I spent most of the first week of July in Orlando, Fla., being a delegate at the Mennonite Church USA convention. Confession: I don’t like conventions. There’s
ORLANDO, Fla. — From official seminars and an inclusive worship service to direct involvement in the Future Church Summit, LGBTQ participation and presence at the Mennonite Church USA convention reflected movement in from the sidelines.
ORLANDO, Fla. — For 3,200 people at the Mennonite Church USA convention July 4-8, “Love Is a Verb” was more than a grammar lesson.
Hundreds of congregations have left Mennonite Church USA in the last few years, making this summer’s convention a peculiar learning opportunity for a group of leaders from Tanzania Mennonite Church (Kanisa la Mennonite Tanzania, or KMT). They are tending a vision of exploding their denomination from 65,000 to 1 million members over the next 15 years to celebrate KMT’s 100th anniversary in 2034.
ORLANDO, Fla. — After 14 hours of talking about how to follow Jesus as Anabaptists in the 21st century, Mennonite Church USA delegates faced the question of how to describe what they had done. Had they set a direction for the denomination’s future or made a list of ideas that needed further discernment?
ORLANDO, Fla. — Mennonite Church USA delegates on July 6 overwhelmingly passed a resolution on Israel-Palestine, confessing “our own complicity in this web of violence, injustice and suffering” and vowing “concrete steps to address these wrongs.”
ORLANDO, Fla. — When best-selling author and blogger Rachel Held Evans saw Mennonite Church USA’s “Love Is a Verb” convention theme, she hoped organizers didn’t see her Twitter feed.
