- Date: February 8, 2014
- Time: 9 a.m. to 12:15 p.m.
- Location: Franconia Mennonite Church
Registration: Please click here to register your attendance. We apologize if you tried earlier and were unable to register. We have experienced some technical glitches in our website that are now fixed. Your registration will help us be better prepared for our time together.
Description: The purpose of this meeting is to share a synthesis of the information gleaned from your input at Conference Assembly in November and develop a direction for how we will live into what Conference leaders heard you say during those sessions.
Desired Outcomes:
- To identify areas for mutual support and engagement
- To grow in our understanding of one another as people of mission and ministry
- To share ideas about how we can strengthen and develop relationships that allow us to become more collaborative
- To create opportunities to hear one another for open and generative conversation
Attached are four documents:
- An an overview of a Strategic Direction for 2014 and 2015.
- Compilations of your 2013 Conference Assembly input:
–How you see God Still@Work.
–Your SWOT Analysis of the Conference Board Statement for Conferring.
–Your reflections on the future of the conference from the afternoon workshop.
Please take time to review these documents in advance in order to make better use of our time together on Feb. 8.
A number of persons have urged Conference leaders to use the February 8 meeting as a time to discuss issues of human sexuality following the recent action of Mountain States Mennonite Conference to grant pastoral credentials to a woman in a same-sex relationship and the six-month listening process begun by Eastern Mennonite University’s trustees to review the university’s employment practices as they relate to persons in same-sex relationships.
However, the focus of the February 8 gathering will not be discernment around human sexuality. Conference leaders have responded to the two incidents with recent communication. You should have received an emailed letter (English, Indonesian, Spanish, Vietnamese) from Franconia Conference moderator, John Goshow, which included a Call to Prayer by Mennonite Church USA’s executive director, Ervin Stutzman (English, Indonesian, Spanish, Vietnamese) along with the Mennonite Church USA Membership Guidelines (Spanish). In response to Ervin’s call, we will spend time in corporate prayer on February 8. This delegate gathering will also be the first step in the 2014-15 strategic direction that suggests ways we can work toward processing this and other potentially difficult conversations.
Franconia Mennonite Conference is all of us: congregations, delegates, pastors, and Conference Related Ministries. Your presence is important! Be part of shaping our shared future on February 8.
The opinions expressed in articles posted on Mosaic’s website are those of the author and may not reflect the official policy of Mosaic Conference. Mosaic is a large conference, crossing ethnicities, geographies, generations, theologies, and politics. Each person can only speak for themselves; no one can represent “the conference.” May God give us the grace to hear what the Spirit is speaking to us through people with whom we disagree and the humility and courage to love one another even when those disagreements can’t be bridged.