How were you to know, Rip, that the communion juice you found in the church basement in early 1983 had fermented and would knock you out so powerfully? Anyhow, it’s now late 2023, and you’ve come back to your senses.

It’s just your luck to bump into me as your long oblivion ends. And now you’re asking me to bring you up to speed on the goings-on you’ve missed among North American Mennonites?

That’s a tall order, Rip. I’d rather go learn to play pickleball. But you are insisting.

You seem particularly curious about the contrast between the goal of unity among major Mennonite denominations — discerned as God’s will by some back then — and the shrinking and reshuffling now going on in Mennonite Church USA, which you’ve read about in these pages.

For sure, this is not how things were supposed to go.

You’re not alone, Rip, in noting the irony of meager numerical results from an ambitious aim. Many are saying “ouch” — if not out loud, then under our breaths. Rather than produce greater unity, our efforts have led to new patterns of disunity.

For what it’s worth, Rip — and I don’t begin to presume to speak for all — here’s my quick take.

The past 500 years of Anabaptist- Mennonite behavior — not to be confused with our beliefs — have shown we’re good at (at least) two things.

The first is splitting. Our history is littered with this or that division.

The second is cooperating on worthy projects as members of separate Mennonite bodies. Mennonite Central Committee and Mennonite Disaster Service are good examples. We’ve done quite well in coming alongside each other when we focus outward, beyond ourselves, in mission and service.

Forty years ago, we set out to move beyond the things we were good at and try our hand at what we had not been so good at: uniting. While not totally blank, that page of our history is written in barely visible ink.

And we have proved again to be less than a smashing success.

So, we’ve gone back to splitting, mainly over sexuality issues. It’s little consolation that other denominations face the same problem.

A merger mixed with tough issues — that’s been our rocky road. We chose the former; the latter chose us, because of the times we live in and the rich diversity of people we now are.

We’ve been through some deflating decades — whatever stripe of Mennonite you are. We’ve failed at building peace and understanding among ourselves.

So, if you see some sad faces, along with a few happy and relieved ones, now you know why.

Rip, you might recall from your college literature class that Don Quixote’s niece warned her uncle “that many go for wool and come back shorn.”

The knight errant no more heeded her — nor his squire Sancho Panza — than we did the voices cautioning us decades ago that launching a new church brand in a postdenominational era was not the wisest idea.

Those versed in these matters pointed to a likely outcome: The new body ends up the size of the smaller denomination prior to the merger, not the combined membership of the merging groups.

Better together

Sometimes people talk about Mennonite Church USA like it’s something “out there.” But that’s not true. MC USA is us, and MC USA is going where the churches are going.

Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank was fond of saying, “Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together.”

But there’s a shadow side of collective action: Sometimes the systems we create do harm that none of us would do alone.

On our own, none of us would pass or enforce draconian immigration laws. On our own, none of us would wage unjust and immoral wars. The things we do together aren’t always the things we choose.

What we create together can seem to take on a life of its own, for good or ill.

MC USA is us, and it also shapes us.

Thankfully, we are often shaped in positive ways. As Paul notes, the entire body can accomplish things that no individual part can (see 1 Corinthians 12). We cannot say we don’t need one another.

We are better together.

At the same time, the systems and structures we create can become vectors for sin and death in ways that seem to transcend any individual choice.

Living faithfully together requires holding together both of these truths. Here are three practices that might be helpful in our shared life:

First, participation. A “set it and forget it” approach to our systems and structures seems unwise. Health and growth require our full participation, allowing the whole to benefit from the wisdom of each part. This means saying “yes” when invited to serve on a churchwide committee, sending delegates to assemblies and staying engaged with the rest of the church.

Second, relationship. MC USA emerges from the web of relationships among conferences, congregations, churchwide agencies and individuals. Our structures exist to serve and strengthen those relationships. We are only as healthy as our relationships.

Finally, humility. While we celebrate the good that we achieve together, we also must remember that acting collectively does not guarantee acting rightly. We need to hold our systems and structures with humility, always seeking to become more like Christ in the journey of transformation.

What we create together can seem to take on a life of its own, for good or ill.

Jon Carlson is moderator of Mennonite Church USA and lead pastor of Forest Hills Mennonite Church in Leola, Pa. This article is condensed from Mennonite Church USA’s Peacemail blog.

One reason: Progressives and conservatives, already contending inside the merging bodies, now find it even harder to agree on new structures and policies. A high-stakes tug-of-war ensues; the losers often end up leaving.

Outside consultants asked, “Are you really sure you want to do this?” Seeing us undeterred, their next words were, “Well, if anyone can do this, it is you Mennonites!”

Some Mennonites take pride in humility. I know, Rip, it’s oxymoronic. But humility went missing in action when we really could have used some to pump the brakes, to pull back on the reins, to be not so full of ourselves.

Waving off warnings, we spoke of “integration” and then “transformation” — no mere merger, this — to speed us toward success.

We shrugged off surveys showing that few at the grass-roots level understood or cared about what was happening at the top.

Rip, years ago, one of my seminary professors liked to say, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.” While he never proof-texted this with Psalm 2:4, he could have.

I know, it might be mischievous to suggest we’ve been amusing God. Yet one “greater Mennonite unity” plan after another over the past 40 years has not gone, well, according to plan.

The Brethren in Christ and Mennonite Brethren demurred on the 1983 General Conference Mennonite Church call to unity. Only the Mennonite Church, meeting in a first joint convention with the GCs at Bethlehem, Pa., responded favorably.

By 1995 the binational MCs and binational GCs, who had been cooperating in many ways, had first explored, then approved, “integration.”

Before long, however, the Canadians (mostly GCs) took themselves out of the binational plan and created Mennonite Church Canada. That left 30,000 GCs and 90,000 MCs to carry on in the United States. But how?

We pressed on with “transformation” based on a parity between two bodies of differing sizes, profiles, resources and senses of urgency in getting this done. It consumed most of the oxygen in most of the many rooms we met in.

Were other options open to us? you ask. Rip, I promised you my take on how and why we got to our present pass, not to lay out roads not taken. But invite me out for coffee next week and I can run a few musings past you — and get you up to speed on pickleball.

One final thought for today, however. I’m not sure I believe in omens. But I can’t get this out of my mind.

At the first joint GC-MC gathering in 1983, convention organizers dismantled the display of the newly formed Brethren and Mennonite Council for Gay and Lesbian Concerns and forced them to leave.

Now, 40 years later, the sexuality question that we tried to squelch back then has been the major factor in the unraveling of MC USA.

What goes around comes around, I guess.

What lies ahead? GC membership in the U.S. was about 30,000 prior to the merger; over the past 20 years, MC USA membership has been halved, to around 50,000. Will we continue the usual post-merger pattern and see more losses?

Or maybe, just maybe — and if God wills it and mightily empowers us at this late hour — we can escape the descending path we’ve been on.

If anyone can do it, Rip, do you think we Mennonites can?

J Robert Charles of Brooklyn, N.Y., is a member of Manhattan Mennonite Fellowship. He teaches history and politics at St. Francis College in Brooklyn.