News

Tim Shenk, Mennonite Central Committee

Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) is considering major organizational changes in order to work more closely with Anabaptist churches around the world in peace-building, development and relief.

MCC is nearing the end of an 18-month process, called “New Wine/New Wineskins,” that has involved several thousand people worldwide in discerning God’s call for MCC in the 21st century. The process has created recommendations for a new vision, organizational structure and global service forum.

About 100 participants will gather for a final summit in Hillsboro, Kan., from June 3 to 5 to debate, revise and approve recommendations for MCC’s vision and structure. The summit results will then be submitted for ratification by 12 MCC boards representing regional, national and binational offices in Canada and the U.S.

The proposed statement of common purpose defines MCC as “a ministry of Anabaptist churches worldwide participating in God’s work of reconciliation.” Justice and peace-building, sustainable development and disaster response and prevention are proposed as mission priorities. Anabaptist churches include Mennonites, Brethren in Christ and other related denominations.

The proposed structure moves MCC from being a Canadian and U.S. organization to a global entity, according to Arli Klassen, MCC executive director. A new, central MCC office would administer and be a resource to the entire system of MCC organizations. Programmatic work around the world, including in Canada and the U.S., would be the responsibility of MCC Canada, MCC U.S. and new MCC organizations accountable to Anabaptist churches in other countries.

The recommendations also call for Mennonite World Conference to lead a process that may result in a forum of global Anabaptist service agencies, of which MCC would be a member.

The recommendations do not include where the central MCC office might be located but it is likely that it would not be in Akron, Pa., where MCC U.S. is based and where MCC’s international operations have largely been headquartered, Klassen said.

Klassen emphasizes that MCC is committed to continuing its work in the name of Christ and to maintaining the trust of its donors, partner organizations and constituent churches.

“Underlying all of this, in order to make this successful, is trust,” Klassen said. “We need to trust that God is present in the middle of this process to strengthen MCC as a ministry of the global church.”

The New Wine/New Wineskins recommendations are available online here.

by Laurie Oswald Robinson, for Mennonite Church USA

When Gilberto Flores, a longtime leader in Mennonite Church USA, saw innocent people hanging dead in a Guatemalan jungle, he felt hate.

Even before that day decades ago, Flores, a Mennonite pastor in Guatemala at the time, had seen so much injustice evoked by the civil war that he questioned whether he was living out his faith. And then when he stumbled upon the bloodbath on that mountain, he knew for sure he had to change.

“A pastor went with some of his members into the jungle to retrieve some cows that had fled their fields,” Flores said. “Once they got into the mountains, the people encountered the government’s army who accused this little group of being guerilla fighters. They had no weapons. They had only ropes to get those cows. But their innocence didn’t matter.

“The army hung them to die. They had no trial, nothing. The group of us other pastors who had gone to the mountains to find them found about two dozen corpses. It was the first time I can say I truly felt hate in my soul. I wanted to retaliate.”

Though passions ran high, he slowly gave his anger to the Lord. This decision was part of the realization that he must allow Jesus to reign in his heart and his hands to bring hope to all this horror. Committed to a more radical journey with Jesus, Flores embarked on working for peace and reconciliation rather than inciting more pain through retaliation.

He could no longer only preach about Anabaptism – a perspective that integrates sharing Christ’s salvation for souls as well as working for peace and shalom for all people. Flores felt he must move beyond head knowledge to heart-felt practice.

“The time had come for me to find out who I really was,” he said. “I needed to become clear about what my faith meant in practical ways that weren’t detached from reality and real-life suffering.”

He got many opportunities to practice a more radical faith, including when an indigenous group asked if he would help them keep their farm land in the mountains. Much of the civil war constellated around seizure of long-held land of indigenous people.

After he worked on this issue with others for several months, the government returned the land to this group, Flores said. But his peace and justice activities had consequences. He became a target.

“Some people in the government spied on me, threatened me over the phone, opened my mail and accused me of doing things against the government,” he said.

“On several occasions, the government seized me and interrogated me to intimidate me into stopping. They told me they would kill me. But it didn’t work. I told them, ‘I am ready to die. Are you? Are you ready to face God, our judge?’”

Flores’ questioning of his questioners didn’t intimidate them. They tried once more to seize him and almost beat him to death this time. He escaped with two broken ribs.

Even after that near-fateful day, Flores continued to work for peace within ecumenical circles. His efforts eventually won some reconciliation within the embittered and embattled land. But in the early 1990s, he and his wife, Rosa, decided it was time to move away from the intense pressure they constantly felt in Latin America.

God brought them opportunities in North America, beginning in 1992. Then in 1996, they moved to Newton, Kan., where the former General Conference Mennonite Church had invited Flores to give leadership to various Hispanic ministries.

After Mennonite Church USA formed, he became a denominational minister and then director of Denominational Ministry and Missional Church for Executive Leadership. Early this year, he moved to Texas to serve as an associate conference minister for Western District Conference where many Latin Americans are part of Mennonite congregations.

A move to Kansas quelled some of the pressure, but it brought new pressures, Flores said. Though there was no war in the land, another battle waged beneath the surface. It was the struggle to walk on the radical edge with Jesus in a place where many Anabaptists were more mainstream in their perspective and practices.

Flores does not criticize this type of faith walk; knowing that much of it comes from the seeming absence of distress in daily living and from the hidden nature of the suffering that does occur in America. At the same time, Flores has worked to awaken more of a radical bent within the ministries and groups where he’s engaged.

“When I first got here, I felt there were many people who didn’t care about the suffering of others, and I felt that they lived in very antiseptic and sheltered ways,” he said.

“But increasingly, we are less sheltered in our denomination. People other than the middle-class, ethnic Mennonites are becoming part of us – including many Hispanics who have suffered in other lands. Once they get here, they continue to suffer, to be marginalized, to experience a lack of opportunities.”

Flores strives to respond to injustices in ways that represent what it means to not close his eyes to the pain around him, nor comply with those who allow the pain to continue.

“There are three responses believers can have to the world around them,” Flores said. “Number one, you can become indifferent to the social context and use the church and Christian faith for a haven to hide from the challenges of the world.

“Number two, you can accept the system as it is and become assimilated as you comply with it.

“Or, number three, you can practice a holistic understanding of Christian faith and integrate all of life – including the individual, social and spiritual aspects of it – and then live that out with the grace of a prophetic witness in the name of Jesus Christ.”

Flores believes that in this time and all times, the only response for Anabaptist Mennonites is number three. His passion is to live and to encourage others to live a faith that is Anabaptist to the core of its heart, not just hovering on the periphery of one’s mind. God is calling and sending Mennonite Church USA into the world where God is already at work.

“What does it mean,” Flores asks, “for us as a people to call ourselves Anabaptist, but to not really practice what Anabaptism teaches?”