Service Inquiry students will share stories and reflections out of their summer Service Inquiry assignments.

Bishop Rhoades is the Roman Catholic bishop for the Fort Wayne and South Bend areas in Indiana. He will speak on Compassionate Peacemaking.

Misty Dillon, MSW, LCSW, SCAMS, works through Dillon Counseling, Inc. in Elkhart.

Andi and Al are a husband-wife team from Chicago. They work with Emmaus Ministries which reaches out to men in prostitution on the streets of Chicago. Through nightly Outreach teams and a daytime Ministry Center, Emmaus staff and volunteers build relationships of trust with these men, working together to help them get off the streets and cultivate a life-transforming relationship with Jesus Christ. Stories from the Streets tells the stories of some of these men through dramatic monologue and music.

Steve Thomas is a pastor who is passionate about powerful peacemaking. He initiated the Peacemakers Martial Arts program, based in Goshen, that trains both children and adults to carry out effective responses to personal violence. Thomas will also lead a safety workshop for female students on Wednesday and a warrior workshop for male students on Tuesday. Both workshops will emphasize using power to defuse violence and will include some martial arts basics.

In this special annual Homecoming Convocation to launch Homecoming Weekend, alumni award winners will be recognized and several will speak.

The Goshen College campus and Rich Meyers farm near Benton, southeast of Goshen, both sit on land that was once tended by members of the Potawatomi Indian nation. George Godfrey and Meyer will share the podium in todays convocation. Godfrey is the former vice president for academic affairs at Haskell Indian nations university in Lawrence Kansas, and a historian of the Citizen Potawatomi band, now living in Athens, Illinois. Both Meyer and Godfrey participated in the Trail of Death Re- enactment this year, which commemorates the removal of the Potawatomi from Indiana in 1838. See related link below. What can emerge through compassionate peacemaking on the part of both Indians and whites today?

Each summer, several Goshen College students complete a ministry inquiry internship with a congregation somewhere in the U.S. What did the 2013 group experience and what did they learn?

To mark International Day of Peace (Sept. 21), student Worship Assistants have planned this chapel service, with an emphasis on immigration.

To mark U.S. Constitution Day (September 17), the history department has invited attorney Lee Roy Berry, Jr. to speak in this convocation. Berry is African-American and is retired from teaching political science courses at Goshen College.