From the editor

The decision to hold Mennonite Church USA’s biennial convention in Phoenix in 2013 generated calls over the past two years for it to be held elsewhere.

Arizona’s draconian immigration laws were the reason many people did not want the convention there and the reason some stayed away.

So was it worth it? Yes. But the experience leaves some long-range consequences.

The first consequence may be a financial loss that this smaller gathering will hand the Executive Board. But it will be some time before that number is known (see sidebar below).

A second consequence is the relational damage lingering among many Hispanic Mennonites for what they felt was indifference to the ways the U.S. immigration system criminalizes undocumented residents.

A third consequence may be that we’ll not see a convention on or near the west coast for a generation. A decision has already been made to hold the 2015 and 2019 conventions in Kansas City, Mo.

But the Phoenix convention surprisingly appeared to be positive for most participants. Here is what one pastor blogged from Phoenix to his congregation back home:

Planners of gatherings like this are not known for being gutsy, making waves and courting controversy. … But so it is here. By focusing heavily on immigration as a biblical, theological, ecclesiological and spiritual issue, our leaders give us something substantial to discuss in the delegate sessions, hallways and on the steaming sidewalks.

Indeed, immigration was the main focus of the convention, and the setting was an integral, even an essential context for the experience. Many people traveled into northern Mexico and visited with people deported from the United States.

Others visited detention centers and courts where undocumented people were herded in groups before the judge and summarily sentenced.

Others learned of the way private detention centers make big money for private investors and the significant economy growing up around an “immigration industrial complex.”

How the church should respond to the broken U.S. immigration system, however, is not a settled matter. The delegates reviewed a 2003 resolution but could not simply reaffirm it without more processing. In the end, they adopted a statement supporting the decade-old resolution and asking that more time be given to refine it.

In spite of the heat, in spite of the travel distances for most people and in spite of the tensions around the decision to hold the convention in Arizona, a good-hearted lightness prevailed during the week.

This may be attributed to the provocative speakers and evocative worship services.

They demonstrated why we hold such events: Conventions remind us that the church of today, with all its joys and sorrows, is a microcosm of the gathered people of God.