Editorial

Mennonite Church USA is becalmed in unfamiliar seas and drifting toward dangerous shores. Even though there is no wind, it is time to put up our sails.

This is the metaphor Jim Schrag used in his final sermon to our denomination on July 1. He drew the example from a story about missionary Hudson Taylor who was sailing to China in the late 1800s.

Apparently, the ship on which Taylor booked passage was stranded near some islands in the Pacific Ocean. With no wind to keep them moving, the ship was drifting near some islands inhabited by cannibals.

Knowing that Taylor was a missionary, the captain asked him to pray for wind. But Taylor said he would do so only after the captain put up his sails. The captain did not want to look foolish in front of his crew by hoisting the sails when there was no wind. But he eventually did so, and a saving wind came along to carry the ship on toward its destination and away from danger.

Several speakers at Mennonite Church USA Convention 2009 pointed out that the Old Testament word for spirit is the same as the word for wind. Schrag’s point is that as a denomination we need to let our sails be filled with God’s Spirit. It is a variation on the convention’s theme, “Breathe and be filled.” In this case, our sails as a national church need to be filled.

Schrag’s use of the metaphor is telling. As the executive director of Mennonite Church USA, he signaled that we are drifting on an ocean of uncertainty. The currents and tides of our culture are edging us close to dangerous shores. The solution: open ourselves to God’s Spirit as an act of faithfulness. If we do so, God’s Spirit will begin to move this ungainly ship toward its destination.

The metaphor can be unpacked even further, however. For example, what is our destination and who will alert us when land is in sight?

Schrag offered the answer to the second question in his address on June 30 during the first-ever Pastors’ Day. He contended in that address that it is the pastor of a congregation who sits in the ship’s crow’s nest (lookout) searching for land.

“[Pastors] have been called to a special place of vantage,” Schrag said, “where the view really is longer, wider, broader and deeper.”

But what is the destination?

Our biennial conventions include both formal and informal times to discern this together. At Convention 2009 we heard calls for several destinations. Whether we all agree on the same one is the final layer of the metaphor.

Jim Wallis, co-founder of Sojourners, suggested what he thinks should be our destination.
“Your best stuff is the right stuff,” Wallis said during his sermon at the adult worship service on July 4. “As a friend of the family,” Wallis said, “I urge you to not be shy about sharing your best stuff.”

It has become common for planners of major denominational events to bring in respected outside speakers to tell us the Anabaptist message is what many other Christians yearn to hear. So is that the destination toward which we sail?

It has been 10 years since Mennonite Church and General Conference Mennonite Church delegates voted to create Mennonite Church USA and Mennonite Church Canada. A decade later—with all the hard work done of putting our new denomination together—we wait for God’s Spirit to fill our sails and get us moving.