Editor’s note: This article originally appeared December 10 on Henok Mekonin’s Substack. Used with permission. 

In the past few weeks, many people across the global Anabaptist family have followed the news that the Meserete Kristos Church (MKC) will no longer host the 2028 global assembly of Mennonite World Conference (MWC), and the Meserete Kristos Seminary (MKS) has ended its formal partnership with Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS). The decision has stirred deep emotions, sparked debate and raised questions about partnership, doctrine, and the nature of unity in the global church.

A recent article by Dr. Girma Bekele has circulated widely, offering a sharply critical interpretation not only of the limited educational partnership MK-Seminary had with AMBS but also of any formal and informal relationships MKC has had for years with MWC and Mennonite Church Canada (MC Canada). While Dr. Bekele raises important issues, his portrayal leaves out key facts and misses something essential about how MKC has navigated global relationships for decades: MKC is not a fragile institution. It is a mature, self-governing church body that has exercised its agency wisely and consistently.

In this essay, I would like to acknowledge my biases: I am employed by AMBS and have worked closely with seasoned Ethiopian MKC leaders who joined and studied in the MATGA Ethiopia cohort program. As someone shaped by MKC, trained in both Ethiopian and North American seminaries, and working closely with Ethiopian students at AMBS, I want to offer a perspective grounded in lived experience rather than distant interpretation.

Misconceptions and broader context

1. MKC did not align with “affirming policies.” It partnered with a seminary.

After weeks of confusing social media posts—most of which were designed to create panic and demand rapid responses — MKC leaders returned home from a fundraising tour in the USA, and met with church leaders at various levels, and some clarity began to emerge. As MKC leaders began to engage with one another, free from the noise on social media, real and legitimate questions started to surface, particularly whether the church should partner with institutions that do not share MKC’s views on sexuality.

One of the central claims circulating online was that MKC had become ‘structurally aligned’ with LGBTQ affirming policies by partnering with Western institutions that hold different views on sexuality. For instance, when MK-Seminary, the educational arm of MKC, partnered with AMBS — an educational institution owned by MC USA and MC Canada — critics claimed that MKC had thereby become ‘structurally aligned’with Western affirming policies.

However, MKC did not partner with MC USA’s policies. It partnered with an educational institution, and it did so under a memorandum of understanding in which AMBS committed to “respect and embody” MKC’s teachings when working with Ethiopian students.

For six years, AMBS honored this commitment. In his analysis of the termination of the relationship between MKC and AMBS, Bekele makes an appeal for the Western minority churches to allow MKC to emerge as a self-theologizing church. This inappropriately infantilizes MKC. MKC has been a self-theologizing church for a long time and continues to be one by ensuring sustainable church growth through the implementation of tailored indigenous strategies. It was out of respect for this self-theologizing church that AMBS committed to respecting the values of MKC when teaching in Ethiopia from the outset of this partnership. If AMBS had posed a doctrinal threat to a self-theologizing church, MKC leaders would have ended the partnership long ago.

2. The real disruption came from misinformation—not from MWC, or MC USA, or MC Canada.

A detailed account of how this online accusation against the current MKC leaders originated and unfolded on social media for months, as well as the pain and workload this online character assassination and questioning of the leaders’ integrity created for MKC leaders and members, is important to share. A wave of social media claims — made largely by people without firsthand knowledge — portrayed AMBS (guilty by association with MC USA), or MWC, or MC Canada as attempting to influence MKC’s theology. These claims created anxiety, conflict, and confusion among MKC members, students, and leaders. The anxiety and confusion caused by social media influencers pushed MKC leaders to forcefully rearticulate the church’s already discerned positions on marriage and sexuality. The positions reported in recent statements are not the result of new discernment.

The issue was not that MKC changed its practices. The issue was that individuals within the MKC church, living abroad, began sharing information about the debates and divisions about sexuality within North American Mennonite Churches with Ethiopian “conflict entrepreneurs.” As a result, a social media firestorm took on a life of its own, including hate-filled messages directed at current MKC leaders.

The impact of being accused on social media differs significantly between individualistic and communal/collectivist societies. Unlike North America or Western Europe, Ethiopia — like many African countries — has a communal identity in which a person’s identity is shared among family and community. As a result, accusations affect everyone associated with the individual, including their family, church, tribe, or village. The harmful impact of a social media mob accusing leaders of compromising not only their own theological position but also the church’s values — especially when that church has 1.2 million members—can hardly be overstated. There is already a high level of suspicion and sensitivity to external challenges, rooted in Ethiopia’s historical habitus, which includes a deep sense of pride and a corresponding hermeneutics of suspicion toward external influences or perceived compromises. This created doubt among MKC members about whether their leaders were compromised in their personal theology on sexuality — contrary to MKC’s official position — while still holding key leadership roles in the church.

The public conversation in Ethiopia shifted suddenly and sharply. The forces behind these conflict entrepreneurs did not seem to be interested in slow, quiet, and prayerful discernment of the issues, which has been at the center of all discernment processes MKC has used to resolve any issues that arise in the church. Instead, these conflict entrepreneurs confronted church leaders demanding rapid response “right here and right now.” This pressure for immediate, conclusive decisions contrasts sharply with the questions many Global South Anabaptists have raised about the culture of rapid disintegration and decision-making in North American Mennonite contexts.

The misinformation created painful challenges for both the MKC leaders and MKC’s Executive Leadership Board. In response, the MKC’s Executive Leadership Board released official statements to reassure their constituency that MKC leaders remained resolute in their commitments on marriage and sexuality. They also asked the public to wait until the leaders returned and encouraged anyone with concerns about MKC’s long-standing doctrinal positions to come to the MKC Head Office and speak with them in person rather than using social media. They reaffirmed and asked the public to respect and follow the slow, quiet, and prayerful discernment process used to resolve any issues that arise in the church.

Ignoring these official statements of the MKC’s Executive Leadership Board, some former MKC leaders in the US and Ethiopia who harbored grudges against the current leaders have continued to involve themselves in deepening the conflict. They called into question the integrity of MKC’s national leaders. While the MKC leaders were in the U.S. for a fundraising trip (not in Canada, as Bekele suggested), these individuals used not only the conflict entrepreneurs on social media but also relied on and used the North American Mennonite churches and their buildings as places to confront MKC leaders in person—arriving at meetings without the leaders receiving prior notice from the inviting North American Mennonite group leaders.

MKC as a mature, self-theologizing church

Not only is it important to share a detailed account of how the coordinated online attack happened to MK-Church, but it is also important to understand Bekele’s misrepresentation of AMBS’s response to hide what happened on social media. To do so, he cleverly introduced new insertions that are worth highlighting.

Bekele quotes a statement by AMBS President Dr. Boshart, which says that:

In the last two months, a wave of misinformation has spread through social media in Ethiopia, targeting the partnership between MKC/S [MK Seminary] and AMBS and creating a volatile and challenging environment for students and church leaders.

Bekele suggests that:

Reducing the seriousness of the issue to ‘false allegations, misinformation, or rumors perpetuated by conflict entrepreneurs’ is highly misleading.

His complete failure to mention what happened on social media — and his failure even once to acknowledge in his analysis the mess, confusion, and pain it created for the church leaders and members — is disturbing enough on its own. Yet he subtly suggests something even more troubling.

By buying into and accepting the idea that Africans are backward and do not think or critically analyze, Bekele is subtly suggesting that MKC leaders are not mature enough to reflect on and revisit their partnerships or discern the next steps as an adult, self-theologizing national church.

MKC ended its partnership with AMBS and no longer hosts the 2028 global assembly of Mennonite World Conference because of the following reasons.

A) The partnership ended abruptly for the sake of unity because new questions—centered on whether the church should partner with institutions that do not share MKC’s views on sexuality—emerged after serious discussions among leaders at various levels, along with extensive listening. The partnership was always intended as a capacity-building arrangement, not a permanent structure. As a mutual, adaptive collaboration, the MKC-AMBS partnership was an example of how institutions can engage in genuine mutual gift-sharing, trusting in small, flexible steps rather than permanent structural fixation

B) To give the church time for reflection, prayer, and further dialogue with a heart of listening to the Holy Spirit and to one another on this new question and other matters the church is dealing with.

A mature, autonomous, and self-theologizing national church will need to revisit its plans and goals in the lived experience of the faith. Once a partnership has served its purpose for the time being, and when new questions arise — which is natural in a self-reflective and self-theologizing mature church — leaders will decide on the next steps after prayer and consultation. Naming this reality is not disrespectful to MKC; it is simply the practice of the faithful church.

Had MKC leaders and members not relied on God and followed the procedural steps that have guided the church for decades — steps rooted in slow, quiet, and prayerful discernment—the magnitude of the accusations, along with the pain and chaos caused by the coordinated pressure and the rapid decisions these groups demanded, could easily have led to division and a split, as has become common in some North American Mennonite churches. Praise to God! God was with church leaders and MKC members, and despite the pressure, the leaders and members remained committed to their established processes, as a mature and self-theologizing national church should do. MKC has remained united and solid like a rock and continues to shine, with God’s help, through its 3,000+ local churches across the country, 4,453 full-time ministers, and 1.2 million members.

Western influence is a two-sided coin. Bekele critiques only one side.

Bekele warns of Western liberal influence but says nothing about Western conservative evangelicalism, which has had an enormous impact on Ethiopian theology for decades — from textbooks to TV ministries to church networks. Any honest analysis must acknowledge both.

Although in recent years, I have observed that there has been overwhelming and persistent pressure from leaders of North American Mennonite churches for MKC to take a side, MKC has historically maintained a neutral position regarding the different issues that have divided North American Mennonite churches. In fact, MKC has often positioned itself as a role model to the global community by demonstrating how the church functions in the Ethiopian context — both in its international partnerships and during leaders’ fraternal visits to the U.S.

As an example, MKC has consistently sought to avoid both sides of the modernist–fundamentalist controversy, not only in general but especially in its pursuit of self-theologizing. For any Global South national church aiming to reach that goal, it is not enough to reject the ‘modernist’ option; such churches must also avoid falling into the opposite extreme by aligning with the fundamentalist option. Bekele, however, wants MKC to adopt fundamentalism rather than modernism. In this sense, he is still advocating theological dependence on the West.

MKC, instead, has been acting out of its freedom from Western categories, selectively choosing where and how it engages in theological education in order to pursue its own self-theologizing project. The partnership with AMBS operated on these terms — not because MKC aligned itself with ‘affirming policies’ or subordinated itself to Western institutions.

To be a self-theologizing church, MKC already has well-developed patterns of theological education. The limited partnership with AMBS should therefore be understood in this light. MKC used the partnership to gain specific skills and insights for its own purposes, not to imitate AMBS.

For years, MKC actually sent students to North American Mennonite seminaries — including AMBS — to balance this strong conservative evangelical influence, not to adopt Western ideologies.

This historical reality is missing from Bekele’s argument, but it is central to the story.

The partnership ended — but it served its purpose well

Long before the recent controversy, MKC was already reconsidering the sustainability of sending leaders abroad for theological education. The costs were high, reintegration was difficult, and some graduates did not return. In seeking a partnership with AMBS, MKC was seeking a high-quality contextual graduate education in Ethiopia. In its memorandum of understanding with AMBS, MKC differentiated its theology from AMBS’ affirming policies by expecting AMBS to respect and embody MKC’s values when AMBS faculty taught in Ethiopia. Ethiopian students have repeatedly testified that their learning through AMBS was rigorous, contextual, spiritually grounded, and respectful of MKC’s convictions. The AMBS-MKS partnership offered high-quality contextualized graduate education in Ethiopia. It was always intended to be a capacity-building arrangement — not a permanent structure.

In that sense, the partnership succeeded. It strengthened MKC’s ability to form leaders within Ethiopia and prepared MKC to shape its next chapter of theological education.

Self-theologizing requires collective discernment

In light of Bekele’s call for self-theologizing, I wonder whether he is actually calling for the simple acceptance of one Western theological model over another. Bekele’s narrative relies on fundamentalist code words such as ‘doctrinal fidelity,’ ‘biblical fidelity,’ and ‘consistency.’ He seems to conceive of biblical fidelity as giving a corporate assent to a set of doctrinal statements over the discerned witness of a living faith. This reflects a theological approach aligned with conservative evangelicalism — essentially Wayne A. Grudem’s method of doing theology, which is very dominant in Ethiopian evangelical churches. If this self-theologizing isn’t just to repeat a favorite Western model, then it will require hard collective discernment — that is what theological education provides at its best.

If self-theologizing is truly the goal, then one cannot simply teach from standard Western models — because there are no ready-made models for this task. They must be created. Theological education dedicated to such creative work must remain open-ended in ways that Bekele does not seem to envision.

Churches in the global South need to remain vigilant about theological paternalism from multiple sources. Such paternalism does not only come from churches in the West — who often assumed they were the “saviors” — but also from Africans who are trained in Western theological models and bring them back to our home countries, perpetuating their unhealthy impulses. For example, Bekele suggests that MKC has the opportunity to develop independent and contextually rooted theological validation grounded in Scripture and local discernment, rather than relying on minority interpretive paradigms. He says this as though MKC has not already been developing independent and contextually rooted theological validation grounded in Scripture and local discernment, and as if MKC is incapable of the judgment necessary to enter into partnerships, or lacks the resilience to remain faithful to its discerned positions. This suggestion is the very definition of paternalism.

The greater theological task is to move beyond this postcolonial mindset toward genuine mutual gift sharing, where both sides enter the relationship in humility and with the attitude of Christ. In its partnership with AMBS, MKC required the partnering seminary to “respect and embody” MKC’s values when AMBS faculty taught in Ethiopia. MKC set their own terms for the partnership, doing what was necessary to ensure that their discerned values were respected.

Ethiopian agency — not Western categories — must guide the way forward.

While Dr Bekele defends Ethiopian autonomy, Bekele’s argument ironically portrays MKC as structurally vulnerable to outside influence. But MKC is one of the most dynamic and theologically grounded churches in the global Anabaptist family. MKC’s decisions arise from its own discernment, not from pressure—liberal or conservative.

Bekele never once mentioned how MKC’s teachings are influencing others in the world. In recent years, Ethiopian theological and historical scholars have been engaging with scholars in the West, bringing fresh nuances and theological perspectives from Ethiopia, and making those resources available in English and in Western theological libraries for study. Without compromising its shared values and theological commitments, MKC has historically valued its relationship with the global Anabaptist family through MWC. Notably, a former MKC leader, Million Belete, served as the first non-Western president of MWC. Contrary to the misinformation spread online claiming that MKC is receiving funds from MWC, the truth is that MKC — as one of the member churches of MWC—actually sends funds to MWC. For MKC to leave or sever its relationship with the global Anabaptist family carries significant implications: (1) it shows a complete disregard for MKC as a mature, self-theologizing church, and (2) it reduces the possible influences that MKC could have within MWC.

The recent stance is not a new development. From its very beginning, MKC has engaged in self-theologizing, evident in its deliberate rejection of the name “Ethiopian Mennonite Church” in favor of “Meserete Kristos Church” (drawing primarily on 1 Corinthians 3:11). Ethiopian MKC leaders further demonstrated this maturity when they refused a demand from Lancaster Mennonite Conference leaders to adopt an episcopal bishop system in Ethiopia.

Bekele, however, has not conducted any research on how MKC’s teachings and theological nuances—shared with the global Anabaptist family — have been a source of inspiration and hope for many North American churches. Instead, he assumes that it is only the West — the enlightened — that is exerting influence, repeating the assumption that Africans are backward and behind the times, and accepting and spreading the notion that spiritual clarity still flows from North to South. This overlooks the explicit desire of East African churches to bring their values and contextual theology as a gift to the global Mennonite family. Any interpretation that denies MKC’s spiritual maturity and institutional confidence risks repeating the very paternalism it claims to critique.

Unity, Variance, and Walking Together

Appealing to the prophet Amos, Bekele says: “Can two walk together unless they have agreed?” This suggests that for Bekele, a church’s uniformity of belief is the measure of biblical fidelity. Anabaptists believe that it is possible for Christians to walk together even when they do not agree, as long as they keep Jesus at the center of their faith. Unity is a gift that has been accomplished in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Anabaptist discern matters of faith and life by centering the way of “Jesus, the pioneer and perfector of our faith.” (Hebrews 12:2). Working out our faith, seeking perfection requires that the church will risk some levels of variance where the practice of the faith is concerned.

This is not a modern idea; it is part of the deep fabric of Anabaptist ecclesiology. Mennonite World Conference (MWC) centers unity on the relationship of its church members with Jesus, rather than on uniform doctrinal or ethical positions. As a mature and self-reflective church, MKC has always held space for internal differences, including charismatic expression, gender roles, church-state relationships, and peace teachings.

Across the global Anabaptist family, the key question in every Anabaptist national church has never been:
“Do we agree on everything?”

but rather:
“Can we walk together faithfully in Christ amid our differences?”

A better conversation is possible

The global church faces real challenges to unity. Questions about sexuality, theology and partnership require deep prayer and careful discernment. But these conversations must be grounded in:

● factual accuracy

● mutual respect

● clarity about what actually happened

● and a shared commitment to Christ’s way of reconciliation

The MKC–AMBS partnership was not a collapse. It was a collaboration that bore fruit and ended amid a rapidly shifting public environment.

The partnership may have ended, but the relationships need not. And the lessons it leaves behind can strengthen — not weaken — the global body of Christ.