On Friday, July 3, while many were beginning their Independence Day celebrations, two Children’s Disaster Services (CDS) volunteers were aiding the Kerrville, Texas, community in a very different commemoration.
Two pastors were ordained for pastoral ministry in the Mangateen IDP [Internally Displaced Person] camp in June: Daniel Mawer and Paul Makuar. Mawer was trained in the Presbyterian tradition but due to conflicts in the leadership of the Presbyterian Church in South Sudan, he asked if he could join the Church of the Brethren.
The National Youth Conference office is excited to announce all of our speakers for NYC 2026! For some 10 weeks in advance of NYC, a speaker was announced on NYC social media pages as part of a series titled “Speaker Saturday.” Read below to find out a bit about each of our speakers.
“As we approach the 250th anniversary of the event that kicked off the revolution, we might ask, what do we Brethren think about the Declaration of Independence? … And what would our forebears say about what we’ve become?” asked Denise Kettering-Lane at her standing-room-only equipping session titled “Dunkers and the Declaration of Independence: Then and Now.”
The following call to worship was shared during the closing worship service of the 2026 Conference on Thursday morning, July 2, with leadership from Gail Heisel. And it has a back story.
The delegate body of the 2026 Annual Conference on Wednesday afternoon, July 1, adopted a “Resolution on Weapons Transfer” with a solid majority vote. The paper cites Matthew 5:44b-45, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…,” to call the Church of the Brethren to “examine and respond to the impacts of the arms industry.”
For some time, the Church of the Brethren has undertaken a periodic review every decade to evaluate the denomination’s organizational structures and procedures, with a committee assigned to bring recommendations to Annual Conference for possible changes. This decade’s Review and Evaluation Committee, elected in 2025, presented its first interim report.
Norton as executive director of Global Mission for the Church of the Brethren introduced the international guests who were present. She then introduced the evening’s speaker and guest of honor Daniel Mbaya, president of Ekklesiyar Yan’uwa a Nigeria (EYN, the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria), “the largest Anabaptist communion in the world.”
It’s a story of ignorance, prejudice, nativism, and ill will, and a mean-spirited law aimed at us Dunkers and all the “plain people,” with consequences that continue to be felt in our day. And it was appropriate that a story involving an Elizabethtown (Pa.) College founding professor, Elizabeth Myer, should be shared by Steve Nolt, director of the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies on Elizabethtown’s campus.
With the proper therapies, and in some cases surgeries and other medical intervention, infants born prematurely have every chance of growing up to their full potential. But in places like Vietnam, premature infants born in rural areas may have no access to top-flight medical care.
