I'm in the middle of a seven weeks sojourn in Bolivia and a long ways from the current action percolating around Mennonite Church USA. Our family is scattered over three continents so we've been blessed to travel and spend time in parts of the world far different from our home in California. Every time we travel afar this lesson is relearned with some new and imaginative twist: This world is big. The things that matter most to me are important, they seem critically important in fact, yet they are small in comparison. Surely we can can trust in each other enough, love each other enough, believe in the heart of each other enough, in this big world, to get along.
I wonder about the common threads stitching together a series of Mennonite gatherings.
First, in the stately Hartville Mennonite Church in rural Ohio, under a cloud of chandeliers, a part of our family gathered in early January. From what I read the mood was somber, meditative, prayerful, and thoughtful. A sense of holy conviction emerged. I imagine it like this. We don't want to be mean spirited. We long for the Spirit's leading. We will not doubt the faith of others. But here, in this room, how we delight in the sense of oneness, of unity, of common spiritual persuasion that we know right now with each other. We long for more of this and we dare to believe that this is God's best for us in this time. And so we want to carve out a new fellowship somewhere on the fuzzy boundary line of being within yet outside of Mennonite Church USA.
Then the next weekend a diverse group of Mennonite folks from around the country traveled to Arc de Salvacion Church in Fort Myers, Florida. This gathering represented another part of our church family. If I read the tea leaves right, this body not only represented our church's ethnic diversity, but it also reflected our theological diversity. And they talked about important stuff. Power, privilege, who's in, who's out, what's Jesus got to do with it, can we all find a place to call this home? And furthermore, judging from the smiles in the pictures, people rocked out and danced. It must have been quite intense yet also, quite the party.
Then, later in January, it was pastors week at AMBS. Still another part of our family. I read that the preaching was good and the conversation rich. Surely the worship was creative, colorful adjectives adorned the spoken word, sonorous sounds filled the sacred chapel, and hearts were blessed. Yet there were clouds. What will happen in Kansas City? And JHY, who once walked these very halls, his memory lingers here too. Still, what rewarding days those must have been full of song and word, coffee and late night conversations, wisdom and saucy wit, perhaps some tears and laughter as well.
Then these last days our executive board has been meeting. I think of Elizabeth, Patty, and Ervin, and the joys and the burdens they carry. Elizabeth and Patty have plenty to do already in Pennsylvania and Kansas, yet they have accepted this mantle, and go forward with what to me seems great grace, courage, and mellow hearts. And Ervin seems tireless in his gift for listening and choosing his words with care and compassion.
Writing the above I haven't even considered our (and I say this with love) crazy Pacific Southwest Mennonite Conference, not to mention my own church. But that's a subject for another time.
I want to believe that there is something sticky, something deeply of God and the way of Jesus, that glues together people in Hartville, Fort Myers, Elkhart, and far beyond. That wonderful and Godly je ne sais quoi that can allow the peace minded and the intellectuals, the charismatics and the pink-shirted, the undocumented and the Bible memorizers, the soft-hearted and the hard headed, the combine drivers and the coffee connoisseurs, all to say, sure it's a big tent but these are my people, this is my home.
I have a story within me. This wasn't preached loudly or pounded into me when I was young, but here it is. Historians can tell the story with more accuracy but what counts for me is how I thought the story went.
My roots go back to the former Soviet Union. I imagine my family in a village called Ebenfeld. I like to think that we were poor and modest, but actually, I don't know for sure. We were Mennonites, for sure. We spoke German in the midst of the Russian landscape.
Around the middle of the 19th century a revival movement broke out. A German pietist preacher was especially influential. Get yourself right with God, I imagine him saying. The church had grown lax. Some, perhaps, had become far too comfortable with material things. Deep conviction about the things of God was lacking. Finally, a group of men got together (we liked to think reminiscent of Grebel, Blaurach and others years before in Zurich) and soberly determined, we must form this new spiritual home. And so they did, and the Mennonite Brethren were born. This went down in 1860. My family became a part of this movement. I don't know if they were part of it from the beginning or not.
Years later I went to college, a Mennonite Brethren college. I learned that studious MBs in Russia later came to look on the whole Mennonite Brethren movement with a bit of a wry smile. Actually, they said, the lines weren't all that clear. Yes, if we can dare to read into the hearts of others, there was some dead wood. But truthfully, they said, there was plenty of life, vitality, and spirituality in the good Mennonite folks who did not embrace the MB movement. Later in my life, when MCC carried me out of my MB world and into the broader Anabaptist family, I found out how true this was.
Back to the present. I believe it was a Goshen area Mennonite pastor who put his finger on what I think is a critical dynamic in our church today. His church decided to leave the Indiana Michigan conference in hopes of finding a new home somewhere else within Mennonite Church USA. In explaining his church's decision he said something like this. Our church is primarily interested in thinking about, exploring, and proclaiming the transforming power of Jesus to change people's lives. But in other parts of our Mennonite church family, there is far more interest in thinking about and exploring the outer edges of Christian faith.
As one who finds himself more in the latter camp, I think this fellow pastor has opined correctly. I think it's true, and I know I like to hang out with people, and read the things they write, who are, finally, sort of like me.
Having said that, it doesn't mean I don't want to learn from and be encouraged by dear sisters and brothers (here in the United States and around the world) who have experienced more vividly than I the transforming power of Jesus. And I believe, I deeply believe, that this Spirit guided Jesus transforming stuff is happening among those who are out there roaming the outer edges. The lines are blurry. The waters are being stirred. The water is getting pretty muddy.
Maybe we all need to wade in the water and plunge our heads beneath the surface, down in the murky liquid mess. When we emerge, what might we see? I'm the eternal optimist, for sure, but I want to believe that when gritty, dirty water is dripping down all our faces, some things will seem, in God's grand design, actually quite small.
