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Blog Post
Hope for the Future (HFF) is an annual gathering of people of color serving in leadership positions across Mennonite Church USA. HFF gatherings began in 2012 and initially served to create space for mutual support among people of color in Mennonite Church USA institutions and agencies. In recent years, white leaders across the denomination have been invited to participate. This year, Ervin Stutzman, executive director of Mennonite Church USA, was invited to participate. For many years, I have greeted groups with the salutation — “Shalom.” Similarly, I often close my letters or emails with this valediction above my signature. This...
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Blog Post
The Future Church Summit will take place July 6-8, at the Mennonite Church USA convention in Orlando. It will be a generative, open space for denomination-wide conversation — to dream together, reset priorities and engage one another in answering the question: How will we follow Jesus as Anabaptists in the 21st century? Leading up to the summit we invite you to reflect on our shared history, what being Anabaptist means for you and your hopes for the Future Church Summit. Terry Shue is director of Leadership Development for Mennonite Church USA and a member of the design team for the...
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Blog Post
Ervin Stutzman is executive director of Mennonite Church USA. This article originally appeared in the March 2017 issue of The Mennonite. Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. — Hebrews 12:1b-2 (TNIV) From time to time, someone asks me something like: “What is the future for Mennonite Church USA? Will we still be here 20 years from now?” Such questions are often laced with worry, reflecting the anxiety that saturates our social atmosphere. I try to avoid giving superficial answers to such deep questions. Besides,...
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By Janie Beck Kreider “I feel we have lost our vision, and it needs to be reignited. I came to this church to be part of a different narrative – a counter-cultural, anti-Christendom movement that follows a radical Jesus. The first Anabaptists chose to be radical – not assimilated to culture or the spirit of the age. We need to go back to the beginning – our radical reformation theology – and reignite an Anabaptist vision in our own context.” —Hyun Hur, co-founder and director of ReconciliAsian in Pasadena, California, speaking at the first planning meeting for the upcoming...
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HESSTON, Kansas (Mennonite Church USA) — The Constituency Leaders Council (CLC) met at Hesston Mennonite Church Oct. 17-19 for its third meeting of the biennium to listen, discern and advise the denomination on issues facing the church and its future. The CLC is a body of elders for Mennonite Church USA consisting of an Executive Board (EB) representative, area conference leaders, constituency group representatives and agency and national office staff. It is the primary forum for conversation among area conferences in Mennonite Church USA. Each conference is invited to send up to three representatives. CLC table...
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(Mennonite Church USA) – On August 26-27, 2016, the Mennonite Church USA Panel on Sexual Abuse Prevention met together with Executive Board (EB) staff representatives in Elkhart, Indiana, to review the panel’s work over the past eight months, reflect on its role and relationship to denominational staff and determine priorities for its ongoing work. Ervin Stutzman, executive director of Mennonite Church USA, and Carlos Romero, executive director of Mennonite Education Agency (MEA), jointly appointed the Panel for Sexual Abuse Prevention on December 1, 2015, for a two-year term that will end in December 2017. But in January 2016, before the...
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Participants discuss covenant relationships, peer reviews and church revitalization [Español] By Janie Beck Kreider GOSHEN, Indiana (Mennonite Church USA) — Nearly 70 denominational leaders gathered March 7–9 at Silverwood Mennonite Church in Goshen, Indiana, for the second Constituency Leaders Council (CLC) meeting of the 2015–17 biennium. CLC...
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By Annette Brill Bergstresser ELKHART, Indiana (Mennonite Church USA)—Leaders of Mennonite Church USA’s Women in Leadership Project (WLP) met Aug. 5–8 in Sarasota, Florida, to plan the next steps for the project. Areas of focus include planning a second Women Doing Theology conference, creating an undoing sexism training, strengthening the project’s web presence and inviting men to participate in the project. This was the first face-to-face meeting of the project’s steering committee, which formed in August 2012 and meets monthly via phone conference....
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(Mennonite Church USA)—Naming sexual abuse, confessing complicity and taking steps to prevent future abuse will be key elements of Mennonite Church USA’s biennial convention this summer, to be held June 30–July 5 in Kansas City, Missouri. The denomination’s Discernment Group on sexual abuse and the church has planned for a public service of lament and hope, a wailing wall, a churchwide statement on sexual abuse and an offering toward a newly established Care and Prevention Fund for survivors of abuse. The Discernment Group was formed in August 2013 to address the painful legacy of sexual abuse by theologian and professor...
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This is the second of four Bible study installments by different authors on the key Scripture text for Mennonite Church USA’s next biennial convention, to be held June 30–July 5, 2015, in Kansas City, Mo. “On the way/En el camino” is the convention theme, and the Scripture text is Luke 24. By Stephen Penner Cleopas and his friend, apostles both, could not help but spill their guts to the fellow traveler who fell into step with them as they trudged down the road to Emmaus. At the time they...
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By Wil LaVeist Fort Myers, Fla. (Mennonite Mission Network/Mennonite Church USA/Mennonite Education Agency)—Being a minority has its privileges, for a change. This was the feeling among many young adults from Mennonite colleges and universities who attended Hope for the Future IV, Jan. 23-24, 2015, at Iglesia Menonita Arca de Salvación in Fort Myers, Fla. For the...
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[Español] By Wil LaVeist Fort Myers, Fla. (Mennonite Mission Network/Mennonite Church USA/Mennonite Education Agency)—Obviously, a leader who has power could abuse it at work, school or church. What’s less obvious is that any person can have the power to affect change, yet not realize it. Understanding how power works across Mennonite institutions was the theme of “Hope for the Future IV,” which took place...
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Blog Post
This post was originally shared by Tim Nafziger on his blog "As of Yet Untitled" with The Mennonite, April 26, 2013. The Women in Leadership Project is grateful for Tim's support. We believe that our work is for women and men together. Only in recognizing the ways that we are all diminished by sexism, can we create a new reality. ~~~~ It was five years ago in May 2008 when the Mennonite bishops of Lancaster (Pa.) Mennonite Conference finally allowed ministerial credentialing of women in their churches. Notably, they stipulated that women were still not allowed to become bishops. ...
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Blog Post
(Appeared first in December 2011, The Mennonite. Reprinted with permission.) By Ervin Stutzman But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet.—1 Thessalonians 5:8 TNIV Many of us find it difficult to talk about sin these days, even in church services. It’s just not in vogue in modern America. Even at our recent churchwide convention at Pittsburgh, when the theme passage was 2 Corinthians 5:11–20, I didn’t hear much...
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