Sharing in Their Concerns
I recently got an email from a friend of mine who is attending a Mennonite church sponsored college in the U.S. She is a member of a theological think-tank there with a group of other students from across our two nations. Leading into the upcoming Mennonite Church conference in North Carolina this summer, they came up with a resolution, and it has been communicated to me. What follows is the text of that letter, and then my response. (I've left out names for now, in case they are uncomfortable with my response)

We are Concerned Too! A Challenge to Mennonite Youth/Young Adults
As members of the Mennonite Church, we cannot wait for change to occur. It's
not up to our current church leaders to make all the decisions while we passively wait for our turn to lead the church. We are the church now. It is time for us, the young adults of the church, to step forward and take responsibility for the future of the church.

In the past few weeks, rumblings of concern for the future of the church have
begun to surface as loud peals of thunder among our peers, especially in the face of the upcoming convention in Charlotte. On Tuesday evening, a meeting between some concerned Mennonite young adults* produced a plan of action. This think tank needs your help.

Our hope is to talk to the Mennonite Church at large, to affirm our commitment
to the church, to acknowledge the areas where we think the church needs to work on, to be catalysts for change, and to make ourselves available to participate in the
process. As we talked about our concerns for the church's future, we came up
with a modest list. By expressing our concerns, we hope not to criticize, but to
learn from our elders and to show that we have a genuine interest in the future.

Here are some of the concerns listed:
A. Wanting to be faithful to the revelation of Jesus in all aspects of our lives. We are uncomfortable with the way politics polarizes and divides the church.
B. Challenging the Mennonite Church to actively engage our history. We want to
know how our origins in the Radical Reformation contribute to the present activities of the church in the world.
C. Bringing community, intimacy and accountability to the forefront of our relationships with each other.
D. Recognizing an active peace witness as integral to who we are.
E. Retaining and involving young adults who have grown up in the church.
F. Changing the Mennonite game from "How are we related as cousins?" to "How did you choose the Mennonite Church?"

We hope that this will be the beginning of conversation between young adults and older members of the church. We want to involve the diverse voices of our peers, so we invite you to join us and share your concerns and discuss those we have listed above as we continue to discern our direction.

First, thanks for including me in this dialogue. I am honoured to be among the first to view it. I want to applaud your efforts to build dialogue, and especially to do so without labeling each other first. I have always found that labels such as liberal/conservative, evangelical/cerebral, right-/left-wing are damaging to the quality of discussion.

Second, I know little about MC Canada or MC US institutional practice and political structure. It's partly because I am new to this conference, and partly because I like to live outside of those requirements, without necessarily defying them. This also means that I don't know how accurately the conference(s) are following or not following your suggestions. The church is defined by what happens in the community, not what decisions are made by old men and women wearing suits and carrying briefcases. While we need to run our churches within the parameters they set, the work at the community level is far more important.

With regard to your points, I strongly affirm A in its content and its top priority. I do however see a disconnect between points promoting the role of the church as institution (B & E) and the points downplaying the relevance of the institution (C & F). I see E and F as being in slight contrast. If young people grew up in the church, then at which point did they choose the church? I sense that your focus is on the 'retaining and involving' part and notsomuch on the 'grown up in the church' part, but when we make special efforts to include our own, we embrace our cousins, and not those who have chosen. It saddens me too to watch young people leave the Mennonite church, but I would prefer that E read "E. Retaining and involving MC's young adults." Also, F brings up a valid theological point, but the Mennonite game is social practice, not conference policy. The fact that F is even a problem is because we've been so good at keeping C in the past. It also seemed ironic to me that all of the members of your group carry typical Mennonite cultural last names.

Reformation studies is a passion of mine, especially the Radical Reformation. I love seeing what that era teaches us today. There however, many earmarks of that era that time from the present. 16th century society was polarized to a far greater extent than we are now. The Radicals were executed because their extreme views branded them as heretical. The invading Turks were viewed as less than human. Luther, Müntzer, Blaurock et al called the Pope and the catholic priests "murderers of souls" for their doctrines, and wrote them off as hell-bound. I doubt your group wants to add that to the present activities of the church. The conflict at that time was an attempt to cleanse a corrupt but dominant church structure. No matter how corrupt our church structure is, our greatest struggle should be against the corrupt but dominant capitalist socio-political system.

Thanks again. All the best! Let me know how things go!

   [ posted by William @ 2:18 PM ]