11:7,6 - The Mennonite

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Gay Brunt Miller of Franconia Conference and Wayne Hochstetler of Illinois Conference discuss issues at the Constituency Leaders Council. For six years we’ve been talking about racial/ethnic issues, but nothing has changed. Unless something changes, we’re going to lose people. —Yvonne Bailey Gordon Houser 24 TheMennonite November 7, 2006 Leaders look at role of area conferences Constituency Leaders Council also hears “power still exists for white males.” One year after calling for a task force to look at the role of area conferences in Mennonite Church USA, members of the Constituency Leaders Council (CLC) heard and responded to a report from that task force. While mixed, the response was predominantly positive. The report and the responses now go to the denomination’s Executive Board, which meets in January 2007. Around 70 CLC members gathered Oct. 13-15 at the Lindenwood Retreat Center near Donaldson, Ind., primarily to consider the report. The report proposed four sets of practices for conferences and for Executive Leadership and its agencies: structural alignment, relational alignment, financial alignment and communication. While one role of conferences is to tend to the relationships of the church, they must collaborate with other parts of the church for this to be effective, the report said. One of the structural recommendations in the report was to add a section to the bylaws that describes racial/ethnic groups. Graham Cyster, Lancaster, Pa., said that while he supports the idea, having racial/ethnic groups should be recognized as “a dysfunction … what the Bible calls a sin.” Cyster said it’s like apartheid. If we have it in the bylaws, it should only be temporary; otherwise we could be institutionalizing racism. We should enlarge our vision and “go for the gold,” he said. “We keep saying we’re not there yet. Let’s do something to get there.” The proposed relational alignment called for creating a CLC forum similar to the task force, that had 14 members and served as a place for candid discussion. Some CLC members expressed caution. Some did not want it to be a regular group but ad hoc. Some questioned the extra cost—about $12,000 for the task force’s three meetings, according to one member. Others wanted that kind of honest discussion to happen in CLC. Task force chair Sue Biesecker-Mast said the size of a group affects the quality of the conversation; 70 people cannot do what 14 people can. Jim Schrag, executive director of Mennonite Church USA, said such a forum would be a helpful tool for Executive Leadership, though it would always go through CLC. Yvonne Bailey, Hampton, Va., returned to an earlier topic. “For six years we’ve been talking about racial/ethnic issues,” she said, “but nothing has changed. Unless something changes we’re going to lose people.” She lamented that power still exists with white males. The formation of another layer of bureaucracy “feels like the kind of sop we have come to expect from Washington,” she said. Earlier, other CLC members had called for concrete, measurable outcomes in the denomination’s antiracism goals. Others called for greater attention to nurturing women in leadership. The financial alignment section of the report stressed the desire that all parts of the church be “abundantly funded for the mandate that has been entrusted to them.” It presented short- and longterm strategies that met general agreement, though no clear answers seemed evident. The task force observed that “the various parts of the church are not communicating well enough.” One area where there is a lack of clarity, said the report, is “who does or does not have direct access to congregations.” The report offered strategies for improving communication from both executive leadership and its agencies and from the area conferences. On its final day of meeting, CLC members responded in one of four ways to each part of the report: (1) I affirm; (2) I affirm with reservations; (3) I have reservations but I am willing to allow this to go forward; (4) I am not able to support this because … . Most received strong affirmation, yet three areas received more than one vote of opposition: (1) that CLC membership be revised to include representation from agencies and executive leadership ministries, (2) the creation of a CLC forum, (3) the financial strategies. Now the Executive Board, which is to begin a six-year review of Mennonite Church USA in February 2007, will look at these responses and decide how to use them. The next CLC meeting is scheduled for March 22-24, 2007, in Excelsior Springs, Mo.—Gordon Houser
Global mission fellowship meets again Network of Mennonite mission workers gathers in Kazakhstan in September. Although Kazakhstan has not been the focus of mission efforts for any of the 42 Mennonite and Brethren in Christ churches, mission agencies assembled there Sept. 17-22 for the second meeting of the Global Mission Fellowship (GMF). Why Kazakhstan? “GMF members had expressed a desire to hold their next meeting at a place of Mennonite involvement and of special mission interest,” said Johannes Reimer of Germany, a member of the GMF planning committee who coordinated the complex event. “Kazakhstan, with its history of Mennonite presence, is a unique mission frontier where Muslims are coming to Christ in unprecedented numbers,” Reimer said. “Thirty-two of the 100 expatriate Christian workers in the country have Mennonite affiliation. Several of the GMF member agencies have workers in other Central Asian countries, but Kazakhstan is less restrictive and an exciting option for the GMF, even though we didn’t have an official inviting agency or church.” Many GMF participants knew little about Central Asia and its 300 million people which stretch from Turkey to western China. Until 15 years ago it was a restricted area, but the church is growing at a rate of up to 30 percent each year. On an exploratory trip, Reimer connected with the Kazakh Evangelical Alliance and the Turkish Kurultai, an association of Central Asian Turkic pastors. Both groups warmly welcomed the GMF and this opportunity to connect with the global church. They believed such a meeting would also give excellent visibility to the fledgling evangelical movement in Central Asia. By invitation from the Kazakh Evangelical Alliance, this assembly that included 91 GMF participants from 36 countries, the Kurultai, and a Kazakh mission partnership, all came together in Kardjali, the “City of Apples.” Javier Soler, chair of the GMF, and Ahaman Egizbaev, president of the Evangelical Alliance of Kazakhstan, welcomed 3,000 guests to the opening rally at the Silk Road Vision Center in the Grace Church. After a parade of flag-waving internationals, a 50-member Kazakh youth choir bedecked in sparkling blue and gold embroidered shirts led in worship. On the edge of the stage another group of youth worshiped with Kazakh dances. In his opening address, Danisa Ndlovu, Zimbabwean vice president of Mennonite World Conference (MWC), said, “I used to associate missions with the west. But in this era, every congregation, no matter where it is—if it’s part of the true church—should be involved in missions. We are all part of the emerging missions movement.” Wilbert Shenk, Anabaptist missiologist who recently retired from the Fuller School of Intercultural Studies in Pasadena, Calif., gave three addresses to the united assembly. It was difficult to address such a mixed audience—one that ranged from highly educated missionaries and church leaders to semiliterate new Christians who did not even have the Scriptures in their own language. But Shenk worked hard to connect with his audience. “I’m gratified to witness this upsurge in mission initiatives from the global South,” Shenk said. “I hope that networking through GMF will help encourage sending international and intercultural teams into situations of interethnic conflict in which the gospel of reconciliation is desperately needed.” Three GMF participants—Ruben Dreidger from Uruguay, Rudolph Wiens from the United States and Alexander Neufeld from Germany—gave Bible studies on the book of Jonah. Even though Wiens and Neufeld both spoke in Russian, young Turkish pastors thumbed vainly through their New Testaments trying to find “Jonah” because many of the Turkic languages do not yet have a translation of the Old Testament. Leaders of the World Evangelical Fellowship and the European Evangelical Alliance each gave Kazakhstan … is a unique mission frontier where Muslims are coming to Christ in unprecedented numbers.—Johannes Reimer major addresses emphasizing the reality of the global body of Christ and the fact that the rest of the church is standing in solidarity with their brothers and sisters in Central Asia, sharing in the fellowship of their sufferings. A Kazakh Christian historian, Bayeke Manarbek, introduced a new book in which he is reconstructing the Christian heritage of the Kazakh people. He said that the Parthians, present on the day of Pentecost, first brought the gospel to Central Asia, where there was a strong church until it was decimated by Tamerlane in the 15th century. “Because of the Arab and Russian empires we have forgotten our Christian roots,” Manarbek said. “But since 1990, these ancient roots are giving birth to new trees. We Christians came alive through the prayers of our ancestors and your prayers. God is calling us to again take the gospel along the length and breadth of the Silk Road.” —Jewel Showalter of Eastern Mennonite Missions for Global Mission Fellowship November 7, 2006 TheMennonite 25
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