Photo: The Mennonite Education Agency board of directors (from l to r): Ramiro Hernandez, Tom Stuckey, Roy Williams, Carlos Romero (Executive Director), Marlene Kropf, Addie Banks, Lynn Suter (no longer a member of the board; replaced by John Yordy); Linwood Rush, Judy Miller, Basil Marin, Carol Roth, Noel Santiago and Lynette Bontrager. MEA photo. 

In October 2016, Carlos Romero, executive director of Mennonite Education Agency (MEA), received a hate call. Although Romero didn’t know the caller personally, the individual, a graduate of several Mennonite educational institutions, used the call as an opportunity to berate Romero.

“The caller told me I needed to go back to Mexico where I belong (I am from Puerto Rico),” Romero wrote in a column for the January issue of The Mennonite magazine. “I was told that my kind of people are rapists, thieves and criminals. The caller said the Mennonite church is corrupt because it made the mistake of welcoming me and that our educational institutions are corrupt because a person like me serves as executive director of MEA.”

Later, during the Oct. 13-15 meeting of the MEA board, Romero shared about this experience with his board members during his reporting time. And after he shared, the room fell into a heavy silence.

After a short time, board chair Judy Miller of Warden (Washington) Mennonite Church thanked Romero for his report and welcomed responses from board members. When no one responded, she began to move on to the next agenda item. However, this movement was met with an outcry and a plea from fellow board member Addie Banks, pastor at King of Glory Tabernacle in Bronx, New York.

“I just couldn’t believe it. So I said, There’s no way that we can move from this into the next agenda item. We will need to hold this in some way and need to pray for our brother,” said Banks, in a Jan. 6 phone interview. “This is not something you will move on from. This is an indictment, it’s a cancer and it’s a toxin and it’s in the church. We have to do something.”

Banks led board members in a time of prayer for Romero. During the time of prayer, many of the people of color on the board spoke up in support of Romero and offered words of lament and rage, decrying this type of racism in the church. And then the group moved on to the next agenda item.

An opportunity for building intercultural competency

Although Romero would never wish a call like this on anyone and laments that this type of hate is still present in the church, he noted that the conversation that followed his sharing moved the board into a higher level of intercultural competency work than he had witnessed before.

Following the end of the board’s Oct. 13 session, several people of color on the board approached both Miller and Romero and shared their feelings of hurt and betrayal. Several individuals noted their concerns that during the prayer and response to Romero’s sharing, only people of color had spoken up and led in prayer.

“Our Anglo brothers and sisters were just cold and quiet,” said Banks. “We didn’t know what they were thinking and feeling, because they didn’t respond.”

As Miller listened to the concerns and talked with her fellow board members, she wrestled with what she

could have done differently and owned her own tendency to prioritize efficiency and not give space to hold and name the pain that was in the room during the silence that followed Romero’s sharing.

The following day, Miller and board members of color shared their concerns about process with the full

board and invited feedback from white members of the board. Many members expressed that they had been feeling ashamed of their fellow white people and unsure of how to respond.

“I think we have a lot more to learn in the church than we think we do,” said board member Linwood Rush in a Jan. 5 phone interview. “I felt that our fellow board members were very direct with us, yet it was very caring. It’s hard sometimes not to take it personally when you hear that you could have reacted in a different way.”

Board members of color named the hurt they experienced during the process, and several white board members named their commitments to speak up and speak out against racism in the future.

“This opportunity came to us to educate ourselves, and I think we were blessed by it,” said Banks. “If these kinds of statements are just let go, they are deadly and toxic. I hope people who hear this story will find this an opportunity, and I hope that they will be emboldened to speak out and to really go to the next level with Jesus and see what he will do with us.”

All board members also recommitted themselves to finding ways to support Romero and other leaders of color in Mennonite Church USA.

Board member Noel Santiago, lead minister for spiritual transformation for Franconia Conference, was

grateful that the voices and needs of board members of color were given priority throughout this process.

“What I found really powerful was that a group of people of color and white people engaged this situation in the way that the people of color needed to engage it,” said Santiago. “That was powerful. In my 25 years of institutional church work, my experience has been that the predominant way of processing tends to be through the white lens.”

An ongoing commitment to intercultural transformation

Board members credit the ability to have this open and honest conversation to the ongoing transformation that the MEA board has undergone over the last six years. Currently, the board has parity between people of color and white people on the board, representing the highest percentage of people of color on any MC USA agency board.

Noel Santiago has been on the board for nine years and was part of the initial strategic planning process that helped to launch the board’s current intercultural competency work.

According to Santiago, rather than setting quotas and requirements for the school boards under MEA’s purview, the MEA board hoped to model healthy ways of intercultural leadership.

“Let us actually engage it ourselves and be transformed so that we can embody the change we want to see,” said Santiago in a Jan. 9 phone interview. “Let the embodying of that change impact and influence whoever we engage with.”

Santiago acknowledges that the work as a board has not always been easy, and that their board has also faced pushback from MEA stakeholders from time to time. For instance, according to Romero, since the move towards having parity with people of color and white people on the board, he and other staff members have heard worries that the board was not qualified or adequately prepared for their work, concerns that were never expressed directly before.

Despite the challenges, board members agree that the hard work to become an interculturally competent

community and leadership group is invaluable.

“Being on this board tends to give me hope,” said Miller in a Jan. 6 phone interview. “I think that especially if Christians can read Jesus’ words about loving your fellow man and really taking that to heart, that’s the only way we can do this.”

As chair, Miller invited each board member to share their own faith journey. Several board members cited this storytelling as a key factor in building understanding.

In addition, the board’s processing style has changed over time to try to make space for different cultural norms. Miller notes that she has learned to leave more space for silence and reflection, and also to invite feedback from board members directly rather than assuming that everyone will feel comfortable jumping into discussion.

Miller knows the board has a long way to go, but hopes that their learnings and modeling of both successes and failures will inspire others throughout the church to engage this hard work.