Tag Archives: Mennonite Brethren

Concern and influence

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While I was picking blackberries on my way home from Tsawwassen Commons, a man on a bicycle passed me on the path and exclaimed, “You’re stealing from the birds!” He sounded quite serious, though he must have been joking because there are thousands and thousands of blackberries on those bushes. I called back cheerfully, “I don’t think so!” He was too far down the path for me to say, instead, “The birds get the best ones — the ones out of reach!” or “These crazy thorn-covered branches protect their own!” As happens frequently, afterwards I think of better things I might have said.

I ambled along the trail and filled up the yogurt container I carry in my little backpack since there are blackberry bushes bursting with berries in many of the places I happen to walk, but after I’d mulled a more clever answer to the bicycle man, I was thinking about whether to respond further to certain situations of which I’m aware — situations of harm done and subsequent pain — and if I did, how? I was thinking of a pastor friend’s blog post about his awful experience with denominational authorities, and authorities in the same denomination recently censoring an anthology of women’s stories I edited, and the collapse of a beloved congregation with grief in its wake, and it seemed something further must be done about these situations, though not regarding the beliefs involved as much as the behaviour contained within them. In a panic to control belief, I thought, all manner of bad actions had been done, had been justified, and were sliding into the past now without accountability.

…thinking about whether to respond further… and if I did, how?

Many years ago, when it was the wisdom-book of the day, I read Steven Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. One of his insights, which continues to help me, was the relationship of concern and influence. Covey pictured our concerns as a circle. Inside that circle is a smaller circle labelled influence. In other words, my concerns are often much bigger than my influence upon those concerns. What I take from this insight/diagram is to look at my concerns and, in my inevitable desire to effect some change, consider carefully what influence I can possibly, realistically, bring to them.

So as I was filling up my container, trying not to get snagged by out-reaching branches, which I swear leap forward if one is anywhere in close proximity, I wondered how much influence I had left, if any. I’d spoken up in several ways in the above scenarios and also worked on a small committee that organized a petition for redress for the pastor friend, which unfortunately yielded little besides pieties and excuses. Was there any point, I wondered, in telling a story much on my mind these days — the story of the time when I worked at the denominational magazine in 2004 and all the staff were women and a leader friend told us of a recent Board of Faith and Life meeting in which a board member unleashed a rant about us, using the worst labels he could think of, it seemed, without quite calling us Beelzebub? We laughed it off and went back to work but what hurt was the stunned silence he told us had followed, no one speaking up in our defence, the chair then carrying on with the meeting.

The story had a happy ending, however, because some weeks later our friend, perhaps bothered in retrospect by his own silence, told us he’d rallied his fellow board members and they’d given the ranter an ultimatum: withdraw the remarks or resign. Apparently said ranter did the former, and while it’s possible he didn’t change his mind about us, a line about charitable behaviour had been established and our friend and his colleagues had used their influence to establish it.

…a line about charitable behaviour had been established, and our friend and his colleagues had used their influence to establish it. 

Would there be any point indeed, I wondered, to tell such a story? The story, in essence, seems a model and a plea to those who have influence where I have none, folks like pastors and seminary professors and colleagues of the denomination’s pinnacle leaders, who, as far as I know, though I don’t know for certain, have been mostly silent on these matters. Was there any hope of persuading them to prioritize behaviour, of persuading them that the health of their denomination is surely their concern, of pleading that they rally and declare that these harming actions must be withdrawn or somehow addressed or we no longer have confidence in the leaders responsible?

I reached home, and still had no answer about whether I had a wee edge of influence left to touch my concerns or rouse the influence of others or whether a simple story and plea would be like shouting after a bicycle man already out of earshot. I saw the half-finished jigsaw puzzle on the coffee table and thought of the enjoyable slow rhythm required for its completion; the patience of many pieces and a steady process of finding the one by one. Maybe, I thought, it’s a puzzle piece I’ll place when I find the spot it fits.

Or maybe I’ve already placed it.

Speaking of women…

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In a kind of offshoot from my previous post, I find myself checking in at my 2006 journals, to see whether my memory of the awe, even euphoria, I felt when the Mennonite Brethren conference I was part of passed a resolution freeing women for ministry leadership (this after a long process of debate and study over many years) is accurate or if it has been imagined into stronger color over time.

I find it’s accurate enough. I was trembling through the final discussions of that particular convention, I noted, because it mattered that much, and then came the surprise, even shock, of the resolution passing, solidly enough (the news report here), a sense of “wow” as it began to sink in. “I feel that something has been loosed on earth, as we prayed…” my private pages said, bursting with gratitude.

Nearly six years later, I confess I’m disappointed in the “since then.” My impression — anecdotal, I realize, since I’m no longer involved in the conference — is that while women’s participation goes on a-pace in some congregations, the ethos of the Mennonite Brethren denomination as such has not changed to reflect that decision — or “the spirit, the direction” it represented, as one of the men who worked hard on that process put it to me recently. Perhaps it’s even regressed. Continue reading →

Leaning Yes to an Anabaptist alliance

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Myron Augsburger, president emeritus of Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and well-known Mennonite statesman, has a new vision for Mennonites in North America.

He’s proposing an Alliance of Anabaptists.

In an article in the current issue of Mennonite Weekly Review, Augsburger says that some 60 years of ministry among diverse groups of believers have shown him that Anabaptist denominations are “too small, too exclusive and too institutional.”

“I’d like to see something far larger, more diverse, more open to others who differ – and also a fellowship of shalom rather than a structural organization,” he says.

Augsburger is not talking merger, but alliance – for “fellowship and witness.”

He suggests benefits such as a greater impact on our society, unity in diversity, support for “our common quest to walk with Jesus,” and a sense of belonging.

Two other bloggers have already responded to this proposal at “The World Together,” one leaning yes and the other no.

As for me, I’m leaning Yes. Oh, there’s a flurry of questions that immediately arises in me and pessimism that such a thing could ever be launched, let alone flourish. And yet I find something intriguing in this vision, something compelling, something that needs to be given space for solid consideration before I let myself bog down in questions and fears. (It’s a personal tendency, I’ll admit). A kind of dreaming space where visions can root, a space to absorb all the reasons this idea is both wonderful and timely.

I’ll start by affirming the reasons Augsburger has already articulated and in addition, offering the following reasons I like his proposal.

1.The fresh theological articulation of a broad, yet core, understanding of what it means to be Anabaptist today is well underway. And, what’s significant about this articulation is that it’s coming from places outside, and/or larger than, individual denominational statements. I’m thinking of the work done by the Mennonite World Conference in their What We Believe Together by Alfred Neufeld and The Naked Anabaptist by Stuart Murray, for example, as well as non-Mennonite articulations of Anabaptism in other parts of the church such as Emergent.

2.The “third way” of Christianity that Anabaptism represents is, by many reports, increasingly relevant and attractive today. But it will need a new wineskin for the twenty-first century, one shaped not only by the traditions and histories of those already in the Mennonite family but by a new generation within Mennonitism and by those coming to it new and unencumbered from the outside. Today’s global culture, technological realities, and ecclesiastical challenges not only require new ways of thinking and being but could make it possible for such an alliance to succeed.

3.Working together across denominational lines works. I have no 60 years of experience on the Mennonite scene as Myron Augsburger does, but I know this from my own small experience of inter-Mennonite cooperation. I’m part of Jubilee Mennonite Church, a congregation that belongs to two long-contentious denominations (the Mennonite Brethren and Mennonite Church Canada, formerly known as General Conference), still alive and well after 15 years, and have watched what’s happened over 10 years at Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg, which merged schools from the same two often-contentious and sometimes dissimilar denominations. Such ventures do not allow for “same old” and both involved many questions, fears, resistance from the powers-that-be and/or the constituency, and many challenges. I still remember my own fears, inner resistances, and doubts. The new that results is — yes — different, but it’s “good new.”

(I know Augsburger dares wish for no structural amalgamation but if “more with less” is a Mennonite credo, just think, for a moment of a publishing house that operated out of Anabaptist Alliance ownership instead of denominational ownership. The creative potential – the reach, the resources! — for all groups and the wider church would be enormous.)

4.For Mennonite Brethren, I think, there would be two additional advantages in such an alliance. First, it would solve the problem of the MB name. Both “Mennonite” and the non-inclusive “Brethren” are currently significant barriers in Canada (compounded, in our Quebec churches, by Catholic scandal that attaches itself to the word “brothers” in the name.) Many congregations avoid the label, or reference it in such small print that it’s scarcely to be found. Imagine being able to say, below one’s church name, “an Alliance of Anabaptists in North America congregation” instead. Second, since the MBs have had, and continue to acknowledge, an identity problem, it would force (or allow) clear occupation in their acknowledged large main house. And if they wish to set down in the house’s “evangelical” wing, so be it, but at least it could be said, this is where MBs live. Mennonite Brethren could begin to define themselves from within that alliance name/ID, instead of working backwards towards and through MB-ness in a continuous quest to sort out and measure the denomination’s constituent components.

What do you think of Mr. Augsburger’s idea? Why not register a response to his article at MWR, “The World Together,” or here?