Warm greetings to you in this season of Advent.
It is a great privilege for me to represent our national family in the International Community of Mennonite Brethren (ICOMB). I am grateful for the support of Don Morris and our USMB national leadership board in representing all of you in this global family of faith. Serving in the ICOMB executive team with Global Executive Director Rudi Plett is a great honor.
Our Lord has led and blessed us for 160 years of global disciple-making, resulting in over 480,000 members in 21 national conferences in 19 countries. Whether or not you are aware of it, this is the global family in which we actively participate, either personally or as a local or national church. It is our desire that this relationship be increasingly experiential at all these levels.
In conversations with USMB conference leadership we have developed and affirmed a plan to create a strategic team of leaders which will serve ICOMB within our national conference. The structure and size of the team is yet to be determined, and we anticipate the possibility of a key leader within the team.
This team would seek to promote ICOMB and to inform our constituency of ICOMB’s purposes, ministry activities and financial needs. Additionally and importantly, we would seek to discover ways in which ICOMB can serve the conference by fostering mutually beneficial church to church relationships with other conferences within the global family and to seek ways in which the USMB conference can support ICOMB´s ministry.
In partnership with national leadership, some possible candidates have been discerned for that team, and with this letter we are requesting and would welcome your suggestions. It is our hope that we will experience the leadership of the Spirit of Christ as we enter the discernment process and to that end we appreciate your prayerful partnership.
Sincere thanks in advance.
Ed Boschman
USMB ICOMB representative
Rudi Plett
ICOMB global executive director
The International Community of Mennonite Brethren is a global fellowship of 22 member national churches in 19 countries. Our global family has approximately 450,000 official ICOMB members. ICOMB has associate members in over 20 more countries. Associate members are all on different points along the pathway to full membership. ICOMB exists to facilitate relationships and ministries to enhance the witness and discipleship of its member national churches – connecting, strengthening and expanding.
