Plans Africa 2003
Mennonite World Conference
Executive Committee Moves Projects Forward
The Mennonite World Conference Executive Committee held its annual meeting in the Mennonite retreat center of Thomashof, on the edge of Karlsruhe, Germany, August 18-24, 2001. It was a setting rife with Mennonite history; planning for the sixth Mennonite World Conference (MWC) Assembly had happened there, anticipating the event held in August of 1957 in nearby Karlsruhe.
The excitement of Assembly planning was on the Executive Committee’s (EC) agenda this time, too. The EC spent as much energy and imagination considering how to allocate the organization’s time and modest resources in the face of all the expectations and requests coming its way.
Next Assembly
Planning for Africa 2003, the upcoming Assembly to be held in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, is kicking in at full throttle. Dothan Moyo, National Coordinator, reported that more than 50 people in Zimbabwe have already been appointed to planning committees. Kenneth Nafziger of the U.S. and Eunice Khanye of Zimbabwe, co-leaders of the Music Committee, are on a search for a “versatile, international ensemble of 12” who will teach and lead the music at the Assembly. They will demonstrate, said Nafziger, “that we can all learn to sing each other’s songs.”
The Executive Committee, despite their enthusiasm for this first-ever African setting for an Assembly, acknowledged the political, economic, and medical uncertainties facing the host country, and, consequently, the event itself. In the end they chose to stand in solidarity with the sisters and brothers of Zimbabwe, but without bravado. “Let’s move forward with God opening the way. Let’s pray and continue to prepare,” said Fimbo Ganvunze, EC member from the Congo.
The Zimbabweans have already begun “providing a prayer cover,” explained Moyo. Not only is a Prayer Committee in place, “nights and vigils of prayer, and prayer camps are being set up.”
“Zimbabweans are so looking forward to having us come,” reflected Doris Dube, MWC regional editor for Africa.
MWC is closely monitoring the Zimbabwe situation, will continue to do so, and is prepared to make necessary adjustments to the unfolding plans. In that spirit, MWC staff and a team from MTS Travel were in the country the first week of September.
Global Gifts Sharing, Phase 2
Pakisa Tshmika and Tim Lind reported completion of the gifts inventory that they have been gathering among member churches in Africa, as part of the Global Gifts Sharing Project. But the Project refuses to stay within its neatly bound covers. Instead, a new phase to this global sharing of gifts has presented itself. Many of the uncovered riches cannot be shared without some further subsidy. For example, a group of women in Ghana have a food preparation technology to offer to the women of Burkina Faso. Unless they can visit each other, the efficiencies cannot be passed along.
Tshmika and Lind are also fielding requests to speed up a gifts inventory in Latin America, in Asia, and in North America.
EC members reminded themselves that, in the short term, MWC may need to “facilitate gift-sharing between churches,” but in the long term, MWC is instead to “lift up, communicate, and celebrate the sharing that is done by its members.”
Global History Project
Two volumes of the global Mennonite History Project are scheduled for release at Africa 2003 -- the Latin American book and the African book, each prepared by writers from those respective continents. John A. Lapp, coordinator, reported that the project has stirred questions that demand thoughtful response in the increasingly mutual relationships being fostered among members of the global church: Who owns the archives of the mission groups who worked in the Congo, for example? Don’t mission groups have a moral obligation to return archival material to the people among whom they worked? And what is appropriate nomenclature for referring to this project and its subjects? Many MWC member churches do not use “Mennonite” or “Brethren in Christ” or “Anabaptist” in their names.
Selecting writers for the volumes about Europe and North America is currently underway. Said Lapp, “Women are being urged to apply.”
Conversations with Other Christians
On an excursion to the Weierhof, EC members were hosted by the local Mennonite pastor, Andrea Lange. Lange, one of the delegates to the Mennonite-Catholic Dialogues, reflected on those continuing conversations: “When you enter a dialogue, you enter an adventure. You don’t know the outcome. I have come to think it’s a scandal that the body of Christ is so fragmented.”
Fernando Enns, German Mennonite Churches’ (AMG) delegate to the World Council of Churches, and Rainer Burkart, Secretary of MWC’s Faith and Life Council, struck a common theme in their reports. They reminded EC members that as Mennonites are seen as bearers of a peace witness, the spotlight turns more penetratingly on Mennonite behavior. “Our own weaknesses and problems in that area are also being exposed,” commented Burkart.
MWC’s Future
As the end of the nearly weeklong meeting approached, Antje de Vries-Van Dijk joined the EC for a day. She is a member of the International Planning Commission, MWC’s appointed think-tank for shaping its future. After testing one of the Commission’s tools for gathering data with the EC, de Vries reminded the group of MWC’s largest task: “We offer ‘prepared land’ to our member churches.”
On that “prepared land” is MWC’s giltedged gift to its member churches -- a meeting space and place. In addition, there are a growing number of projects, designed to help those churches become increasingly a global congregation.
Phyllis Pellman Good, Lancaster, PA, USA, is assistant editor of Courier.
