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president's column

Listening with Different Ears

by Barry C. Bartel '84

The apostle Paul used the metaphor of the body having many members to talk to the churches of his time. That metaphor applies equally well to the Bethel faculty, staff and administration and to your local congregation. I would like to frame the same idea in another way.

Last September, Barbara Thiesen reported on early Mennonite mission work to the Arapahoe at Darlington, Okla. In a letter to the mission board in 1880, missionaries wrote of language difficulties – for example, getting the Arapahoe to provide the word for “Great Spirit.” So the missionaries found what they thought was a suitable alternative. To describe “God,” they combined two Arapahoe words to create the expression “Tschaba Nihaathu” – “Tschaba” meaning “above” and “Nihaathu” meaning “white man.” I have no doubt that readers of this issue of Context in 2007 cringe to think that missionaries described God to the Arapahoe as “white man above.” But in 1880, even though they realized that the phrase was “decidedly wrong,” it is what they used. Mennonite mission work is much different today.

Likewise, we cringe when we see the way our brothers and sisters with darker skin were called “colored” and forced to sit in the back of the bus and use different drinking fountains less than 50 years ago in this country. It took the courageous leadership of Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and many others to bring about changes in the civil rights movement.

I reflected on these experiences after visiting with a friend in downtown Denver last year. Merritt Welty is a chaplain who ministers to the spiritual needs of people at the hospital. Merritt and I had walked down the street a few blocks to a lunch spot, eaten lunch and then walked back, when Merritt commented about how many emergency vehicles there had been that morning. None had passed us as we walked but Merritt’s ear picked them up in the distance. I had to admit that I had not heard them. Somehow his experience of ministering to people when those ambulances reach the hospital caused him to listen in different ways. I had heard sounds of the city as we walked, but my ear had not picked out the emergency vehicles the way Merritt’s did.

We all listen in different ways. Our background and experiences give us different perspectives and cause us to hear things in different ways. Part of our task in working at cross-cultural understandings is to think not only of what sounds right in our experience, but what sounds right in the experience of others. Will what we say or do now cause people to cringe in 50 years? Some things may. But our best chance to prevent that is to listen carefully and respectfully to each other and to be deliberate about listening to people of different backgrounds, to recognize that we have much to learn from each other.

I am excited about our focus on cross-cultural learning at Bethel. Diversity enriches us all, and our students recognize this. In the follow-up to the Bethel College Project, students were surveyed and participated in focus groups. Students from different racial-ethnic backgrounds on campus expressed the most consistent agreement about these two statements: “Religious diversity on campus contributes positively to education” and “Political diversity on campus contributes positively to education.”

The surveys and focus group discussions provided rich descriptions of how people experience our campus. We learned through these surveys that different groups on campus experience campus in different ways. Perhaps we have known that but we now have better tools to deal with our diversity. Student orientation, programming and other activities will be assessed with those learnings in mind. We experience and hear things in different ways and we can and will become more alert to how different people experience our campus. That awareness is an important characteristic of cross-cultural learning, strengthened as when we go to other locations as students and demonstrated when Bethel graduates disperse geographically and professionally as our alumni.

Excerpts from Barry Bartel’s speaking schedule since March 12, 2007:

• March 12, 2007, Devotion, Mennonite Mission Network Board meeting, Newton
• March 25, 2007, Sermon and children’s story, Zion Mennonite Church, Elbing (joint evening service with Grace Hill Mennonite Church)
• April 15, 2007, Sermon and children's story, First Mennonite Church, Halstead
• May 13, 2007, Children's story, Evergreen Heights Mennonite Church, Caldwell, Idaho
• May 5, 2007, Students for Social Change Hunger Banquet, Bethel College
• June 17, 2007, Sermon and children’s story, Washington Mennonite Church, Washington, Iowa

For a complete list of Barry C. Bartel’s speaking engagements, as well as other news from the Office of the President, visit: www.bethelks.edu/bc/administration/president

Education on the road

Sometimes the best way for a college to serve its constituency is to ask.

Bethel College has been working to develop a summer term course that will benefit Hispanic Mennonite churches and leaders, particularly in Texas. During a conference call discussion with the board of directors of the Leadership and Learning Institute (LLI), a program of the Dallas Mennonite churches, president Barry C. Bartel asked what might be an urgent need that Bethel could help LLI meet.

The answer: A class taught in Spanish on how to write a paper for graduate-level credit. Bartel suggested he come to meet with the board in person, and did so the weekend of Feb. 25-27, when he also preached at Peace Mennonite Church and Iglesia Menonita Mi Redentor.

From these two meetings, the idea developed for Bethel professor of Spanish Martha Peterka, who regularly teaches a similar curriculum on writing papers to her upper-level Spanish students, to come to Dallas and do it there in a weekend intensive course.

The class, which Peterka gave April 20-21, came under the auspices of LLI, which the Dallas churches founded in 2002 “to enhance the ministry and outreach of urban churches.” One of LLI’s primary goals is to provide educational services, including distance education through Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Ind., for pastors and church lay leaders.

Peterka taught the mechanics of writing a standard academic paper – including format, style, paragraph organization and thesis statement – and a critical review to 12 participants, ranging in age from teens to 80-plus, with educational experiences almost as varied.

Peterka did not ask her students for written evaluations at the end of the class but said that already by Saturday morning, she was getting oral affirmation and even hugs from her students. “They told me how much they had learned, and how helpful the information would be in enabling them to succeed in subsequent classes. Several times I was told my being there was a blessing from God.”

“We were very pleased,” said Esther Martinez, LLI executive director. “Martha was an excellent teacher who was able to teach us at all educational levels. She was very well prepared and she was very sensitive to the needs of all. I believe the project was a great success. Thank you for the opportunity of partnering with Bethel College – you have truly been a blessing to our community.”

“Some things you do because they are the right thing to do,” Bartel said. “This was a need expressed by the LLI leadership, and Bethel has a professor with the skills needed. So it was a good fit and a good way to serve the churches.”

He added, “We look forward to furthering this relationship with these and other Hispanic churches. Who knows where that might lead?”