From the editor

Mennonite Church USA will face some significant challenges in 2011. At least one will come to a head early in the new year: deciding whether to change the location of the 2013 national convention. But there are other, equally troublesome issues confronting us all.

On Jan. 7, the Executive Board will begin a three-day meeting in Tampa, Fla. On the agenda is the question of how to respond to calls for a venue change for Phoenix 2013 national convention because of Arizona’s new immigration law. For months, the Executive Board has been working through a myriad of issues surrounding the decision. This careful listening has resulted in a complex of concerns. But many people will be angry no matter what the Executive Board decides.

But there are even more daunting challenges ahead for our denomination. One that will come to the forefront again—probably at the Pittsburgh 2011 convention in July—is the ongoing tension over sexuality and the church’s teaching position on homosexuality.
Well-meaning people on both sides of this divide were busy in 2009 and 2010. A group of pastors in the Pacific Southwest Mennonite Conference sent a letter to their conference and to the Executive Board, asking that they stop activist groups such as PinkMenno from continuing to push for change in the church’s teaching position (see our Dec. 1, 2009, issue). Pink Menno advocates for full inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) members in the church.

Pink Menno leaders and leaders of other groups working for change also spent time organizing for the Pittsburgh 2011 convention (August 2010). However, these activists may have inadvertently energized another group that is emerging.

Although not gathering to specifically address the church’s teaching position on sexuality, a by-invitation-only gathering of racial/ethnic leaders in Tampa immediately after the Executive Board meeting is the first of its kind (page 6). This group will address the continuing racism many see within our church structures. An evidence: I’ve heard often from racial/ethnic leaders that the voices of people of color are at times discounted and ignored. Even more onerous, according to several of the racial/ethnic associate groups, is the appropriation of civil rights and justice language by LGBT activists for their cause.

Executive Board leaders are trying something new in this conflict that first hit our conventions at the 1983 convention in Bethlehem, Pa., the first gathering of General Conference Mennonite Church and Mennonite Church delegates. In an “official communique” (November 2010), moderator Ed Diller described the “conversation rooms” planned for the Pittsburgh 2011 convention.

“The Conversation Room will be a special place for listening and conversation,”Diller said. “We invite individuals or groups in that room to engage in specific conversations about … health care, immigration, sexuality and human trafficking.”

This is new, and we encourage participants attempting to push the church in one direction or another to take a step back. One way to do so is to respect the arrangement for conversation at our national gathering. If participants do this, it may actually be possible to discover what it means to agree and disagree in love.
Now that’s a new year’s resolution.