YAMEN 2024/2025 orientation at Cambodia. Photo: Sarah Sarauniya Adamu
“This service experience, without a doubt, was a beautiful gift…. Upon returning [from my service assignment], I realized that my place was at home, with my faith community, but my heart burned to return to the Indigenous Mayan Popti’ communities where I had spent my time of service. I felt that I had found a place where I could continue to be part of building the kingdom of God.”
—Febe Madrigal, YAMEN participant from Nicaragua, Jacaltenango Hue-huetenango, Guatemala, 2022–2023
At first glance, Mennonite Central Committee’s YAMEN program (Young Anabaptist Mennonite Exchange Network), operated on behalf of Mennonite World Conference (MWC), could be understood as a volunteer and multicultural exchange program. However, if we see YAMEN as a space for young people who, with curiosity, a calling to service and a burning desire to put into practice their gifts and professional skills, seek to be part of building the kingdom of God in different parts of the world, then YAMEN becomes an opportunity to experience the complexity and richness of the global church.
Most of the countries where the YAMEN program operates are facing crises: war, mass displacement, economic catastrophe, the devastating impact of the climate crisis and combinations of these challenges.
Anabaptist churches worship and witness within these contexts with an eagerness to respond to and generate changes in their immediate contexts, bringing a message of peace in the midst of the violence that surrounds them.
In some contexts, churches fight so that their young people are not recruited by armed groups.
Other communities strive to pass on their knowledge of the land to younger generations so that young people do not leave the countryside.
Diverse skills
At the YAMEN orientation in 2024, I met young people dedicating themselves to bettering their communities through agriculture, music, art, teaching, accounting, administration and engineering.
YAMENers’ diverse skills invite us to think about how rich the global church is.
The global church consists of congregations in both urban and rural communities, with each teaching us new ways of looking at Anabaptism and showing us new ways to embody the call to peacebuilding in contexts where people are confronted with neglect by or even violence.
Anabaptist churches view MCC’s service programs as opportunities for their young people to build connections to and gain knowledge from the global Anabaptist church and the broader world that they can bring back to their communities.
For church communities to send their young people away for a year of service is a major step. For a young leader in a congregation to be absent for a year or more requires adjustment. Yet that adjustment can become an opportunity to develop new leadership skills.
After young adults expand their thinking and gain knowledge beyond their borders in YAMEN, they return to their home communities to share new ways of being the body of Christ
Re-entry adjustments
The experience for each YAMEN participant is so profound that often the return to their countries is challenging, with some of them struggling to find their place as they readjust to their own cultures.
For the sending churches, the return of YAMEN participants can be challenging. Sending church communities can sometimes feel like the YAMENer has changed so much that they are almost “lost,” with their new perspectives challenging the church’s traditional ways of operating.
Remember this . . . But if he plants plenty of seeds, he will get a big harvest. (2 Corinthians 9:6b, EASY). While service through YAMEN can bring challenges, it can also be understood as planting a seed for the future. At the end of the service year, the seeds that were planted have flourished in new, sometimes unexpected, ways, with young people then bringing back new gifts, ideas and hopes for their home churches and communities.
“Living with people from different cultures and immersion in a new environment were molding my way of being, I rebuilt myself and learned a lot. I discovered facets of leadership that I did not know I had in me, along with a responsibility that made me feel closer to God and my neighbour.”
“For me, YAMEN taught me other ways to worship, other ways to be church, and that changed the way I think and how I see the world,” says Malin Yem who served in Haiti (2018–2019), then returned to Cambodia to serve as an assistant pastor.
For over two decades, the YAMEN experience has strengthened young people’s leadership, ministerial and professional skills along with their interpersonal and cultural skills. It has helped many young people discern their vocations and has expanded their vision for how they can contribute to the church in their home contexts. At the same time, YAMENers have expanded the vision of the churches where they have served, opening a window onto the richness of the global church.
—Carolina Pérez Cano coordinates MCC’s YAMEN and Seed young adult service programs. She lives in Bogotá, Colombia.
A version of this article first appeared in Intersections: MCC theory and practice quarterly (Winter 2025, Volume 13, Issue 1).
The Young Anabaptist Mennonite Exchange Network (YAMEN) program is a joint program between Mennonite World Conference and Mennonite Central Committee (MCC). It emphasizes expanding the fellowship between churches in the Anabaptist tradition and developing young leaders around the globe.
Participants spend one year in a cross-cultural assignment starting in August and ending the following July.