Rochester Mennonite Fellowship is a gathering of people in Rochester, New York, inspired by the Mennonite vision. We meet weekly for worship, and many of us are also members of small groups that meet at other times. We are a lay-led congregation, with no pastor. We are a member congregation of the New York Mennonite Conference which is itself a member conference of Mennonite Church USA.
Yes! Everyone is welcome to come be with us any Sunday morning or any other time we are together for worship. It’s a good idea to send us an e-mail to make sure our schedule hasn’t changed for a particular Sunday.
Members of the congregation have come from a variety of backgrounds. Some of us were born and grew up in Mennonite homes and communities. Some of us grew up in other faith traditions, or with no religious identity at all. We all have been drawn to the Anabaptist ideals of the Mennonite Church and the longstanding tradition of this congregation that the church is a welcoming and supportive family. We would love to talk with you about our faith journeys.
We have no pastor, so different people from the congregation lead our worship services. That means that from Sunday to Sunday the service will vary somewhat. However, most of our services follow a basic pattern. We are informal and flexible in our gatherings. Most visitors will find much that is familiar about how we worship.
We praise God in song and in words. We read the Bible. We share our stories so we can learn from each other. The younger children usually have a short time set aside for them. We pray, for ourselves and for the whole world, for the raining down of justice and of peace and an end to violence.
The worship service typically lasts about 45 minutes to an hour. Afterward, during the school year—from September through June—we normally have an education hour. Children go to their Sunday School classes, while the adults usually choose between a Sunday School class of their own or an informal discussion time. Visitors are always welcome to stay.
God calls us to be disciples of Jesus Christ, inviting others to join us. As a Christian community in the Anabaptist tradition we offer healing and hope to one another and to our world through worship and the practice of spiritual disciplines, by creating a supportive and welcoming community, and by offering a clear witness for Biblical peace. We seek to encourage one another to be faithful to God’s word, mission, and work in the world, as revealed though Jesus Christ, joyfully helping each other hear and heed our own calls to ministry.
In local outreach, we are supporting Partners in Restorative Initiatives (formerly the Finger Lakes Restorative Justice Center) by lending space in our building and Teen Empowerment, an organization we feel led to support as we confront racism in ourselves, our fellowship, and our community.
Rochester Mennonite Fellowship started in the mid-1970s when a group of believers in the Rochester area with past connections to the Mennonite Church started meeting informally in homes for prayer and study. We wanted to maintain and intensify those Mennonite connections with others of like mind.
The group began with no pastor or other staff. (Thus, we called ourselves a fellowship, rather than a church, to make clear we were not structured like the typical Christian congregation.) Over the years as we have grown we have continued our tradition of sharing leadership. We take seriously the idea that the church is a priesthood of believers, and have confidence that God has given us the gifts we need to be a faithful, thriving community. We believe we have been successful in providing appropriate leadership, worship, education, and administrative needs from among ourselves for this part of the body of Christ. At the same time, we are very grateful for the many and rich gifts given us by our friends, families, neighbors, and the larger church.
Although our origins are in the house church tradition, a growth spurt in the early 1980s meant we could no longer fit comfortably in a living room or basement. In our quest for space to accommodate our increase in numbers, we have gathered for worship at YMCAs, the Harley School in Rochester, and the Friends’ meetinghouses in the city. A continued expansion in size led us to seriously consider the question of whether we could have our own church building. Moving forward in faith, we purchased land early in 2003 for a church. With many gifts and a grant from the JoinHands Mennonite Church Building Program, and much donation of labor, we constructed a modest building in a residential neighborhood in Rochester. We moved into our new home (pictured above) on Hillside Avenue in the Cobbs Hill neighborhood of the city in April, 2007.
With continued growth and energy, we decided we could support a voluntary service unit in Rochester. Our first group of volunteers arrived in late summer 2010 for a year of working in the area in various organizations and living in community under our guidance. With the downsizing of the national program, the program ended in 2016.
