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Greetings!
Mennonite Disaster Service defies attempts at definition. Yet over the years I have kept morsels of definitions in my files. So here are some:
Years ago, historian Robert Kreider tried to define Mennonite Disaster Service:
“There is something about MDS that is elemental, earthy, grassroots, celebrative, loving-accepting, confident, eager, Spirit-filled, and unsophisticated…It is like a third force in Mennonitism…Talk about evangelism, witnessing, and social action…” [from, The Hammer Rings Hope: Photos and Stories from Fifty Years of Mennonite Disaster Service, Herald Press, 2000, p. 173]
Jeff Wright, missionary pastor from Riverside, CA once said “service transforms us not because it makes us nicer people or better people. Service transforms because it opens us up to the possibility of a fresh experience of God in our lives. Our hammers may indeed ring hope for others, but they also construct for us who wield our hammers a doorway into a deeper walk with Christ.”
Devotions and meditations offered by volunteers is often cited as something that helps to define an MDS volunteer experience. Volunteers have the opportunity to sign up to share a short devotional. It varies a lot, yet I get to hear their definition of the MDS experience. There are readings from the Daily Bread devotional to sharing of personal testimonies.
Devotions are not a perfunctory time on the scheduled routine to be gotten through, but rather an infusion of empowerment of God contained within our frailties, to do Christ’s MDS project each day. By doing so, both we and the disaster survivors - who are hard pressed on every side, will not be crushed; those who are perplexed will not despair; those persecuted, not abandoned and those struck down, not destroyed. (II Cor 4:8 & 9)
I would be interested in hearing how you define MDS!
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