Long-time MB leader lets down his hair

My Lines Have Fallen in Pleasant Places: An Autobiography Marvin Hein. Privately published, 2005. (Contact author at 559-298-3940 or online.)

Many who attended the 1975 MB General Conference in Winnipeg will recall the dramatic visual aid in Marvin Hein’s keynote address. While he held forth on “The Temple God Is Building” (Ephesians 2:19–22), stonemason Jacob Loewen was busy with trowel and mortar erecting an actual stone wall onstage.

Marvin Hein

Hein was one of the best Mennonite Brethren preachers of his day. The anchor of his ministry was the Hillsboro (Kansas) MB Church, then the second-largest in the conference. With many elderly members, there were many funerals. It was said Hein could preach three funeral sermons in a week and not repeat himself.

He came up the old-fashioned way. He was a contented young farmer in Fairview, Okla., when his name was put forward for ministerial selection. It wasn’t his idea, but he had promised God that if chosen, he “would not disregard the wish of the congregation.”

After studies and a brief internship he began a long and rich ministry with the Mennonite Brethren – 24 years in Hillsboro and 11 at North Fresno in California. He held many denominational positions and concluded with 11 years as executive secretary of the now-disbanded General Conference.

His memoir is substantive and fascinating. While there is the expected abundance of family history, there also is plenty to illumine the temper of the times and the pulse of conference life.

Hillsboro may have been rural and conservative, but it was long the centre of MB missions and publishing and gave room to nourish Hein’s progressive spirit. Under his leadership Hillsboro became the first Mennonite Brethren church to hire a full-time female ministerial staff member in the 1970s.

Aspiring pastors will benefit from Hein’s reflections on sermon preparation, theology, worship styles, and personal finances. He lets his hair down about the pastor’s real world – life in the fishbowl, dealing with moral lapses in the congregation, and trying to satisfy the range of congregational longings.

“I learned very quickly that some people want the best preaching in the world and others want the utmost care in the world,” he writes. “Most of us pastors don’t possess the gifts nor the time to do both of those that well.”

Hein’s sermons, which he wrote out and memorized, became the grist of books. Some appeared as The Ties That Bind (1980), the volume that launched Kindred Press. A book of funeral sermons was published as Like a Shock of Wheat (Herald Press).

A refreshing feature of this autobiography is its candor. (Some might call it a fault.) Hein provides, for example, a rare recounting of a nasty land development scandal that plagued the U.S. Conference for many years and ended up costing some retirees their savings and threatening the stability of Tabor College and Fresno Pacific. Hein was a close observer (and personal investor) through his long involvement with the U.S. MB Board of Higher Education.

Sprinkled among musings on golf, gardening, and world travel there is also a rich history of ecumenical work, including a long involvement with Mennonite World Conference. Hein’s unapologetic commitment to Anabaptist principles and his willingness to work with others polished the MB image in places where we were seen as standoffish.

“I am a dyed-in-the-wool Mennonite,” he writes. “I have given my life to the service of the Mennonite Brethren in particular and to Mennonites of all varieties in general.”

This is an excellent portrait of an MB pastor’s life. Sadly, it may be hard to find as it was self-published in a small press run.

Wally Kroeker is editor of MEDA’s Marketplace magazine and also once lived in Hillsboro, when he was editor of Christian Leader.