Thinking out loud

So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.  (I Corinthians 3:7)      Told from a global north point of view, the story of Mennonite missions in Indonesia begins in the Netherlands. In 1851, the Doopsgezinde Zending Vereniging (DZV) sent Pieter Jansz, its first missionary, to Java. The result today is three Mennonite synods with more than 340 congregations and more than 108,000 members.      But there is a different way to tell the story that is also true. For the leaders of the Gereja Injili di Tanah Jawa (GITJ Synod) the story could begin like this:      Tunggul Wulung was a Javanese mystic who joined Diponegoro, a Javanese prince,in fighting against the colonial rule of the Dutch in the late 1820s.   After Diponegoro was defeated and exiled, Tunggul Wulung was on the run. His spiritual quest was to find the Messiah. In about 1851, he atte...

      May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace.  Romans 15:13      One congregation in the rural village of Srumbung Gunung and another in the city of Ungaran. The two Mennonite church es  in Indonesia are probably not 20 miles apart, but in other ways, the distance seems much greater.       There are almost 110,000 Mennonites in Ind onesia in three different synods (denominations). One originated in a Ja vanese context (GITF), and another began among the Chine se in Indonesia (GKMI). The th ird (JK I) , younger, more pentecostal and ur ban , i s also more connected to Mennonites on the West Coast of the United States .      On the first Sunday of Advent at 7 a.m. , you could see the members an d f amilies of the Srumbung Gunung (GKMI) congreg ation (left above) walk up the road to the church at the top of t he hill. The y are a minority here because most of t...