News

By Marathana Prothro

In a meeting Sunday and Monday with the executive directors and board chairs of Mennonite Education Agency, Mennonite Mission Network, MMA and Mennonite Publishing Network (Mennonite Church USA’s churchwide agencies), the moderator and moderator-elect of Mennonite Church USA shared the Executive Board’s vision for a reformed and unified churchwide organization.

Moderator Sharon Waltner of Parker, S.D., and moderator-elect Ed Diller of Cincinnati, Ohio, expressed the board’s concerns to the group, which also included Mennonite Church USA executive director Jim Schrag and associate executive director Ron Byler. At its Feb. 8 to 9 meeting in San Antonio, Texas, the Executive Board stated that the denomination’s vision and call “is not adequately supported by our present relationships, behaviors and organization.”

To support the vision of Mennonite Church USA, the Executive Board is calling for a unified churchwide communication and identity system and a simple and cohesive funding system. The Executive Board is also suggesting that an additional person be added to the Executive Leadership staff with the goal of assisting the executive director to ensure churchwide ministries practice good stewardship by reducing duplication and increasing organizational effectiveness at meeting congregational needs.

Finally, the Executive Board believes that the unity of purpose needed to adequately support the vision requires the development of one, integrated board of directors for the denomination that would replace the individual boards for each agency.

“Too often, we appear scattered organizationally and motivated by narrow purposes and segmented missions that do not equip our members and congregations for ministry,” Waltner said. “Our future depends on our ability to grasp new relationships and behaviors that support community, equip our members and offer a clear, focused, unified identity and witness for Christ in the world.”

Waltner said the Executive Board came to these conclusions in two closed sessions without staff present at its San Antonio meeting. The board agreed it was important to share and discuss this direction first with agency executives and board chairs before public discussion. Area conference and constituency group leaders will be invited into the conversation later this month when the Constituency Leaders Council (CLC) meets March 31 to April 2 in Mt. Pleasant, Pa.

The Executive Board agreed at its September 2007 meeting in Newton, Kan., to lift up Vision: Healing & Hope and its missional church priorities as a framework for future board direction. The board said it would lead the church in responding to the Church Member Profile findings and would evaluate churchwide systems by how effectively they supported congregations.

Also at its September meeting, the Executive Board agreed it would accept its leadership position and authority in Mennonite Church USA. Waltner and Diller said this guiding principle was stirred by delegate responses at San José 2007 calling for the Executive Board to take a more prominent role in vision and leadership for the whole of the denomination.

Waltner and Diller said the denomination’s six year review, delegate table group responses from San José 2007, feedback from the Constituency Leaders Council, a 2006 CLC task force report, a 2005 funding study and the Church Member Profile 2006 all indicate a need for improving the ability of churchwide ministries to function effectively, to relate to each other and to support area conferences and congregations as they seek to join God’s work in the world.

“An increasing number of congregations and area conferences are calling for integrated churchwide communications and funding practices that bring clarity to their connection to other parts of Mennonite Church USA and support the whole denomination as a unit,” Diller said.

Waltner said that while the Executive Board has stated its desired outcomes, it wants to engage the other parts of the church in developing a plan for how to achieve them. She said the board wants the best thinking from across the church on how best to reorganize the denomination and its agencies in a way that best meets congregational needs.

One churchwide communication and identity system

The Executive Board sees redundancy—such as multiple news services, uncoordinated congregational mailings and competing organizational identities—in the area of communication as a hindrance to the denomination’s combined capacity to enable Mennonite Church USA congregations and members to strengthen their witness. At present, each of the agencies and Executive Leadership coordinates some joint communication, though the majority of each staff’s work is separate from the work of other staff. To remedy the duplication, the Executive Board calls for one churchwide communication and identity system that is headed by and in the denominational center.

Area conferences will be needed to help shape and participate in a new churchwide communication system. The board wants the system to include The Mennonite magazine so that all communication from church entities to congregations and their members will be integrated.

A simple and unified funding system

Currently, Mennonite Church USA has multiple funding systems that are complicated and lead to what appears to be competition among agencies, colleges, area conferences and related groups for funds. As the system currently operates, each agency is responsible for raising its own funds independent of the others. Executive Leadership does not actively raise funds from individuals, but relies on contributions from area conferences and agencies to support its ministries.

A funding study of Mennonite Church USA household giving completed in 2005 by Advancement Associates indicated that Mennonite Church USA is a small denomination with too many organizations competing with each other for the same funds. For board members, this raises a concern about whether existing church structures are sustainable—or relevant—for the future of the denomination.

The board calls for a simple and unified funding system that respects designations from donors while providing funding where it’s most needed in the denomination. The funding system, like the communication system, will be headed by and in the denominational center.

One integrated board of directors

At present, each agency and The Mennonite has its own board of directors that are responsible to the Executive Board. The Executive Board acts on behalf of the Delegate Assembly, the denomination’s decision-making body, when it is not in session.

The Executive Board is calling for an integrated board of directors for the agencies, Executive Leadership and The Mennonite that would make space for meaningful, connective voices from present agencies and conferences. The shape of a new integrated board will be the subject of discussion between now and the all-boards meeting June 19 to 21 in Columbus, Ohio, Waltner said.

Next steps

After the CLC joins the conversation at its March 30 to April 2 meeting in Mt. Pleasant, Pa., the Executive Board’s Executive Committee will meet to evaluate the discussions with agencies and conferences. The committee also will prepare for discussion with other churchwide boards June 19 to 21. Boards participating in that meeting include the Executive Board, Mennonite Education Agency, Mennonite Mission Network, MMA, Mennonite Publishing Network and The Mennonite. This meeting was set more than a year ago and will be the first gathering of all Mennonite Church USA boards of directors since its inception in 2001. Immediately following the all-boards meeting in Columbus, the Executive Board will have time to evaluate next steps. Those steps will be reported as they are discerned.

Diller shared his optimism about the future, “The strength of our vision, supported by clearer identity and stronger behaviors of community might surprise us in its capacity to invite increased support for all parts of our mission.”

SIDEBAR: A summary of delegate responses from the San José 2007 Minutes book
The Executive Board at the San José 2007 Delegate Assembly asked delegates, “In what ways do you recommend that Mennonite Church USA organizational structures be modified as the church moves into its next phase of growth?” This is a brief summary of the table group responses listed in the San José 2007 Minutes Book.

• Many delegates felt uninformed of the current organizational structure. They asked for specifics about what may or may not be working. One group wrote, “The structure is known but its usefulness and function is less well understood.”
• Delegates expressed a desire for Mennonite Church USA organizational structures to be driven by churchwide priorities.
• Delegates called for more streamlining or consolidation of activities among agencies, the Executive Board and Executive Leadership.
• Delegates highlighted duplication of ministry as a concern. One specific comment was “Executive Leadership and MMN both involved in peace initiative and missional church education—who is leading?”
• Delegates called for a more efficient funding system. “It would be wonderful to give to one rather than so many parts!,” one group wrote. Another responded, “(We) need a clear and easy way to distribute money to the groups in the church.”
• Delegates requested a proposal of how the Executive Board would change the structures, and some responded that “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it!”

Source: San José 2007 Minutes Book, pages 42 to 43.

By Everett J. Thomas

Leaders from Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) and Mennonite Church USA held a day-long conversation Feb. 21 in Elkhart, Ind. The meetings—designed to help both groups with “right remembering” of the Protestant Reformation—included a capacity lunch-time crowd during a forum at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary. The event also made it clear that both groups have challenges ahead if the ecumenical effort is to be extended into congregational life.

In the fall of 2006, ELCA passed a declaration on the condemnation of Anabaptists. In it, Lutheran leaders said, “We express our deep and abiding sorrow and regret for the persecution and suffering visited upon Anabaptists during the religious disputes of the past.”

In response, Mennonite Church USA executive director Jim Schrag wrote a letter in April 2007 conveying appreciation for the declaration. Schrag said, “We are especially moved by the expression of ‘deep and abiding sorrow and regret’ for past persecutions of Anabaptists.” He called for a blessing on “future collaboration between our two churches.”

The “future collaboration” at the Feb. 21 meeting included a report from John D. Roth about the challenges ahead for Mennonites in this dialogue. Roth, a Goshen (Ind.) College history professor, and Paul Schreck, executive assistant to the ELCA Secretary, were featured at the event, entitled “Unbinding Each Other: New Possibilities in Mennonite-Lutheran Relations.”

Roth said that there are several challenges for Mennonites as they receive the Lutheran statement, including the attitude that “We were the true Christians being persecuted, and now 500 years later we are being vindicated.” He also said that Mennonites have taken on a martyr pathology. “When someone says, ‘I’m sorry,’ can we give it up?” he asked.

Roth also pointed out that “It’s relatively easy to start conversations with people who are quite different. The much, much harder thing is to initiate conversations with those groups who are just a little bit different . . . For Mennonites, it’s Beachy Amish and Old Order Amish and Conservative Conference.”

Schreck noted that two differences remain unresolved in the ongoing Lutheran-Mennonite dialogue: the relationship between the church and the state, and baptism.

“A breakthrough point for us,” said Schreck, “was the discovery that in the Mennonite ministers manual, Lutheran baptism is not automatically invalid. This is very important to Lutherans.”

Roth, who represents Mennonite World Conference on the Lutheran World Federation and MWC international study commission, listed several challenges for Mennonite Church USA in the future.

“The ELCA has a greater clarity about doctrine as formulated and who is responsible to speak on behalf of the church in an official way,” said Roth. “For Mennonite Church USA with its congregational polity, it’s been more difficult to know on whose behalf we are speaking—even at a global level.”

This issue is particularly difficult around the unresolved issue of baptism. “Lutherans would deeply appreciate a statement,” Roth said, “that baptism practiced in Lutheran contexts . . . would be fully recognized in all Mennonite Church USA congregations. For reasons of polity, we don’t have the authority to tell a congregation to do this” even if we thought it was the right thing.

Informal conversations between Mennonites and ELCA leaders began in 1986. The three-year dialogue began with a meeting at Goshen (Ind.) College in February 2002. André Gingerich Stoner, director of interchurch relations for Mennonite Church USA Executive Leadership, said that no further formal dialogue is planned at this point, but “the next step in our relationship is to facilitate serious encounter and conversation between Mennonites and Lutherans in two or three local settings.”

Stoner said another possibility is for representatives to be invited to each other’s national assemblies.

Members of Mennonite Church USA and Mennonite Church Canada will meet at a binational “People’s Summit for Faithful Living” at the Canadian Mennonite University campus in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in July.

The theme for the gathering is “At the Crossroads: Promise and Peril” and the text for the event comes from Deuteronomy 4:1-9. Participants will focus on the task of being a faithful community of God amidst the many challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.

“The book of Deuteronomy is especially suited for use in such a summit,” says Jack Suderman, general secretary of MC Canada. “It is directed at God’s people as they move into the land God has allowed them to possess, where they face important questions like why does God work through peoplehood even when that people is not deserving? What does covenant mean and how does that inform our questions of faithfulness? What are the temptations of God’s people in the land in which they live? Where do God’s people find security as they live in the land and are tempted by wealth, power and ownership?”

Mennonite Church USA identified similar questions at its convention in San Jose, Ca. when it passed a resolution calling for “resources that help us live faithfully in Christlike ways, sometimes at odds with our national culture, acknowledging that no culture is either completely redeemed or completely fallen.”

Ron Byler, associate executive director of Mennonite Church USA says, “We will be looking to further our work in response to our delegates with this upcoming event. For me, an important part of our theme is what it means to live as a contrast community.”

Plenary worship speakers are Tom and Christine Sine of Seattle, Wash., April Yamasaki of Abbotsford, B.C., and Tom Yoder-Neufeld of Waterloo, Ont. A variety of workshops and activities and time for visiting and recreation will round out the event.

The People’s Summit was announced in July 2007 at the Mennonite Church USA biennial convention in San Jose, Calif., and the MC Canada annual delegate assembly in Abbotsford, B.C. The two denominations last met together at a joint convention in Charlotte, N.C., in 2005 where delegates strongly supported continuing to meet together.

The gathering will begin the evening of July 8 and continue through the evening of July 10. Attendees are invited to make a vacation of the People’s Summit and visit Manitoba attractions such as the Mennonite Heritage Village in Steinbach, Whiteshell Provincial Park and the Winnipeg Folk Festival.