Oxford Circle's new $3.5 million complex in northeast Philadelphia houses their church, an MCC office, a day care center and many community activities.
Basketball versus Class In a YouTube interview posted at www. emu.edu/crossroads, Leonard talked about focusing almost entirely on basketball as an undergraduate, while neglecting his studies and spiritual life. When asked to speak to athletes today, Leonard refers to the “threepoint stance” in basketball, where a player positions himself to either pass, shoot or dribble around someone. “I challenge the young people to have a three-point stance in life – mind, body and spirit.” Leonard says his coach, Sherman Eberly ’68, “was on me constantly” to perform as well off the court as on the court, but when “you are young and dumb” you don’t always follow smart advice. “What I regret most [at college] is skipping the cross-cultural experience – it interrupted the [basketball] season – but I should have taken it to expand my world view.” For athletes, Leonard says the “natural gravitation is to taking care of the body,” which is what he himself did by playing basketball two or three hours a day as a college student. Excellence in athletics “gives you a level of confidence in yourself ” as well as “a pass” in ways that can be unhealthy. “Being 38 | crossroads | spring 2010
a star on the court can be intoxicating.” After graduation, however, athletes will discover that they need to rely more on their relationship with God and the use of their minds to find fulfillment and success, Leonard says.
when doing his volunteer church work than when working in the bank. When his then 35-member church, Oxford Circle Mennnonite in Philadelphia, went looking for (in Leonard’s words) “a pastor to be paid halftime to do full-time work,” nobody nibbled. Church members urged Leonard to consider Success in Banking being the pastor himself. He would be servUntil he was in his late 20s, Leonard ing a diverse, low-income urban neighborclimbed the ladder of success in the banking hood not populated by ethnic Mennonites. Leonard wanted to respond to the call, world, starting as a teller and ending up but Rosalie hesitated at first: “She was conas a vice president. Since he grew up in a cerned about the security of our family. She situation of tight finances, Leonard wanted had married a banker, not the man I was to make money. He had season tickets to becoming. I was changing the rules on her. the Sixers, family health insurance through She thought I was having a mid-life crisis.” his employer, and a spacious house in Ironically, it was Rosalie who had Philadelphia. He was preparing to welcome “dragged” Leonard “kicking and screaming his first child into a world of middle-class into the Mennonite Church,” he says. “I got comfort and was putting his wife, Rosalie to choose the city where we live, and she got Rolón-Dow ’89, through graduate school. to choose the church.” (Leonard and Rosalie met when he was an upper classman working in the cafeteria Money Poor, Spirit Rich line at EMU; she came through the line as a first-year student, the daughter of a Today Rosalie whole-heartedly supports Puerto Rican Mennonite pastor. She now Leonard’s ministry and accepts that part of has a PhD in education and is an education that ministry is his receiving a salary that professor at the University of Delaware.) is lower than what he was earning in the But Leonard felt himself more energized banking business back in 1999.