How Can Mennonite World Conference Best Serve the Church?
— A Look at the Next Three Years
by Phyllis Pellman Good
Mennonite World Conference finds itself in a swirl of activities these days -- some at its own instigation; some the result of others who have come knocking.
Mindful of its history as an organization formed primarily to foster fellowship and support for each other among Anabaptist-related churches worldwide, MWC is trying to step carefully. Having opened a clearing in Anabaptist-Mennonite-dom where it has no rivals or even parallels, MWC has coined its own language for describing who it is and what it does. It sees itself as a space, a place, a communion.
Those words are invitational. And they are increasingly being filled with specific meaning. Observing this, MWC's governing body, the General Council, recently adopted a document to provide some guidance for the next few years -- "Mennonite World Conference: Mission, Objectives, Goals, Actions 2000-2003." In addition, the Council named an International Planning Commission. The task of both the document and the Commission is to suggest an appropriate shape and direction for MWC's future as demands for its involvement increase. Against that "design," this ever-emerging movement can be evaluated.
What's Happening?
MWC's list of current activities is long and relatively new. Most have come into being in 1997 and since. There is the Global Church Sharing Fund, the Global Gifts Sharing Project, the Global Mennonite History Project, the Peace Council, the Faith and Life Council, Courier, Correo, Courrier, and a news service, the World Directory, World Fellowship Sunday, formal conversations with other world communions (the Baptists, the Reformed Churches, the Roman Catholics), the Global Peace and Justice Network, Connecting Theological Educators, the Jerusalem Seminar, the Francophone Network, the Leadership Sabbatical Exchange, and YAMEN! (a young-adult global exchange program developing arm-in-arm with MCC). Not to mention the global Assemblies, held every six years.
All of these are active undertakings today, overseen from one of MWCs many rooms" around the world. (MWC Executive Secretary Larry Miller describes MWC as one representation of the "household of faith," with one "room" in Strasbourg, France [the small "head" office]; another in Kitchener, Ontario [a small satellite office]; with still other rooms [where officers and other staff live and work] in Salatiga, Indonesia; in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; in Fresno, California; in Montevideo, Uruguay; in Winnipeg, Manitoba; in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe; and in many other places.)
What has triggered all the helter-skelter activity in this skinny, low-profile, widely scattered organization?
The seeds of global give-and-take were planted in the earliest Mennonite World Conference gathering in 1925. But that spirit took on more vigor in the early 1970s, says Miller, when MWCs Assembly was first held outside Europe or North America, and when an African was first selected as MWC president.
Why Now?
But since 1997 there's been a new intensity of action. Miller highlights several reasons. "Since 1994, the majority of our members live in the South; in 1997 in Calcutta we experienced the first Assembly where the new majority was actually present in the majority; and articulate spokesmen for that majority were named MWC president (Mesach Krisetya) and vice-president (Bedru Hussein). In tandem with that was the increasing self-confidence of some younger churches, plus the greater possibilities of global communication. More and more Anabaptist-Mennonite churches want to do things together globally, and MWC is an obvious channel for at least part of that connecting."
Miller himself has persistently interpreted the need for greater mutuality between churches of the North and those of the South. (It's been mostly "behind the scenes in the current power structures," he explains.) In that he found a number of allies in national church offices and agencies who began to direct some of their budgets and staff toward developing this churchly interdependence.
Formed to encourage fellowship rather than to convince a marketplace of a product, MWC has opened its arms to many imaginative ideas that enhance communication, that create and build relationships. "We intend to help the 'extended' family connect -- and commune and cooperate," reflects Mesach Krisetya of Indonesia, MWC's current president. "Our family has changed greatly as we have grown, added new members, and changed color through the 20th century. We need to make room for everyone at the table; the table needs to be extended to make space for the extended family. With today's communication possibilities, that is increasingly feasible."
How Much Should MWC Take On?
The members of Anabaptist-Mennonite churches around the world undoubtedly yearn for more regular and significant contact with each other. MWC, sorting out the scope of its mission as those wishes grow stronger, is reminding itself to live by its own definition. Its Mission Statement has been extended into an outline delineating Objectives, Goals, and Actions with many points and sub-points. And its newly designated International Planning Commission will further interpret how MWC might fittingly offer itself to the global church.
"I doubt that 'program' is really the best word for most of what we have in the plan for 2000-2003," comments Miller. "Most of the activity has to do with facilitating, with coordinating this, or providing space for that. Most of the other activities will likely not be permanent (for example, the Global Mennonite History Project and the Jerusalem Seminar). Something like YAMEN!, the joint venture with MCC, may come closest to what the West understands as 'program.' But even that is set within a five-year plan. We'll decide after four years or so whether we continue."
Is there a chance that MWC, in its new refinement of its activities, will select projects that affect more than those people who attend its Assemblies, or leaders who get to go to its consultations? The Global Gifts Exchange will eventually be an inventory available to all Anabaptist-related member churches. The global Mennonite and Brethren in Christ history volumes will be for all to read. YAMEN! will benefit young persons who join its programs. "I hope," says Larry Miller, "there will be enough separate impacts over a generation or two to contribute to reshaping our consciousness, our patterns of decisionmaking, and our relationships, so that we begin to resemble a global community."
More Flesh and Bone?
Can Mennonite World Conference both beef up its structures and, at the same time, better deliver the personal contacts and connections it has been known for? "Nearly all of the activities that have developed in 1997 and since have precisely to do with face-to-face fellowship, personal encounters, and coopertive experiences," Miller emphasizes. "I continue to believe that the real and present danger for MWC is too little flesh and bone to enable the community and cooperation people long for," says Krisetya.
"It is hard to talk about that without the words 'structure' or 'infrastructure' sneaking into the conversation, or at least into the minds of the conversation partners. And the word 'structure' tends to contaminate the reflections," Miller points out.
"Why? I think for different reasons in different parts of the world. In the North there is a sense of having too much structure already. So why should there be more? Just relate directly and freely."
In the South, there is a sense that structures have been hierarchical, dominated by the North," commented Krisetya and MWC Vice President Bedru Hussein of Ethiopia. "So our first impulse is to ask, why should there be more?"
"But nearly everyone wants more relationships. Nearly everyone is open, in theory and theology, to more exchange, sharing, interdependence. And most people agree that is not possible without some continuity and relative permanence in the relationships."
Not content to live in an atmosphere of romantic notions about mutuality and communion, Mennonite World Conference is attempting to manage its future. By laying out its mission, dovetailing it with particular program plans for the next three years, and then setting up an international group of people to keep the organization flexibly responsive to its member churches, it means to live within its agreed-upon "calling."
And all its stakeholders may watch. Mennonite World Conference will be carrying out its task in full view of the global church, whose organization it is.
Phyllis Pellman Good, Lancaster, PA, U.S., is assistant editor of Courier.
Top photo by Laurie L. Oswald
Bottom photo: MWC photo/Merle Good.
