Hands and Feet of Jesus: 50 Years of MVS in San Francisco

Karen Kreider Yoder wrote this history moment on Mennonite Voluntary Service and what it has meant to FMCSF. She presented it during our 50th anniversary year on October 5, 2025.

When we celebrate our congregation’s first 50 years, we are also celebrating 50 years of Mennonite Voluntary Service (MVS) in San Francisco. 

The MVS unit’s central place in the congregation traces to the first few months after James and Leanna Rhodes arrived in San Francisco in November 1975 with their vision of living simply together in Christian community, bringing an Anabaptist presence to our city, and proclaiming a witness of peace.  

The closest Voluntary Service unit was in Stockton, associated with a Methodist house church. Braxton Combs, pastor, held Sunday evening services in the parsonage, and the volunteers were welcome to attend.  

Pastor Combs’ daughter, Lindy, recalled one Sunday evening.  “I remember meeting Rachel Miller, a volunteer from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She was wearing a granny dress of yellow seersucker, long blond hair and the biggest Bible I’d ever seen.”  They became best friends. 

VS leaders in Elkhart, Indiana, wanted Mennonite supervision for the young volunteers, so they asked James Rhodes to move the unit to San Francisco. Rachel transferred to the new unit, with three other young women who joined in the fall.   

In the first years of the VS unit, the volunteers generated enough funds from their placements and lived simply enough that they sent money back to the VS headquarters.  

At the beginning, our VS unit was affiliated with the Mennonite Church Voluntary Service program (VS), which assisted congregations as a short-term resource for a particular need. Our first need was to grow our small congregation. 

In 1983, when our congregation was 8 years old, and fully 14 members, our VS Support Committee recognized that we now had a solid congregation, and that we were ready to do VS that was even more aligned with our church’s mission.   The VS Support Committee changed our affiliation from Mennonite Church VS to the General Conference Mennonite Voluntary Service (MVS), which focused on outreach and community service important to us, including legal services for prisoners, housing for immigrants, food access.  

In other words, our program hoped to have a deeper, longer impact in our city based on our congregation’s mission. 

In a letter requesting this change, the committee wrote that their goal was “to attract volunteers who are willing to risk something of themselves in order to get the rest of us involved in the part of the city that frightens or intimidates us.”

Voluntary Service has always pushed the boundaries.  

We often say that our VSers are the hands and feet of Jesus in San Francisco. What does that mean? 

Jesus used his hands:  

-He took a loaf of bread, broke it, gave thanks and fed 5000 people who ate and were full.

-He held a scroll and read prophetic words. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. To proclaim release to the captives. And recovery of sight to the blind. To set at liberty those who are oppressed.”  

How do we use our hands?

Jesus used his feet: 

-He walked alongside people and listened to them. 

-He stood firm and was courageous in his beliefs. Standing up to unjust power. 

How do we, each of us, use our feet to help others?  To push the boundaries. 

Mennonite Voluntary Service started in the 1940s as an alternative service to the military, as a way of conscientiously objecting to war. 

And so, our volunteers over these 50 years have worked to conscientiously object to wrongs in our society and to right those wrongs –meeting the ever-changing needs of our city. Our volunteers supported conscientious objectors after the Vietnam War, worked with HIV-AIDS patients in the 1990s, worked to find housing since the 1990s, and have worked with legal services throughout the years. 

Our volunteers work …To clothe the naked, to feed the hungry:      

Through the San Francisco Food Bank

To give legal support to those in need:

Death Penalty Focus

East Bay Sanctuary Covenant

Eviction Defense Collaborative

Mission Action

Prison Law Office

To house the unhoused:

DISH

Housing Advocacy Project

La Casa de las Madres

Homeless Prenatal Program 

Raphael House

To heal the sick:

Catholic Charities- HIV Services

Center for AIDS Services

Tenderloin Health Clinic

Tom Waddell Health Center

To teach our youth:

Mission Graduates

Every year for 50 years, at least one new volunteer has joined the MVS house. We have hosted 157 volunteers and almost 40 have stayed on in the city after their service. Many have remained active in our congregation. Many are here today. 

How have we sustained this unit all these years?  

One key is our commitment to a permanent house for our volunteers. For the first 6 years, we rented space in the Haight— 142 then 24 Beulah Street.  In 1983, we rented the upper apartment of 802 Page Street in the Lower Haight, and the MVS unit settled in for 17 years.

Then, the year 2000 posed an existential crisis: The entire building was for sale. Would the loss of the apartment be the end of our MVS unit?  How could we possibly find another light-filled, spacious apartment with 5 bedrooms and affordable rent?

Randy Newswanger, a member, gathered a group from First Mennonite – Dan Flickinger, Denny Kauffman and Judy Georges – who, together, agreed to buy 802 Page, understanding it was an emergency and a temporary measure. 

After many discussions, our congregation decided the MVS program was important enough to the life of our congregation that we were ready to buy the building as a long-term investment in the life of MVS. 

We established Phase I of a Capital Campaign in 2002 to raise $120K from our own congregation. Could we manage that amount in addition to our regular budget?  In only 8 months, we were successful.

Phase II of the Capital Campaign began in 2003, with FMCSFers reaching out to family, friends and people interested in service. We practiced how to give a sales pitch. Many of us were uncomfortable, but we tried our best.  

Randy read the history of the New Holland, Pennsylvania, church where his grandmother was a founder. They had spent 8 years raising funds before breaking ground. Our fundraising might take 10 years, Randy calculated.  

Five years later, in 2008, we had raised the needed funds, and our congregation bought the MVS house–the entire building.

Since then, our Trustees Committee has kept up on maintenance and improvements that contribute to making our MVS house a strong draw for young people to the city. 

Our MVS Support Committee has remained strong, with leadership from Doug Basinger in the early years.  In 2000 Russ Schmidt became our first Local Program Coordinator (LPC), followed by Ann Speyer, Sarah Spellman and Tina Reiman for an interim period, and now Joanna Lawrence Shenk.   We are grateful.

The MVS program nationally has dwindled from many dozenU.S. locations–78 in the 1970s!–to three: Alamosa, Colorado; Tucson, Arizona; and San Francisco. Still, our unit is stronger than ever, providing additional sets of hands and feet to bring about the kindom of God in our time and in our place. 

What are we grateful for?  

We are grateful that in the early years, the MVSers did fill the chairs so we could steadily grow. 

We’re grateful that our early MVSers had the foresight to take a stand to be a long-term presence in the City and a visionary presence among us. 

We are grateful that our MVSers keep us engaged and aware of the organizations they are serving in–helping all of us get involved in parts of the city we don’t know much about– or are intimidated by.  

We are grateful that each year, we get to welcome new members and incorporate them into the life of the church.

We’re grateful for our volunteers’ willingness to develop their leadership skills.   Some former MVSers have become church leaders or in other ways live out MVS values.

We’re grateful that when our MVSers go back to their home congregations, they share who we are as an inclusive church.

We are grateful that each year, our MVSers bring new insights and help us all 

–give generously

–speak prophetically

–walk alongside others and listen

–stand firm in speaking truth to power.

To be the hands and feet of Jesus in our city.

We are grateful for 50 years of Mennonite Voluntary Service in San Francisco.