Photo: Frances Ringenberg (pastor, Prairie Street Mennonite Church, Elkhart, Indiana) and Terry Zehr (pastor, Sunnyside Mennonite Church, Elkhart), two of the local planners for the 2016 Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference assembly, give an enthusiastic opening welcome. Photo by Joe Pendleton, pastor at Bethel Mennonite Church, Ashley, Michigan. 

During the June 16-18 annual sessions, the Missional Leadership Team (MLT) of Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference gave a straw poll to delegates to gauge their readiness to adopt a renewed vision for the conference. The annual sessions took place at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Ind.

The MLT took council from a document, “The Breadth of Variance,” created by the Unity and Variance

Task Group earlier this year. The document outlined  a “proactive approach” to working at relationship building within variance in theological understandings and practices. The document states, “Missional Leadership Team desires to create space for congregations to engage in local discernment, while offering the discernment process for ways to confer together. Because we have been unable, as a conference or as a denomination, to decide on a stable and consistent understanding of LGBT inclusion, we hope that more stable and consistent understandings can occur within individual congregations as we strengthen our relationships with our God, one another, and our communities.”

Growing out of the task group’s work, the MLT presented delegates with the second draft of a renewed conference vision statement, which included theological statements, recommendations for shared spiritual practices and a covenant for congregations and credentialed leaders.

The “Renewing a Vision” document also outlined a process of discernment for congregations and credentialed leaders whose beliefs and practices are at variance with the broader church and the conference. The six-step process includes:

• an articulation of how “beliefs and practices we hold in common bear witness to God’s intended purposes for the church and the world,”
• a commitment to accept guidance from the MLT in designing a discernment process,
• articulating to other conference congregations how the differing belief or practice “bears witness to God’s intended purposes for the church and the world,”
• entering into a biblical discernment process with a peer congregation that embraces the conference’s current beliefs and practices,
• and an agreement to be led in study by a teacher appointed by conference leadership and other congregations. If, after the process, the congregation reaffirms the beliefs and practices of the conference, the process is completed.

If the congregation still embraces beliefs or practices different from the conference, the MLT may either

bless the congregation to “follow that course of the teacher Gamaliel, ‘If the path is of human origin it will fail, but if it is of God it will flourish,” or the conference and congregation can evaluate whether or not their relationship will continue.

Delegates responded positively in the straw poll, indicating a readiness to adopt the “Renewing a Vision” document. While the poll was not a formal vote, Bob Yoder, moderator of the MLT, hopes to have the first covenant-signing ceremony in the summer of 2017, when every credentialed person and a representative from every congregation will have the opportunity to covenant with each other.

According to Yoder, “These documents represent a significant step in addressing how we [proceed]on issues where we disagree, particularly in how we approach issues such as same-sex marriage that are currently dividing the church.”

Yoder sees the structure of IN-MI Conference strengthening its position as a community of congregations in relationship amid disagreement. “MLT is looking at our conference membership more as an invitation to congregations to gather themselves around this vision,” said [when? Following the sessions] Yoder, “and seeing congregations…as the primary place for discernment.”

Mark Schloneger, pastor at North Goshen Mennonite Church, and chair of the Unity and Variance Task Group, noted that the Breadth of Variance document is intended to answer the “hows” and “to what extent” questions not answered in the conference bylaws.

“With the tensions we’ve experienced during the last few years within the conference,” said Schloneger, following the sessions, “what we’ve found is that we don’t always have strong relationships with each other.” The vision document is intended to guide congregations toward strengthening their relationships with each other through shared spiritual practices and covenanting with each other.

The document identifies six shared practices with drawing on various articles from the Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective and Mennonite World Conference’s Shared Convictions of Global Anabaptists: Worshipping God as “the central act of common life”; practicing prayer, fasting and generous giving; prayerful Bible study; accepting and offering hospitality; invite “neighbors and strangers” to become disciples of Jesus; and practice peacemaking by “extending loving-kindness to our brothers and sisters as well as to our neighbors and enemies.”

Some delegates voiced concern that the conference is being too legalistic and they fear the practices will be viewed as a checklist. Yoder noted that the intent of the Vision document “is not to be legalistic. The intent is to be committed to doing these things. At annual sessions, when we get together as groups of churches, that is where we will continue to flesh out these practices.”

“Those are practices we encourage congregations to do,” said Yoder, “but the conference also wants the practices to inform annual sessions.”

The vision practices were already visible in this year’s annual-session format.

Elkhart area congregations, led by Frances Ringenberg, Prairie Street Mennonite Church pastor, and

Terry Zehr, pastor at Sunnyside Mennonite, planned the schedule for annual sessions due to decreasing staff at the conference level. They experimented with a format that allowed for more time for worship, storytelling, singing, and time to hear about how the Spirit is alive and working in each of the Elkhart congregations and other congregations within the conference. Yoder said that he hopes as each region of the conference takes ownership of the annual sessions, they will bring a different flavor and continued energy to the sessions.

Attendees also signed up for prayer walks around Elkhart and came together for a final worship time. Conference pastor Dan Miller preached a sermon in which he shared more about the vision and why the conference should center around Jesus together.

Miller tearfully recalled the opening of last year’s annual sessions where the conference remembered the victims and families of the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in the Charleston, N.C., shootings. Miller added that the current week of annual sessions now acknowledged the mass shootings in Orlando, Fla. The delegates and leadership engaged in Communion and anointing to end their time together.