Who We Are
Pasadena Mennonite Church is an Anabaptist community of people from all over the Los Angeles area. We gather in Pasadena on Sundays and live out the rest of the week, both together and in our personal spaces, committed to the work, teaching, and witness of Jesus. As followers of Jesus, we seek authentic fellowship with one another and the world centered on his message of good news for the poor and dispossessed, seeking peace, justice, healing, and joy in all our relationships.
Sunday Mornings
On Sunday mornings, you can find us in the fellowship hall of the Pasadena Church of the Brethren (1041 N. Altadena Ave; Pasadena, CA 91107). We begin to gather together at 10:10AM for fellowship, coffee, and snacks. We view this as part of our worship. Then at 10:30AM, with our gathering song, we begin to make our way to our chairs for our more programmed worship time. For our younger participants, the nursery is open for those 6 months to 2 years olds at 10:25AM and children 3 years old to 5th grade begin the service with the community and are dismissed for children in worship, primary, and middlers during the service. You will note that we meet in the fellowship hall rather than the sanctuary. We meet this way quite intentionally in order to link our fellowship and community time closely with our worship, and so that we can arrange ourselves in such a way as to see each other, emphasizing that we come together as a body to worship together. We currently offer the ability to worship with us live over Zoom. If you have questions about attending via Zoom, email: Office@PasadenaMennonite.org
All Are Welcome
Pasadena Mennonite Church is an open community that celebrates and affirms that all people are created in God’s image. We believe that all people are worthy of dignity and respect whatever one’s socio-economic status, ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, physical or mental ability, immigration status, education, politics, culture, or other life situations. We invite all to partner with us as fellow journeyers and pilgrims, members and leaders, and as full participants in the life of our covenant community.
Our Central Values
Discipleship
We believe that to be a disciple of Jesus is to seek to be formed into Jesus’s image; that is, to be like Jesus, to follow Jesus’s teachings, and to follow after Jesus on his journey. We seek to be followers of Jesus. His life and mission is the lens through which we view the world and our place in it. Believing that Jesus is best known incarnationally, we strive to be doers of Jesus’ teachings, enactors of the Sermon on the Mount, and “embodiers” of his presence as a body of peace and justice. Simply put, we think that Jesus told us all that stuff about loving our neighbors because he wanted us to actually do it. We long to know Jesus more and to reflect that relationship in the world.
Community
We believe that we are not merely a ramshackle collection of individuals, but a community of Jesus’ body. Thus, we strive to work out life together in community, pushing each other forward in discipleship, sharing our talents and resources for the good of our sisters and brothers, and creating spaces of healing. We commit to fostering a community of non-conformity and resistance to the “normative” systems of the world, such as racism, sexism, homophobia, nationalism, war profiteering, and materialism. To be Mennonite is to be weird. We embrace that and look for the unruly Holy Spirit to move among us and shape us to be weird.
Peace & Justice
We are committed to being a peace church. Peace means more than the absence of conflict. We live in a world of perpetual war and systemic violence. We commit to be wagers of peace, seeking justice for the least and striving to reconcile ourselves with our neighbors, God’s Creation, and God. We believe that God can be found on the margins, and so we seek to become one with those on the margins, to be allies and accomplices for true peace and reconciliation, as Jesus taught us.
Mennonites? Is that like being Amish?
No we don’t wear bonnets and all black, nor do we ride in buggies, though a number of us have beards (but not like those beards!). You wouldn’t be able to pick us out in a crowd by our dress, though we share a common history with those groups you might be thinking of. Want to know more about what a Mennonite is? Then, you might want to click here.
Pasadena Mennonite Church 