Mennonite Church USA membership has decreased about 17 percent over the past year, and a large part of the drop is due to updated reporting of Lancaster Mennonite Conference congregational involvement in the denomination.
Mennonite Church USA membership has decreased about 17 percent over the past year, and a large part of the drop is due to updated reporting of Lancaster Mennonite Conference congregational involvement in the denomination.
HARRISONBURG, Va. — “Project 606,” MennoMedia’s song collection project for the next hymnal serving Mennonite Church USA and Mennonite Church Canada, is beginning this year. MennoMedia began accepting applications for committee and staff positions Jan. 1.
Here are five new year’s resolutions that are critically necessary to reverse the decline of Mennonite Church USA.
Consecutive issues of MWR carried opinion pieces speaking negatively of the nonviolent movement to oppose Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territory. “Resolution on Mideast Harms Efforts for Peace for All Faiths” (Oct. 26) equates last summer’s Mennonite Church USA resolution on Israel-Palestine with the BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) movement and calls it “counterproductive” to the cause of peace. The piece never uses the word “occupation.” In “Pray for Peace of Jerusalem” (Nov. 9), J. Nelson Kraybill encourages us to be “agents of healing” rather than participants in “coercive boycotts.”
The Mennonite Church USA Executive Board staff cabinet has called together a panel to continue the work of healing and prevention of sexual abuse within the denomination. The panel’s formation is a response to the Churchwide Statement on Sexual Abuse passed this summer by the delegate assembly at the MC USA convention in Kansas City, Mo.
Bluffton (Ohio) University has become the third Mennonite college this year to leave the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities after expanding its nondiscrimination hiring policy. The Bluffton board of trustees voted unanimously Oct. 10 to include sexual orientation and gender identity in its employment policy.
