FMCSF History Moment: Our Growing Church, 2010-2020
In this First Mennonite’s 50th Anniversary year, we’re presenting several short “History Moments.” This is the fifth in the series by Karen Kreider Yoder.
By 2010, we had settled into our new, light-filled worship space at Congregation Sha’ar Zahav.
Our congregation was growing! Guests visited and stayed. Young families arrived. Our Mennonite Voluntary Service workers (MVSers) stayed in the city after their terms ended.
We were nearly 100 members and active attenders plus 26 children. How do you remember everyone’s names in a group that size? We moved our fellowship time from our cramped location downstairs in the Oneg Room, upstairs to the present location. We added the Community LIfe Committee for a vision of community that expanded beyond fellowship time.
Our young children overflowed the childcare room. We didn’t have enough rooms to house our children’s, youth and adult education hour groups. So we rented space across the street at Holy Names for our children’s Sunday School. With increased numbers of children and childcare providers, we formed a child protection policy for all who work with children. We formed thematic children’s education series– on the Parables, for example, and a multi-age series on telling our on-going Anabaptist stories from the 1500s to the present, culminating in the Braided Lives worship service on Mother’s Day 2016.
We formed Discipleship Groups, studying topics like racial justice and climate change. We formed our first “Over 55” small group to discuss issues of aging.
With growth comes wondering who we are– who we want to be and what God is calling us to be. So we dove into a discernment process to determine our core values and how to increase our outreach. We examined our physical space and our organizational structure.
Even before the discernment process was completed, Sheri felt increasingly challenged to keep all the balls in the air, so she gathered a Leadership Group– the chairperson of each major committee– to meet regularly with her. This experiment in organizational structure led to our new format– seven main committees that each send a representative to a core group called – Elders. This structure relieved strain on any committee or person.
We continued to grow. By 2013, we were 125 active members and attenders plus 33 children and youth. Our need for nurturing our youth and for doing outreach was also growing. We looked outside our congregation for additional leadership, and we found Joanna Shenk, who joined our pastoral staff, Sheri Hostetler and Pat Plude, as Associate Pastor and Local Program Coordinator for our MVS program, and she soon took on the responsibility of Youth Group Leader.
Joanna brought a zeal for activism, and she soon organized us making banners to use during actions in front of banks, at Immigration & Custom Enforcement (ICE) offices, in solidarity with Palestinians. “First Mennonite Church of San Francisco in Solidarity.” “Mennonites for Black Lives.” “We are Building Up a New World.”
On October 27, 2018, a gunman attacked Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, killing 11 people. Organized by Joanna, the following Friday, we gathered outside our sister synagogue to pray and sing and hold a vigil of protection so our Jewish friends could gather for Shabbat. Rather than step up traditional armed security precautions, Rabbi Mychal said, “I’ll take 20 Mennonites over one armed security guard any day.” We have kept up our vigils when needed.
Through these years, we hosted our Pacific Southwest Mennonite Conference and sent leadership to their board and committees.
In 2019, we put together a congregational quilt; each person chose a piece of fabric that represented their work in the world or their passion in life. We donated the quilt –and an accompanying book of stories of our collective life work– to the Mennonite Women USA raffle. In reading those stories of deep involvement in our community, Sheri reflected that, during this time, “many people came to church to get refreshed from the tensions of being engaged in the world, to stay healthy and to offer prayers for balance.” Pat Plude won the quilt and the book of background stories.
Still our congregation grew. Several years during this decade, we ended the fiscal year with a budget surplus– a delightful challenge to consider how to spend the overflow funds.
In 2019 when MVS National Office decided to hand over financial responsibility to local MVS units, we were in the position to accept that responsibility.
It was not all roses. We felt the pressure of worsening housing prices. We met in regional groups to discuss how to creatively manage the housing crisis, and we grieved as some of our beloved members moved away.
Even so, by 2020, we reached nearly 150 members or regular attenders and 35 children and youth.
Then, this time of growth abruptly came to an end. In early March, 2020, without knowing it, we worshiped together in person for the last time that year.
