 Last year, we did our first virtual honoring of our annual award winners for the Alumni Ministry and Service Recognition, and we decided that that worked really well. It allows people from a lot of different places to be part of this event, rather than mostly the AMBS community being part of it. So we're doing that again tonight, and so pleased that all of you can join us. We have folks here from all different parts of Leonard and Joanne's lives, and I know they are very happy that you've joined us tonight as well. After I'm finished with the introduction, then our president, David Busher, will read a commendation for Leonard, and then Leonard will have some time to share. And then after he has shared, we will open it up to everyone. And that is your chance to offer him congratulations or memories if you can kind of keep them somewhat short that allows more people to share their memories. So don't go too long on that, but that's what the evening will be, and then I will close us up at 7.15 with a word of prayer. So very grateful to all of you for joining us tonight, and I'm going to turn it over now to President David Busher to, oops, we just lost David. Okay. I'm here. Oh, there he is. There he is. Okay. Popped a different point on my screen. David, I'll turn it over to you now. Please mute themselves before we go any further. Go ahead and put the little mute button in the corner of the screen on so that we don't hear your background noise. And then, Dan, if you would now start the focus screen on the speaker, thank you. Thank you, Janine. It's been it's really good to be with you all this evening. I am delighted to present the 2021 AMBS alumni ministry and service recognition to you Leonard Webe. As a younger pastor, you have been a source of inspiration and encouragement to me over the years, and I'm just delighted to be extending this award to you for your much deserved years of service to the church. Leonard received his Bachelor of Divinity degree from Mennonite Biblical Seminary in 1960. Leonard grew up in Kansas and graduated from Bethel College in 1957, where he met his wife, Joanne. While at Bethel, they became close friends with Erland Waldner, a Bible professor at Bethel, who went on to become a Bible professor and president of Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Chicago. Erland officiated at the Webe's wedding and encouraged them to go to MBS. Leonard's first year of seminary was in Chicago, and then the seminary and its students moved to Elkhart in 1958 to begin the association with Goshen Biblical Seminary known as AMBS. While still in seminary, the Webe's were asked to plant a church in Fort Wayne, and they moved to Fort Wayne after Leonard's graduation in 1960. Leonard was pastor of Maplewood Mennonite Church until 1974, and during that time he also completed a Master of Sacred Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York in 1970. From 1974 to 1986, Leonard was pastor of Faith Mennonite Church in Newton, Kansas. And he then planted a second church in East Denver, pastoring at Peace Mennonite Community Church in Aurora from 1986 until 1998. I noticed that all of Leonard's pastorates were longer than 10 years, which is very significant I think. Since returning to Northern Indiana, Leonard has served as a congregational coach for several congregations in the Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference. So Anne have been active members of 8th Street Mennonite Church, which is part of Central District Conference. Leonard, thank you so much for your decades of service in pastoral ministry, church planting, and leadership. Congratulations on being named one of our alumni recognition recipients. This certificate recognizing this honor will be delivered to you soon. And we invite you to share with us a few words at this point. You're still on mute. Start one more time. Okay. Oh, okay. I want to begin by thanking the seminary for the Alumni Ministry and Service Award and this recognition event. I feel like the seminary prepared me well for my approximately 60 years of active work with churches. About 40 of these years were as lead pastor of Mennonite churches in Fort Wayne, Newton, Kansas, and Denver, Colorado. And then the last 20 years were as interim of two Mennonite churches in Kansas and as a congregational coach of three churches here in northern Indiana. At the age of 91, just this fall, I finally fully retired, whatever that means. And Joanne and I just moved here to Green Crop. It has been a rich and full life. I decided I wanted to go into the ministry after my second year of college, while doing one W work in a polio hospital in Los Angeles. A patient I knew well, suggested that I should become a pastor. While I had always thought about being a farmer, the idea of being a pastor was planted at a young age. Gertrude Roten used to call me her little preacher, or the preacher boy, she called a little preacher boy. When my sister did that at that time, I didn't really go with her on that. I was still thinking a little bit of farming. But Gertrude then later became a Greek professor here at the seminary. I do want to acknowledge Joanne's role throughout all of these years. We met at Bethel College, as you've already heard. We took a Bible class from Erlen Waltner, and I'll say more about Erlen later. But we asked him to officiate at our wedding. And in a counseling session, he made this statement, I see you two as a team in the pastoral ministry. And this is what it has been. I'm very grateful to Joanne, the way we could pass her together. After graduation from Bethel, we began our study at Mennonite Biblical Seminary as you've heard, or MBS. And the first year in Chicago, and then we made the move with the seminary to Elkhart in 58. During our seminary years, I had the opportunity to do some interesting things. One was to join several others from the seminary to take a trip to the south to study racial issues in 1960. Our small group went to the Martin Luther King's installation service at the Ebenezer Baptist Church. And we were able to meet him and to visit with him briefly. Of approximately 600 in attendance, there were only about 30 whites that I could count. This impacted me. The seminary made this possible, giving us a card to use for two weeks and helping to set this up. The speakers were Peter Edgar. No, I'm sorry. Another memorable experience was attending a conference in Kansas City on urban church planting. The speakers were Peter Edgar from Fresno, Stan Bone from Kansas City, and Don Wismer from Arvada, Colorado. I spoke and it created an interest in me when I heard of the good experience they were having in church planting in the city. During our senior year, Erlen Walker told me about the burn church in Elgin, Fort Wayne, and yeah, yeah, the burn church. Dad, you got muted somehow. I'll start over there. Just right there. Yeah. Yeah. During our senior year, Erlen Walker told me about the burn church interest in planting a church in Fort Wayne. Can you hear now? The burn church contacted us. And after some thought and prayer, we sensed a call to go forth to Fort Wayne. They were anxious to begin soon. So they asked us to begin part time by March 1 of our senior year. The church purchased a house in northeast Fort Wayne, which would serve as a person age and also a meeting house to get started. We began with just four couples who were interested in helping us. Years later, having grown to about 65 persons, we built a church with seating for about 120 people and additional Sunday school classes and fellowship hall. In 1964, we hit a plateau in our attendance. It was difficult to reach out to new persons and families, and we were discouraged. Out of this difficult time, we, Joanne and I decided to meet every Thursday evening with Stan and Ruth Naylor, and they would, we would have prayer together. We continued for a number of months and over the next few years our prayers were answered and we did keep growing. Two things we started during those years were a preschool at our church, and we also helped develop the East Central Neighborhood Center. We started a voluntary service unit in 1966 to help with this project. After housing became a serious problem in this black neighborhood. With the help of a Mennonite businessman, we started a housing project, which purchased older homes, which were empty and condemned, and completely restored them with electrical plumbing and heating units. In the period of eight years, we restored 20 such houses to sell back to the community at a modest price. To continue growing, we needed to keep reaching new people. People have sometimes asked me, how did you make contacts with the new people in your community? Our church was in a neighborhood of new homes, and I visited every home in our neighborhood or the community. When I visited with someone at the door, I often asked one question. May I ask, do you have a church home? No one has ever objected to answer that question. The question opened the door for further conversation, resulting in many people visiting our church. And I've used that question over the years. By our 12th year, the church had overgrown or outgrown the existing sanctuary. And in 1972, we added on a long larger sanctuary with additional classrooms for Christmas education, Christian education. By then, the attendance was about 190. About a third of our membership came from members who were not from Mennonite background. Following our 14 years of ministry in Fort Wayne in 1974, we accepted a call to Faith Mennonite Church in Newton, Kansas, where we served for 12 years. And it was the only established church that we served, except for interim work, which we did in retirement. We enjoyed our work at Faith Church very much. In our fifth year there, we went through a building program, enlarging the sanctuary and adding Christian education classrooms. With a larger sanctuary, we needed two services because of the attendance. Part of this was because we were in the same community as Bethel College in North Newton, Kansas. And many college students came to our church. Some pews on the right side of the sanctuary were sort of when the high, that's where the high school students sat. And on the left side, the college sat there. They had their kind of usual places. Some Sundays, we had 50 to 60 college students. Now these were usually the potluck Sundays, when the students love to come for a meal. The food probably helped the students to attend more regularly. There were many young families that were coming too. I recall one Sunday, when we had a baby dedication, and there were 34 parents holding 17 babies all in a row in front. I spent time that week memorizing each baby's name so that I could bless each one individually. During our 12th year at Faith Church, we received a call from the Western District Conference, the office, asking if we would be open to help start a new church in East Denver. We considered it and prayed about it, but we were hesitant. And we said no. We didn't know if we had the energy to plant another church. Also, Joanne was serving in her eighth year as Executive Director of Women in Mission of the General Conference Mennonite Church, but they called again. And we gave it some more thought and prayer. And then we felt that God was leading us to say yes. There were several churches in Denver, but there was a desire that the new church be on the east side of Denver in Aurora. To get started, we wrote to all of our Mennonite colleges and asked them to send a list of the alumni who lived in the larger Denver area. For the first five months, we called on many persons. We began to meet at our home for Bible study, prayer sessions, planning meetings, many meals, and welcoming new people to the group. After five months of bringing small groups of people together, we had about 30 people, and it felt it was time to find a place where we could rent space. And we realized that the Aurora Senior Center, a gathering place for senior citizens, became available to be used on Sundays. We chose the name Peace Mennonite Community, Community Church. We did Sunday services announcing this in the papers, and we stopped at many houses in the community, giving them a brochure, and telling them about the new church. After we had been there for about three and a half years in a rented building, a piece of land came up for sale. It was very near to the Aurora Senior Center where we were meeting. We were located on Alameda Avenue, a well-traveled street, and good visibility. One humorous experience was a time I felt compelled to go to this plot of land and pray that, ask God, is this really something we can afford to do and pay for? My VW bug and parked it partially on the land and partially on the sidewalk of this undeveloped 2.2 acres. I walked to the middle of the land, and I knelt down and prayed. And the only interruption was that after a little while, a police car pulled up behind my VW. I was worried he was going to write me a ticket. He saw me get up off my knees, and apparently he felt there was nothing too wrong with this, and he drove off. Paying for the land and the building was a big challenge. And all I can say is that we relied on many generous people, not just in Colorado, but also in Kansas, Nebraska, and Indiana. The land 2.2 acres was 170,000 in cost, quite a bit higher than the usual farmland we think of. And in Whitewater, Kansas, the land wasn't that high. Well, the construction company, it was tremendous how they had a lot of help. Some of these people came from far away, and like Barney Hubberger from Burn, Indiana, who made three trips to help out, and he even brought a small crew with him every time he came. We couldn't have done it without all of this help. The first worship service in the new building was on August 17, 1997, which happened to be Joanne's 62nd birthday. I was 67 by then, and it was 11 years since we had first moved to Denver to plan a church. The membership at the church was about 100 people when we finished our ministry. There are one year later, and almost half of the congregation came from backgrounds other than many. I want to close with a few things about Erlen Walker, who I mentioned at the beginning. The relationship with Erlen demonstrates the role that AMBS faculty have with their students. It's not just a relationship for three years, but often for a lifetime. In addition to being our professor in college and marrying us. He was my professor when we both ended up in the new seminary in Elkarp. He was my ordination service at a Mayesh church in Whitewater, Kansas, and he also preached at my mother's funeral. He spoke at the dedication of the second building project in Fort Wayne, and he came, he was 80 years old, and he came all the way to Colorado to give the sermon when we dedicated that church. Enter for me for over 50 years. Many of you, of course, know that Walker was a president of the seminary for 20 years. Through all of these experiences, we know that it was God's doing. And there were many answers to prayer. Joanne and I witnessed God's faithfulness to us and to our church institutions, including AMBS. Thank you for allowing me to share these reflections. Thank you so much Leonard. What a rich life's experience for you and Joanne, and we are very grateful to hear that story.