by June Krehbiel
The words of Isaiah 6:8 didn’t impress 13-year-old Jim Schrag at the time. His pastor, Arnold Epp at First Mennonite Church in Newton, Kan., presented “Here am I, send me” to young Jim in 1958 along with similar verses to other baptismal candidates. Only later, when his dad called attention to their meaning, did the young man recognize the significance of the words.
During three decades of church leadership, the Isaiah verse has inspired Schrag, who retired Nov. 30 from his position as executive director of Mennonite Church USA. He has ministered a total of 36 years within Mennonite congregations and in denominational leadership. Beginning in 1996, he served three years as general secretary for the General Conference Mennonite Church, two years as project leader for the team which guided the former General Conference and Mennonite Church toward a merger and, since 2001, at the helm of the fledgling denomination.
Someday Schrag might put stickers on a map to show all the airports he’s been at, especially the last 13 years, while attending denominational and area conference meetings.
His most recent call from God, however, finds him not on the way to a meeting, but writing a book-length manuscript about the years leading up to and including the merger. Faith and culture stand together as his way to describe the coming together.
“God is in the future more than the past, but God is certainly in the past,” he said last month at his office in Newton, Kan. Favorite quotations and Bible verses, including the Isaiah words, hang on the walls. Boxes crammed with paper files cover a table. Three-ring binders fill the shelves. A laptop computer sits on his wooden desk.
He has picked Bethlehem (Pa.) 1983 to begin the retelling. At the time he’d pastored Tabor Mennonite Church near Goessel, Kan., for 10 years and was co-chairing the planning committee for the meetings. These were the first joint delegate sessions of the General Conference Mennonite Church and the Mennonite Church. A statement on inter-Mennonite cooperation was one item discussed in joint sessions—the first step toward a merger between the two denominations.
In 1995 delegates to sessions held in Wichita, Kan., granted approval to integration. By then Schrag had pastored the Oak Grove Mennonite Church congregation near Smithville, Ohio, for 10 years. The next year the General Conference called him to the position of general secretary, and his tenure in churchwide leadership began. Because he was relatively new to the work that had been done on the institutional level, with a smile he describes that time as feeling like he was “thrown into the water and asked to swim.”
The theme Schrag is pursuing in his book is change. Amid the changes the new denomination has experienced lie cultural differences.
“The culture brought us together, and the culture kept us apart,” he says, describing the peoples of both groups. “I used to think that the forces for integration and merger lay basically on an Elkhart and Newton axis. But then I realized that’s just a smattering of the historical pieces that have been trying to bring parts of the church together for decades.”
He’s learning that change within the church is best measured in decades or even centuries. And organizational questions “spiral along,” resurfacing regularly to be talked about again and again.
“Spiritual issues, too,” he says, “draw people together and keep them apart. The experience of being the church is not entirely a spiritual or cultural human experience. It’s both. We get confused when we emphasize one over the other.”
Where is the church headed? Referring to Phyllis Tickle’s book, “The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why,” Schrag believes the church is in another reformation. “About every 500 years since the time of Christ, something has been an important hinge point in the church,” he says.
Just like Protestantism was connected to the fall of feudalism and movement to the cities, the current reformation connects with modernization, science and other changes in society.
“Part of what Mennonite Church USA is, in my understanding, is a logical result of the 150 years preceding. The distinctions between us are blurring—not just between Mennonite groups but also between churches. The question for us today is: What direction is the church pointing from here? Can we be Anabaptist with a different suit of clothes?” Schrag asks.
He hopes Mennonites will seriously consider the call to be missional.
“We used to say, ‘We know who God is. We just need to know what God wants us to do.’ Now the missional understanding calls us to switch those around to say: ‘We want to know what God is doing so we can get an idea who God wants us to become.’ When you switch the two, you emphasize the becoming part and trust the doing part of it to God. That describes the church’s transformation,” Schrag says.
The missional calling of the church is “the best thing we have going for us,” he says. “It takes us from our history of separation for the sake of purity and preservation on a slow odyssey toward engagement with the world where God is active.”
“God has provided some new people, especially from other cultures, who have said to us, ‘We share your understanding of scripture; that’s us too,’ Schrag says.
To the person in the pew, Schrag counsels to “be attentive as we always have, to what God is doing now. Right now, it’s not what God wants us to do, but rather who God wants us to become.”
As Schrag continues writing the history of Mennonite Church USA and following his call, he offers his favorite Pauline benediction:
“Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.” Ephesians 3:20-21 NRSV
Schrag’s writing project began in August. Since then Ron Byler of Elkhart, Ind., has served as acting executive director for Mennonite Church USA. Beginning in January, Ervin R. Stutzman of Harrisonburg, Va., will lead the church as the denomination’s next executive director.
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.