Mennonites stirring the stew

Duane Ruth-Heffelbower

My friend Steve Penner just posted a blog entry about the current stirrings among the members of Mennonite Church USA. The image he used was a stirring of waters. The situation is fluid, not unlike those days just before the US Civil War when Mennonites in Russia had a renewal movement that launched the Mennonite Brethren denomination. People and congregations want to find a group to relate to that fits them. The result is a constant stirring of the waters.

I see the MCUSA as a stew. There are recognizable chunks, and then there is the broth in which they all float. The stew has been simmering for a long time, and the chunks are tender, ready to fall apart if prodded.

One big difference between MCUSA and stew is that in the MCUSA new chunks are able to form. Church people want to be part of a congregation in which they can feel at home, and congregations want to be part of larger groups in which they can feel at home. It is inevitable that, over time, some people will leave their congregation and join another. It is also inevitable that some congregations will want to change their affiliation.

When MCUSA was formed the Mennonite Church and General Conference conferences in the west merged and split again to form true area conferences based on geography. We have been hanging out together as a mixture of former MC and GC churches ever since, and the former lines have blurred. In the Midwest and east there was little of this re-forming of conferences, leaving very distinct MC and GC chunks. The farther east you travel, the more MC chunks there are in proportion. MC conferences also overlap geographically with each other, and with former GC area conferences in the east.

As I have written before, former MC congregations were accustomed to authoritative leadership, while GC congregations were usually more egalitarian. The former Mennonite Church was a conference of conferences, with correspondingly powerful conference leaders, while the General Conference was a conference of congregations. GC area conferences were based on geography, and had very little authority.

Individuals who wanted power in church politics could find it in the Mennonite Church, but there was little power to be had in the General Conference above the congregational level. This resulted in very different leadership styles in the two former denominations, and there has been little effort to create a new leadership culture in the MCUSA. Older leaders continue to operate as they did before the merger. New leaders have the confusing task of trying to navigate this historical agglomeration of styles. Not being aware of the source of differences in leadership styles, there is a tendency for them to follow the older leaders with whom they resonate, regardless of their politics.

Adding to the confusion is the situation of immigrant churches and congregants. Immigrants are rarely generated by egalitarian societies, and the default position of most immigrants is to look for a strong, preferably charismatic leader. The pastors of immigrant churches generally fill this bill. This being the case, leaders of immigrant churches are attracted to the more hierarchical style of older MC leaders. The current calls for the MCUSA Executive Board to exercise “strong leadership” largely come from former MC and immigrant church leaders.

There is now an effort to form new affinity groups of MCUSA churches. It is not clear whether these groups will try to become conferences, or even denominations with some authority, or will continue as affinity groups for those of like mind. There is also talk, but no visible action, among those who are most inclusive of people on the edges of the church about forming an affinity group for those people and congregations.

People who are not comfortable with strong, hierarchical leadership favor structures which allow freedom at the local level and cooperation at the national level on those things not much in dispute. Those who prefer authoritative leadership are not very comfortable cooperating with people who don’t agree with them on everything. As others have pointed out, it is the difference between seeing the church as a centered set, or a bounded set. Former MCs tend to be more comfortable with bounded sets, where you know who is in, and who is out. Former GCs are more comfortable being focused on how we relate to the center, usually understood to be Jesus.

As MCUSA prepares for its convention this summer, figuring out how, or whether, these different preferences can be contained within a single structure is the goal. Those who care about local autonomy would not agree to create a single hierarchical church body, so the conversation is really about how willing those who favor authoritative leadership are to be connected to those who desire more autonomy.

Back at the end of the 18^th century the new United States solved this same problem by having a bicameral legislature. The House of Representatives would be apportioned based on population, and the Senate would have two members from each state. This allowed the less populous states to prevent the more populous states from running roughshod over their interests.

A new nation born out of a violent revolution was able to find a way to cooperate enough to make being together worthwhile. I would hope that a group of Mennonites could do the same.