English | Intersections

Serving in the name of Christ today:challenges and opportunities facing the church

Featured

Posted on November 22, 2020 by mccintersections

Individual articles from the Fall 2020 issue of Intersections will be posted on this blog twice per week. The full issue can be found on MCC’s website. This article consist of five reflections which will be posted separately.

From its inception, MCC has partnered with diverse Anabaptist churches
in serving in the name of Christ. For this issue of Intersections in MCC’s
centennial year, we asked church leaders from India, Canada, Switzerland,
Zimbabwe and Syria about what serving in the name of Christ looks like
in their contexts today. As it enters its second century, MCC continues to
accompany churches around the globe as they discern how they can faithfully
participate in God’s reconciling mission.—The editors.

India

The church in India has long been a subject matter of great curiosity and
intrigue, not just from a Christian perspective, but also in the general manner
that India and its many religions coexist. India is a predominantly Hindu
nation. India’s culture is overwhelmingly rooted in Hinduism. Therefore, the
line between religion and culture is often blurred.

Never before have churches in India faced greater scrutiny than today.”

How does the body of Christ function in a complex and ancient cultural,
socio-economic and political ecosystem like India? No doubt several challenges
confront the church. The impact of politics and government policies on the
church in India are greater than ever before. The BJP-led government continues
to assert its self-proclaimed Hindutva politics in a democracy where minorities
feel the heat of an increasingly intolerant majority. More churches have been
vandalized in the past five years than over many previous decades put together.
Never before have churches in India faced greater scrutiny than today. Scenes
of people being lynched on the streets of India, once unprecedented, are today
just another headline. Christian organizations which have contributed to the
national interest for years have had their funding cut-off and their activities
closely monitored on the pretext of possible acts of polarization or “conversion
tactics.” The Indian church today is not free to worship, because its mind and heart are bound in chains of fear and anxiety.

However, politics is not the only challenge the church faces. In fact, the bigger challenge comes from within its own fabric. Broken communities, church politics, faithless ministry and godlessness in Indian churches are more common than one would imagine. Moreover, India is projected to become the youngest country in the world by 2022 with over 60 percent of the population under the age of 35. This widening generation gap brings with it several challenges. Contrasting values and principles collide, causing strain within the community. Churches in India today run the risk of becoming obsolete and irrelevant to the young and restless minds of India`s youth.

“As brothers and sisters in Christ, we must unite and pray for a revival over the land of India.”

But where adversity persists, opportunity abounds. The church must take active measures to connect more with the younger lot. Church leadership and clergy must consciously include young people as a mainstay in decisions and day-to-day activities rather than relegating them to merely a youth section of the church. Furthermore, in a world guided by subjective morality, our churches must stand strong on biblical principles and not be swayed by the lure of a false and ungodly culture the world currently thrives on.

The Mennonite Church today has a divine opportunity to show the world how peace and reconciliation can still be sought and found in a broken world. If ever there was a time for the church to proclaim the need for reconciliation and the means to achieve it through the word of the living God, that time is now! We cannot shy away from persecution. We cannot deny that the hardships we face might get worse. We cannot say that followers of Christ will not undergo pain and suffering from the world, as prophesied in Scripture. Yet it is within such persecution that the church has the greatest opportunity for Christ’s body to bring healing wherever there is ailing.

Amidst the hardships faced by the church in India, MCC India has been a great source of encouragement and financial support to the Indian Mennonite churches through its relief and development programs. MCC supports peacebuilding initiatives carried out by Indian Mennonite churches, organizes peace and conflict mediation seminars in congregations and assists the church in working for the empowerment of women and children. The church in India is strengthened in its faith and witness through MCC’s ministry. We praise God for MCC India and its mission in our country.

As India’s population continues to grow, the church must keep its ears open and eyes closed, pointed upwards in expectant prayer. As brothers and sisters in Christ, we must unite and pray for a revival over the land of India. As the world looks at us and waits for a day when India becomes a superpower, let us pray that day will be the day every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord!

Premanand Bagh teaches in the Christian Ministry Division at Union Biblical Seminary in Pune, India.

Canada

The tag line for my organization, Multiply, reads, “Together, that the world may know.” Philosophically, “together” connotes ideals that are warmly endorsed by faith communities the world over. It embodies community, dependence, humility and unity. The opposing spirit to “together” represents all that is anathema to the Body of Christ, the Bride: isolation, independence, power and enmity.

I have spent the last two years engaging more intentionally with the Lord’s Prayer as part of my personal spiritual disciplines. I want to align myself with the themes upon which Jesus invited his followers to focus and intercede. It seems that the goal of this prayer template was not so much to create a universally repeated liturgy, but instead to steadily renew the mind and soul of the believer through daily prayer into a longing for and engagement with the themes on the heart of God. “Together” is at the core of this petition. The Lord’s Prayer invites us as a global family to pray to “Our Father,” calling for community and not isolation. “Your kingdom come, your will be done” requires humility and an absence of power. “Give us this day our daily bread” embodies dependence, not independence. And finally, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” calls for unity, not enmity. As Jesus invited his disciples to pray, so we are invited to pray and then live out each value, continually resourced by the Holy Spirit.

As Jesus invited his disciples to pray, so we are invited to pray and then live out each value, continually resourced by the Holy Spirit.

Where are we seeing this “together” today? In our global context, Multiply has been resourcing North American churches engaging in partnerships with the global church, not simply with a budget line to fund ministry, but with a lifeline, a human bridge of members coming and going to each other’s contexts to serve, support and mutually resource. An Ontario church travels to Germany to partner with a local congregation so that they can in turn support the start-up efforts of another region’s German/Canadian planting team. A rural Ontario community connects with a Thai network reaching out to rural communities in the country. Together, that the world may know.

A team of young adults from around the globe gather in Central Asia and the Middle East to collaborate with those of other faiths on the themes of peace, reconciliation and forgiveness. They run a camp together. The team goes in the love of the Father sharing the values of the Prince of Peace as they live and serve in community. Together, that the world may know.

If God’s saving love, expressed through the death and resurrection of Jesus, is for every person, every family and every nation, then we as the church are compelled to pray the Lord’s Prayer together—in community, dependence, humility and unity

In the Canadian North, denominations unite together to serve Indigenous communities by collaboratively resourcing workers who have relocated to engage in holistic support and witness. Together, that the world may know.

There are challenges in serving together. The global church has faced cultural distinctions, discriminating biases, theological differences and sometimes long histories of division. In Multiply, we have been reminded of the humbling unifying posture embodied in Jesus’ final prayer for disciples the world over: “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:22b-24, NIV).

If God’s saving love, expressed through the death and resurrection of Jesus, is for every person, every family and every nation, then we as the church are compelled to pray the Lord’s Prayer together—in community, dependence, humility and unity. Together, that the world may know . . . Jesus.

Robyn Serez is regional mobilizer for Eastern Canada for Multiply.

Switzerland

Five hundred years ago, Europe was seized by the Reformation. At that time, the church was still a major force within society and could play a decisive role in determining which forms of faith and life were accepted. The Anabaptist movement experienced this reality in Zurich. While initially part of renewal movements within the state church and the broader society, Anabaptists were soon persecuted by church and state as heretics and rebels.

This societal powerlessness is a great opportunity for the witness of our churches. For at the margins of society we first learn to know Christ himself anew.” “A post-Christendom society means a pluralistic society. We must therefore learn to participate in a broader conversation about how a flourishing

Five hundred years later, the church has long since lost this position of social power. In Switzerland we increasingly live in a post-Christendom society. For the church, this does not only mean a theological loss of relevance. Many people today associate the church’s former moral authority with sexual abuse, violence and outdated beliefs. The diaconal commitment of the churches to service has long been appreciated by society, but this has changed noticeably in recent years. Churches which explicitly justify their social action by appeals to their Christian faith are under the suspicion that they merely want to proselytize other people on this path. Such suspicions were factors in the Swiss government’s decision to cut national funds for our Mennonite youth work. The church is under the general suspicion of wanting to interfere in social life in an invasive way.

The church must regain its credibility in our society. But it cannot do so as it did five hundred years ago. The church must learn to live as a minority in our society. This is a challenge and, above all, an unusual situation for the large national churches. As Mennonites, we think that this is first and foremost an opportunity.

If the church as a whole comes into a minority position, a new coexistence of the different churches is needed. The church cannot serve our society with denominational disputes, but only as a common and reconciled body of Christ. Service to society must therefore not be misused as a means of gaining new members for one’s own denomination. If the church is marginalized in society, it naturally loses its influence, which is based on a position of social power. But this powerlessness is a great opportunity for the witness of our churches. For at the margins of society we first learn to know Christ himself anew. This can happen if we turn to the weak in our society. Not only do we serve them in the name of Jesus, but first and foremost we encounter Jesus himself in them. As a powerless church, we also no longer have any claims to power to defend, as was so often the case in the Christendom. A powerless church is in a good position to build bridges between different social groups.

As a church we therefore want to learn anew to live the reconciliation given in Christ. We practice how to deal constructively with conflicts and thus make a contribution to peace in society. After all, a post-Christendom society also means a pluralistic society. We must therefore learn to participate in a broader conversation about how a flourishing life is possible for all within a pluralistic society.

Finally, when one considers Switzerland within the global context, we recognize that we belong to one of the richest societies in the world. This obliges us to show solidarity with the world’s poorest and to make a substantial contribution to a fairer world. In doing so, we must live with the challenge that there are still very different forms of need in our society.

Lukas Amstutz is co-president of the Swiss Mennonite Conference and is the programme director of the Theological Seminary Bienenberg.

Zimbabwe

The apostle Paul proclaimed: “For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Cor. 4:5, NIV).This proclamation sets the tone for all who seek to work in the name of Christ. The church, however, faces challenges and opportunities wherever it serves. Challenges usually herald abundant opportunities for change. For this reflection, I engaged some Anabaptist church leaders in southern Africa about what they see as the challenges and opportunities faced by the church. I heard three main themes from this feedback, namely, challenges and opportunities related to economics, technology and leadership.

Genuine evangelists of integrity have an opportunity to present the pure gospel of Christ.”

Economics: Implementing and operating mission activities with poor human and material resources are immensely challenging. Many churches, including mine, have for many years looked to the mother church in the U.S. and Canada to provide highly trained theologians and to offer resource tools to mobilize evangelism as part of the church’s fulfillment of its mandate. Many rural churches are so poor that only the pastor owns a Bible. Also, sadly, a cancer that has crept into many churches in southern Africa is the onslaught of the exploitative prosperity and healing gospel moguls. In South Africa, one pastor made his naive congregants eat grass and flowers and drink petrol to be “closer to God.” There was even a pseudo-miracle of claiming to raise a person from the dead in South Africa.

Islam has an upper hand in this region because their missionaries proclaim Islam while simultaneously providing the material assistance people need, such as food, clothes, school fees for children and even housing. Many say that is how Christianity is undermined.

These challenges reflect the dire hunger and thirst for something more fulfilling. They present opportunities for genuine evangelists of integrity to present the pure gospel of Christ.

Technology: Access to the internet and social media has many positive results for congregations and congregants. These include easy access to Christian broadcasts, training programmes and Bible studies. On the other hand, social media has created havoc, especially with young people. Parents are competing with media of different types as they seek to raise and discipline children. There is general moral decline due to the encroachment of various media content, which may be both foreign and negative to African cultural and Christian norms.

There is ample opportunity for the church in the global North to partner with the church in the global South

Leadership: Many denominational congregations are led by part-time and untrained leaders. Southern Africa is still deeply entrenched in patriarchy and male-domination in ministry work. Denominations such as Methodists, Lutherans and the Church of Christ have many women in leadership roles. Be in Christ and Brethren in Christ churches in North America have ordained women in ministry as they believe both men and women are equally called and empowered to work in missions. In the Brethren in Christ Church in Zambia and Zimbabwe, rural areas have a majority of women pastors who serve on a voluntary basis, as they are not trained for the task. Lack of training causes the women-led rural congregations to be marginalized.

The church globally is consumed by materialism and secularism which makes it lukewarm. Yusufu Turaki says that materialism makes Christians lukewarm and indifferent to their faith. There is ample opportunity for the church in the global North to partner with the church in the global South, the former providing needed resources to further the gospel while the latter provides the zeal and passion for the gospel.

Barbara Nkala is Mennonite World Conference regional representative for Southern Africa.

Syria

Hama is a Syrian city with a great history and a proud multi-cultural heritage in which Muslims, Christians and others have lived together in peace and harmony for centuries. Unfortunately, the war that has been fought inside Syria for almost a decade has wounded this heritage.

Christianity entered Hama in the earliest decades after Jesus’ resurrection. Within the city today there are eight existing churches, the remains of a great cathedral and a monastery. The countryside surrounding Hama is full of towns populated not only by Sunni Muslims, Alawites and Ismailis, but also by Christians, who for centuries have lived in villages like Kefarh, Ayu, Bayh, Tumin, Maharada, Skelebiyya, Baydah and Bayadiyah. Hama and its surroundings have for centuries reflected a multi-cultural Islamic society, a society which accepts others for who they are and in which Christians have led the Christian life according to Jesus and his word. Christians have had friendly relations with their Muslim neighbors, who have respected them as followers of ‘Issa (the Qur’anic name for Jesus), son of Mary.

With the start of violent conflict inside Syria in 2011, Hama’s multi-cultural fabric has been torn. Syrian Christians have now sometimes come to be associated by some Muslims with the West. Amidst these new challenges, the role of the Church grew in extinguishing fires of hostility, declaring: “We are all partners in pain and sorrow, in joy and loss—this is not a religious war! We are brothers and sisters!”

Through the viciousness of war, marked by anxiety, distress, homelessness, hunger, pain and insecurity, breaks through a ray of light: humanitarian assistance. By extending humanitarian assistance, the church proclaims that “The other is me, I am the other: we do not simply live together, but rather we live and survive together.” Over the course of the violence, our churches have become signs of hope to the people of Hama, offering refuge for all in need. People who came in need to Hama’s churches discovered in these churches the true love that crowns acts of mercy. Amid violent conflict, the church calls out: “Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28, NRSV). In the face of shelling, missiles and violent incursions, the church in Hama has remained steadfast and faithful to its mission, proclaiming God’s glory through its good works (Matthew 5:16). Meanwhile, the faces of perseverance from the displaced, hungry and suffering people who have come to us from Homs, Aleppo, Idlib, Raqqa, Deir al-Zour, Hasakah and Qamishli give us hope for a better future.

Through the viciousness of war, marked by anxiety, distress, homelessness, hunger, pain and insecurity, breaks through a ray of light: humanitarian assistance.”

The aid sent by the churches in Canada, the United States and Europe has been a blessing. Support from MCC and Canadian Foodgrains Bank has enabled displaced refugees and host communities to survive and maintain their dignity in a war that not only destroyed buildings and a way of life but also the woven fabric that has held the Syrian way of life together. In faith, like Peter, the church in Hama cast out a net, and thanks to God’s grace and the work of the church around the world, we pulled in a catch of 153 fish, and our net did not break (John 21:11). We are faced with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, who works through the loyal, faithful and weak in the East and the West. We can only bow and be thankful.

In the face of shelling, missiles and violent incursions, the church in Hama has remained steadfast and faithful to its mission, proclaiming God’s glory through its good works (Matthew 5:16).

We believe that the Spirit of God works in us all for good. We also believe that he guided us to our partners like MCC, who have supported us in carrying the message of love and the law of mercy and the light of the Gospel at a time when we struggled to find humanitarian assistance to share this message with our fellow Syrians. Despite the hardships we have faced, we still believe that God will carry out his will.

Boutros Melki is a Syrian Orthodox priest in Hama, Syria.

In the name of Christ: keywords and excerpts from MCC’s missiology across the decades

Featured

Posted on November 2, 2020 by mccintersections

Given that MCC is a one-hundred-year-old organization representing a wide range of Anabaptist churches in Canada and the United States, churches with diverse theologies and practices, it should come as no surprise that MCC’s missiology has changed and developed over time, even as lines of continuity can be charted. This article does not offer a missiological history of MCC, but instead highlights keywords which future historians of MCC’s missiology would do well to examine, alongside representative excerpts from diverse documents that offer windows into MCC’s evolving missiology over the decades.

A key phrase in MCC’s missiology over time has been “In the Name of Christ.” First proposed in 1941 by John and Eileen Coffman, MCC workers in war-torn England, as a “little slogan” that could be attached to “the clothing that is made and donated by our people,” the phrase “In the Name of Christ” quickly became a widely-used shorthand for naming the motivation undergirding all of MCC’s work. The phrase continues to be used extensively within MCC’s public and internal communication, an ongoing reminder that MCC’s relief, development and peace efforts are a form of Christian witness.

While “In the Name of Christ” would arguably stand out as the most significant keyword or phrase in a history of MCC’s missiology, other keywords would also receive sustained attention. The quartet of relief, service, peace and sharing would all figure prominently in an account of MCC’s first decades, with service through relief efforts understood as a proactive witness for peace (and as an alternative to war) and as a form of sharing within the global church (mutual aid) and beyond. Public and internal documents across MCC’s century also highlight MCC’s identity as an inter-Mennonite or inter-Anabaptist agency, a church-based organization representing diverse Anabaptist churches.

In the second half of MCC’s century, new keywords gained prominence in MCC discourse. From the 1970s into the 1990s, words like partnership, simple living (alongside more-with-less), presence, justice, peacemaking, mutual transformation and connecting people began appearing with increasing frequency within MCC publications and internal communication. These new keywords did not replace earlier keywords like relief and In the Name of Christ, but rather modulated how they were understood.

The excerpts below from a wide variety of documents—from official board statements to internal working papers to news releases to cookbook forewords and more—offer some representative (but by no means exhaustive) examples of how these keywords and phrases have operated within MCC. Future historians of MCC’s understanding of its work and mission will do well to pay attention to the function and development of these keywords within MCC over the decades.

“Relief work is a particular duty and privilege in time of war, when human sin and destructiveness are doing their worst. To build where others destroy, to heal where others kill, to love when all men hate, is ‘to heap coals of fire upon the head’ and to overcome evil with good. There is no greater force in the world than the power of Christian love in action. Relief work is a living and powerful testimony to this love at a time when it is most needed.”—“The Why of Relief Work,” 1941.

“Confessionally we stand on the teachings of Christ as presented in the Gospels and interpreted by the lives and letters of the apostles as recorded in the Scripture. Even though we represent a number of groups of Mennonites who differ more or less in their modes of life and in their practices, we all agree on the essentials of faith in Christ, the Son of God as the Savior and coming Prince of Peace through whom alone is forgiveness of sin, peace in the heart, victory over sin and life everlasting. With Christian charity we respect our differences, finding no occasion to meddle with matters which might disrupt our unity of effort to give expression to the sacred trust we all share. Appearing in a spirit of prayer we leave our differences under the cross and proceed in the name of Christ with a united front.”—P.C. Hiebert, “Foreword,” MCC Handbook (Akron, PA: MCC, 1945).

“Sacrificial contributions, given ‘In the name of Christ,’ will feed both the body and the spirit of many of our brethren in the faith, their neighbors, and friends. From the abundance of our resources, from the warmth of our hearts, we have much to share.”—Ruth Hilty and Lydia Lehman, Mennonite Central Committee Women’s Activities Letter, no. 20 (July 1945).

“North American agencies used to go around running their own programs, using their own personnel and doing pretty well as they pleased. Eventually the error of that approach became obvious and we began to have a great deal of respect for the indigenous process. Now we much prefer to identify an existing agency with which we feel compatible and support it with personnel or money, permitting it to enlarge its effort.”—Edgar Stoesz, “An Improvement, Yet a Dilemma,” Intercom (July 1976).

In 1976, the MCC board approved these organizational objectives:

To share resources in the name of Christ and proclaim Jesus as Lord.
To establish and preserve an identity as free as possible from those nationalistic, cultural and ideological interests which are contrary to our understanding of faithfulness to Christ and to seek to meet human need in any nation regardless of political identity or affiliation.
To participate in a development process based on local capacity and self-reliance by which persons and societies come to realize the full potential of their human, natural and spiritual resources.
To follow the example of Christ, in striving for justice in identifying with the weak and oppressed and in reconciling the oppressor and oppressed.
To provide relief for victims of disasters in ways which encourage their maximum initiative, dignity and participation.
To sensitize our constituency to the injustices and human suffering which exist at home and abroad, so that the church can participate in MCC ministries with a greater understanding and follow a life style commitment consistent with Biblical and Anabaptist principles.
To attempt to influence, out of our experience, public policy decisions which affect victims of war, hunger and injustice with sensitivity to and in consultation with national churches and groups to which we relate.
To support and cooperate with national churches and mission boards, especially in places where Mennonite and Brethren in Christ mission and churches are present. Where no Christian groups are present, MCCers should see themselves as a nucleus for a Christian fellowship.

—MCC Statement on Program Assumptions, Objectives and Priorities, 1976.

“Mennonites—a people who care about the hungry—are on a search. We are looking for ways to live more simply and joyfully, ways that grow out of our tradition, but take their shape from living faith and the demands of our hungry world.”—Doris Janzen Longacre, “Foreword,” More-with-Less Cookbook (1976).

“Although the fact is not widely known, the Mennonite Central Committee has preceded Mennonite mission work in some 20 countries. . . . Wherever MCC has initiated, it has strongly encouraged missions to follow. This pattern is central to MCC’s understanding of word and deed. . . . MCC’s work does not always have to lead to missions. But church planting has often followed, and when it does, MCC looks on it with great joy.”—Marion Keeney Preheim, “MCC: Forerunner in Mission,” MCC Information Services (December 6, 1979).

“A ministry of presence suggests that need is best defined from the stance of being present rather than by strategies inspired by well-developed ideology, media headlines or grandiose projects.”—John A. Lapp, “Report of the Executive Secretary,” 1987.

In 1989, Robert Kreider worked with Reg Toews to list a set of “Unwritten Tenets of MCC Operations.” These included:

#3: Committed to programs which are personnel intensive.

#4: Inter-Mennonite in control, staffing and image.

#14: Growing interest in and commitment to reciprocity, exchange and partnership—seeking the grace of being able to receive gifts as well as give gifts.

#15: Preference for the small scale. If you make mistakes, let them be little mistakes.

#21: Committed to the integration of word and deed.

“MCC serves as a channel of interchange by building relationships that are mutually transformative. . . . MCC facilitates interchange and mutual learning between its supporting constituency and those with whom we work around the world, so that all may give and receive.”—Principles that Guide Our Mission (1991).

“We will contribute to the relief of human need and suffering by giving ourselves and our resources. The needs of our world and the cries of people in many places for justice call us to respond as Jesus did, with compassion. At the same time, we recognize our own spiritual and moral poverty and seek to receive the gifts that others, some of whom may be materially poorer than we are, have to share with us.

We will live in relationships of love and mutual respect. We seek to model such relationships in our homes, churches and work places, and to refrain from behavior which violates and abuses others physically or emotionally. In the spirit or Christ, we will oppose and seek to correct abusive relationships within our church family.”—From A Commitment to Christ’s Way of Peace (1994).

“Connecting Peoples is rooted in our understanding of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, coming to live among us in order to break down barriers and walls: ‘For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.’ (Ephesians 2:14) MCC seeks to promote Christian unity by supporting constituents and partners who are interested in direct relationships with each other. Such a goal assumes a deep confidence that building relationships—proper relationships based on generosity and accountability—transforms us even as it assaults cultural assumptions.”—Mennonite Central Committee Connecting Peoples Manual, ed. Robert Eugene Brenneman (Akron, PA: MCC, 2003).

“The implications of receiving from God in order to give to others are profound because receiving from God requires a new way of thinking about myself in relation to God and others. Instead of perceiving myself as one who actively initiates a response to the needs around me, I begin to recognize that my concerns for justice and peace are planted in me by God. God is the Source of my desire to serve and I am the recipient of God’s concerns, dreams, and activity in the world.”—Susan Classen, A Spirituality of Service: Freely Give, Freely Receive, MCC Occasional Paper No. 29 (January 2003).

“Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), a worldwide ministry of Anabaptist churches, shares God’s love and compassion for all in the name of Christ by responding to basic human needs and working for peace and justice. MCC envisions communities worldwide in right relationship with God, one another and creation.”—MCC Purpose Statement, in Principles and Practices (2012).

Alain Epp Weaver directs strategic planning for MCC. Frank Peachey and Lori Wise are MCC U.S. records manager and assistant, respectively.

Learn more

Kreider, Robert S. and Rachel Waltner Goossen. Hungry, Thirsty, a Stranger: The MCC Experience. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1988.

Principles and Practices. MCC, 2011. Available at https://mcccanada.ca/sites/mcccanada.ca/files/media/common/documents/mccprinciplesandpracticesweb2.pdf.

Unity amidst Diversity: Mennonite Central Committee at 75. Akron, PA: MCC, 1996.

Unruh, John. In the Name of Christ: A History of the Mennonite Central Committee. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1952.

Weaver, Alain Epp. Ed. A Table of Sharing: Mennonite Central Committee and the Expanding Networks of Mennonite Identity. Telford, PA: Cascadia, 2011.

Defining identities: MCC and Mennonite World Conference

Featured

Posted on October 26, 2020 by mccintersections

Individual articles from the Fall 2020 issue of Intersections will be posted on this blog twice per week. The full issue can be found on MCC’s website. This article consist of five reflections which will be posted separately.

“The church will slow down the work of Mennonite Central Committee,” a person at the 2008 MCC New Wine, New Wineskins consultative process meeting in Winnipeg told me. “If we want to be a more effective NGO, we need to act independently from the church,” he continued. I remember that consultation as an opportunity for me to reaffirm my Anabaptist convictions about the church. Yes, the church may not be very effective in fulfilling NGO standards of professional management and administrative structure, but it nevertheless embodies God’s method of real and long-lasting social transformation.

Social transformation is a goal shared by MCC and Mennonite World Conference (MWC). But what roles do MWC and MCC play in pursuing this goal? Surveying the past decades, we see that MCC’s and MWC’s histories have been intertwined, with the two bodies shaping each other and shaping broader understandings of Anabaptist identity. In the words of former MCC executive director Ron Mathies, “the two organizations are made of the same cloth—the fabric of Anabaptist peoplehood—and have had an increasing impact on each other and the mission of the church over the past decades” (Mathies, 85).

The MWC-MCC relationship throughout the decades has been marked by counsel and cooperation. Both MCC and MWC started in response to the context of violence and persecution that Mennonites were facing in Europe and Russia in the second decade of the last century. MCC began in 1920 as a service arm of churches in the United States and Canada to support Mennonite refugees and families affected by war and famine in southern Russia (present-day Ukraine), with this relief ministry joined from MCC’s inception by development and peace work. In 1925, MWC emerged as a way of bringing Mennonites together, affirming the cross-cultural faith in Jesus as understood in the Anabaptist tradition, a faith that is capable of overcoming nationalisms and racism.

“The church may not be very effective in fulfilling NGO standards of professional management and administrative structure, but it nevertheless embodies God’s method of real and long-lasting social transformation.”

As Mathies explains, over the course of their histories both MCC and MWC have placed a strong emphasis on inter-Mennonite solidarity, have shared leaders (including presidents, executive secretaries and senior staff), supported each other (e.g., planning the logistics of MWC global assemblies and global consultations) and connected churches around common goals (such as through the YAMEN program). These converging purposes and leadership exchanges are understandable due to the ecclesiological understanding that Anabaptists have about mission. Mission, from the Anabaptist point of view, is something done by the church in the world as a witness to Christ. It cannot be completely delegated to specialists or independent institutions. Moreover, the church per se is mission, which makes it difficult to separate or compartmentalize mission and church.

Catholic theologian Gerhard Lohfink has rightly insisted that “the real being of Christ can be bright only if the church makes visible the messianic alternative and the new eschatological creation that happens from Christ” (191-192). This new eschatological creation is global and multicultural in scope. It overcomes nationalisms and other boundaries, facilitating interdependence, care and love for one other. Our world desperately needs to see this eschatological reality manifested today. That is a call to which MWC responds by becoming a global communion.

MWC has understood itself as part of God’s activity of bringing together diverse social fragments—as parts of the same body—to make God’s new creation visible. As a global church in the Anabaptist tradition, MWC is a place where all member churches sit together with the same level of mutual authority regardless of their ethnicity, financial capacity and Anabaptist distinctives. It is a place where theology, service, education, peacemaking, church planting, health care, pastoral care, worship, ministries of women and youth and other ecclesial activities happen globally and cross-culturally. In this manner, MWC serves as a global alternative community to the states of this world.

One of the essential questions of MCC’s New Wine, New Wineskins revisioning and restructuring process was, “To whom is MCC accountable (who is the ‘keeper of the MCC soul’)?” From the MWC perspective, it was clear that, even though MCC has multicultural staff and volunteers all over the world, it is accountable to Anabaptist churches in Canada and the United States, who are the owners of MCC. In a similar way, churches in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America have developed their own service structures as they have matured and developed. However, none of their agencies have the experience, capacity and global reach that MCC has. Therefore, in practice, MCC has been called to provide a leadership role within the network of Anabaptist agencies in MWC.

“In practice, MCC has been called to provide a leadership role within the network of Anabaptist agencies in Mennonite World Conference.”

Through MCC’s active participation in MWC’s Global Anabaptist Service Network (GASN), new possibilities of global, inter-Anabaptist collaboration have emerged over the past decade: coordinating multiagency responses to natural disasters or other crises, joint planning of cross-cultural ministries of service with other Anabaptist agencies, supporting national churches in creating their own service structures and helping Anabaptist service agencies around the globe build their own capacity.

With MCC’s active role in the GASN, which itself is part of MWC’s Mission Commission, there are endless possibilities of coordinated planning and interdependent work among agencies from different cultures and with different ministries such as church planting, peacemaking, healthcare and education. As we look to MCC’s second century—and soon MWC’s second century—can we dream together about multicultural Anabaptist teams serving together in the same geographical area providing relief, education, health, peacemaking, church planting and social development? I think so. I think that is God’s call for our church and mission.

César García is general secretary of Mennonite World Conference.

Learn more

Lohfink, Gerhard. La Iglesia que Jesús Quería: Dimensión Comunitaria de la Fe Cristiana. 4^th ed. Bilbao: Desclée de Brouwer, 1986.

Mathies, Ronald J. R. “Synergies in Mission: The MWC/MCC Relationship.” In A Table of Sharing: Mennonite Central Committee and the Expanding Networks of Mennonite Identity. Ed. Alain Epp Weaver, 84-103. Telford PA: Cascadia 2011.

Peacebuilding as presence: MCC assignments in “enemy” contexts

Featured

Posted on October 22, 2020 by mccintersections

Individual articles from the Summer 2020 issue of Intersections will be posted on this blog twice per week. The full issue can be found on MCC’s website. This article consist of five reflections which will be posted separately.

Beginning with the decision by some MCC workers from the United States to remain in Vietnam after the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country on March 29, 1973, one form MCC’s peace witness has taken has been a witness of presence within so-called “enemy” contexts. Such peace witness included placing graduate students behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War tasked with connecting to and supporting churches in the Eastern bloc, assigning aid workers to live and work in Iraq before and after the U.S. invasion of the country in 2002, placing more graduate students at an Islamic studies center in Qom, Iran, seconding staff to work with health ministries in Afghanistan and sending agronomists to make extended program support visits to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea). Below are reflections from MCC workers who were involved in such peacebuilding-as-presence initiatives on the joys and challenges they faced.—The editors.

Iraq

We often think of two U.S.-led wars in Iraq. One began in January 1991 in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, ending just over a month later. The second Iraq war began in March 2003 and ended in December 2011. But it is more accurate to say that it was just one long war. The no-fly zones established over northern and southern Iraq from 1991 to 2003 included multiple air strikes and dozens of cruise missiles bombing Iraqi targets, coupled with a debilitating sanctions campaign and a long legacy of depleted uranium.

I arrived in the middle of this long war. From January 2004 to June 2006, I was the MCC Iraq program manager. My job had two components. First, I was to teach English at Babel College, a Chaldean Catholic college and seminary in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital. Second, I was tasked with cultivating relationships with potential MCC partners, whether churches, Islamic organizations or emerging local NGOs. In doing so, I was merely continuing the work that had begun in 1998 with Wanda Kraybill, the first MCCer in Iraq. From 1998 to 2003, Wanda, and later Carmen Pauls and then Edward Miller, were in Iraq as a gesture of solidarity, especially with the churches there. Placing these MCC workers in Iraq was a way of saying: “Not all Westerners share the U.S. government’s position and not all Christians in the U.S. think their citizenship is more important than their baptism.” MCCers worked alongside the Middle East Council of Churches, the Iraqi Red Crescent Society and the Australian branch of CARE to mitigate the effects of the U.S. sanctions and to call attention to the slow violence of depleted uranium munitions, but they did so with limited resources. Importantly, this was a time when there was virtually no Western presence in Iraq. The MCC difference was, first and foremost, simply being there as friend instead of enemy, despite our U.S. citizenship. We took a stand against the sanctions campaign, both as advocates at home in Washington, D.C., and through aid projects on the ground in Iraq.

Placing MCC workers in Iraq was a way of saying, “not all Westerners share the U.S. government’s position and not all Christians in the U.S. think their citizenship is more important that their baptism.”

But after the U.S.-led invasion of 2003, all that changed. Specifically, two things shifted dramatically and both made MCC’s position harder to maintain. First, instead of a few western NGOs with limited resources, Iraq was flooded with western NGOs with billions to spend. Instead of being a lone NGO in defiance of the international community’s aggression, MCC was now just one small cog in a giant aid industry. That industry, as I came to see it after I arrived in January 2004, had three distinct factions. The first were what we might call the “occupying NGOs,” indebted to USAID and the U.S. State Department and (some eagerly, some reluctantly) a key part of the U.S. war effort. The second was what I affectionately called the humanitarian fundamentalists. These were primarily European NGOs committed to the principled tradition of humanitarian neutrality that is best represented by the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) and Médecins Sans Frontière (MSF). The third were the left-wing activist NGOs who were willing to abandon the neutrality of the second group in pursuit of their anti-war agenda.

MCC was an odd fit with these three groups. While philosophically, practically and socially most distant from the U.S. NGOs, we couldn’t get away from the fact that most of the MCCers involved were U.S. citizens. We became closest to the humanitarians and the activist NGOs, but for that to happen they had to overcome their wariness of both our citizenship and of our faith commitments.

The second change was that aid workers were now vulnerable in a way they had not been before 2004. In April of that year, the Iraqi insurgency began taking hostages. A Wikipedia page, “Foreign Hostages in Iraq,” lists over 200 hostages, the vast majority between 2004-2006. At least eight of those were close colleagues of MCC and of those eight, three were killed. It would be convenient if the ones kidnapped were the ones with the closest ties to the U.S. and the invading military coalition. But that wasn’t the case. It was the ICRC compound in Baghdad that was attacked in 2003. In the eyes of the insurgency, we were all enemies. In other words, it became harder to imagine that MCC, or any non-coalition aid agency, was either neutral or on the side of Iraqis. The whole notion of ‘sides’ had gotten scrambled.

Sister Elham Degaly and Sarah (age 12) in the courtyard of St Anne’s Orphanage. St Anne’s Orphanage was an MCCsupported Global Family project from 2009-2016. Sarah’s last name is not used for security reasons. Iraqi families have been torn apart by poverty and war. Some families have been unable to care for their children. Some children have watched their parents die. The Daughters of Mary of the Chaldean Christian Church provide a loving home for children (mostly girls) with traumatic childhoods. In partnership with the Daughters of Mary, MCC buys textbooks, tutoring resources and other supplies. (MCC photo/Kaitlin Heatwole)

Evacuated to Jordan, the humanitarian fundamentalist and activist NGOs had a standard explanation. “Humanitarian space,” the space in which aid agencies could carry out their mission to the most vulnerable, was only possible when aid agencies maintained their distance from the U.S. coalition power and when the U.S. coalition power respected that distance. Since so many NGOs had effectively become extensions of the occupation, whether willingly or because of USAID arm-twisting, that space no longer existed. In other words, the ICRC hadn’t been bombed because it was an enemy, but because the occupying NGOs had so muddied humanitarian space that it was no longer possible to tell the difference between the humanitarian fundamentalists and the occupation. In the space of just a year, MCC went from being the sole inhabitant of humanitarian space, to one of many organizations claiming humanitarian space, to witnessing the end of that space.

Meanwhile, the suffering of our Iraqi friends and colleagues increased exponentially. Caught between the coalition forces and the growing Iraqi insurgency, tens of thousands of Iraqis died and millions were displaced and remain displaced to this day. Those who remained had their lives disrupted and upended in all the countless ways that war wrecks societies—struggles to obtain food, healthcare, education and employment and lives of constant fear. From my apartment in Jordan in 2005, communicating with Iraqi friends and colleagues by phone and email and learning daily about the deteriorating conditions, we weighed commitments to solidarity with Iraqis alongside the risks. The former won out and MCC agreed to let me return to Baghdad, to an apartment above the flat where members of Christian Peacemaker Teams lived. CPT had never left. But just a week before my return flight, four of those CPTers were kidnapped. One, the only U.S. citizen, Tom Fox, was killed. Fifteen years later, MCC Iraq still does not maintain a presence in Baghdad.

Peter Dula is professor of religion and culture at Eastern Mennonite University. He worked with MCC in Iraq from 2004-2006.

Paticipants at an interfaith workshop in Abeche, Chad, hosted by Ethics, Peace and Justice (EPJ) in 2016, discuss challenges to interfaith collaboration in their communities. MCC partnered with EPJ for over 20 years in peacebuilding initiatives, bringing Muslim, Protestant and Catholic leaders together to foster cooperation and community resilience. (MCC photo/Mark Tymm)

Peacebuilding as presence: MCC assignments in “enemy” contexts

Featured

Posted on October 15, 2020 by mccintersections

Individual articles from the Summer 2020 issue of Intersections will be posted on this blog twice per week. The full issue can be found on MCC’s website. This article consist of five reflections which will be posted separately.

DPRK (North Korea)

MCC’s provision of humanitarian assistance during the 1994 famine in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea) initiated a quarter century relationship and over US$22 million in aid, assistance that has supported disaster responses, agricultural education and pediatric hospitals. While MCC has received wide recognition for this humanitarian work, we might also ask: Have these efforts furthered the “peace” element in MCC’s commitment to “relief, development, and peace in the name of Christ?” This question is critical in the context of MCC’s wider mission, as a lack of peace in the region has shaped life on the Korean peninsula for 70 years.

My work with MCC has introduced me to many North Koreans who are caring rather than threatening.

Prior to the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, the Korean peninsula thrived for 1,300 years, united under a distinctive culture and language. In the 70 years since, however, ten million Koreans have lived permanently separated from their families. A formal peace agreement to end the war was never signed, leaving the peninsula split by a heavily militarized border and a bilaterally-enforced ban on cross-border travel and communication. Despite near complete isolation from one another, the longing for eventual reunification runs deep on both sides of the divide.

With this broader geopolitical context in mind, I propose to consider how MCC’s 25 years of humanitarian work in North Korea has provided a platform for a reconciliatory “peace witness” in three critical ways: people-to-people contact between North Korea, the U.S. and Canada, advocacy with the U.S. government and education work in South Korea.

First, as in any deep national division, political peace is critical. The absence of a peace treaty is an enormous barrier to a new future in Korea. Yet lasting peace also requires the overlooked work that scholar Cecelia Clegg calls “societal reconciliation” (Clegg 84). Speaking from her research into healing in Northern Ireland, Clegg argues that “there is no substitute for . . . a sustained level of new contact, the act of deliberately seeking out a meeting or encounter with the [threatening] ‘other’” (90). Sustained contact is precisely where MCC’s North Korea work has mattered in relation to what Clegg calls “the will to find out the truth about the ‘other’ [as] an essential dynamic in any reconciling process” (89).

Amid a hostile climate that has often condemned positive engagement toward North Korea, MCC’s presence has been catalytic as one of only a handful of agencies with work on both sides of the border.

Mutual isolation has created profound misunderstanding between people in North Korea and the U.S. In North Korea, dominant “enemy narratives” of the U.S. include the U.S. military’s indiscriminate bombing during the war and the complicity of U.S. missionaries in violence. But MCC’s relief work has provided a different face of both U.S. citizens and Christians. Over many years of face-to-face monitoring visits, MCC delegations have shared the story of where MCC’s canned meat comes from—not a factory, but from the hands of tens of thousands of volunteers and churches across Canada and the United States.

These encounters also defy the narratives held by many Canadian and U.S. Anabaptist constituencies accustomed only to threatening images of North Koreans. My work with MCC has introduced me to many North Koreans who are caring rather than threatening. I think, for example, of a dedicated tuberculosis sanitorium director who, while compassionately caring for his patients, eventually contracted and succumbed to the disease himself, as well as government officials who witnessed the impact of a U.S. couple’s work with cerebral palsy and approved the construction of provincial pediatric rehabilitation centers.

A second critical dimension of MCC’s peace witness in North Korea is political advocacy. Even today, 28,000 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea. Economic and social collaboration on the peninsula is subject to the mercy of the United States. In 2017, the U.S. State Department banned travel by U.S. citizens to North Korea and the United Nations (under U.S. leadership) instituted sanctions severely limiting imports to North Korea. This threatened the sole avenues for aid to vulnerable North Korean people and endangered future diplomacy. Alongside other faith-based agencies, MCC engaged in direct advocacy to the U.S. government, pushing for humanitarian exemptions and to make signing a peace treaty a top priority in the ongoing U.S.-DPRK negotiations.

During a 1998 visit to Pyongyang, DPRK, MCC staff member Kevin King learns about medicinal plants from Mrs. Kim at the city’s Botanical Gardens. (Photo courtesy of Kevin King)

The third dimension of MCC’s peace witness on the Korean peninsula is its peace education in South Korea. Amid a hostile climate that has often condemned positive engagement toward North Korea, MCC’s presence has been catalytic as one of only a handful of agencies with work on both sides of the border. One South Korean pastor said his encounters with a Canadian agriculturalist who worked with MCC in DPRK “changed my concept about North Korea from missiles and ever-marching people of nationalistic madness to the same common people like us in South Korea.” Another young South Korean I know had grown up distant from the trauma of the Korean divide. Her indifference was challenged in college when she joined an InterVarsity Korea visit to the China-North Korea border. A boat ride to view the North offered her a sight many South Koreans never see: two North Koreans up close, two soldiers sitting on a beach. “One of them looked exactly like my brother,” she said. “Only then did I understand that we are one people.” This transformative experience led her to MCC’s IVEP program, an experience which shifted her career toward peacemaking. If, as described here, MCC humanitarian work in North Korea has become a platform for peace witness, we might ask: witness to what? Perhaps to what scholar Marc Gopin describes as a distinctly Anabaptist approach to peacebuilding where true transformation requires building new relationships over many years across divides. Such peace work bears witness to “the inherent moral value of building relationships” across divides and with adversaries where the “moment of relation becomes a moment of religious fulfillment, of imitatio dei, in [the case of Anabaptists] emulating Jesus. The person in relation becomes an end in herself” (Gopin, 242, 246). With U.S.-DPRK relations tense and fraught, such long-term relationship-building is more critical than ever.

Chris Rice is director of the MCC United Nations Office. Editorial assistance was provided by Abby Hershberger, communications and advocacy assistant at MCC’s UN Office in New York City.

Learn more

Gopin, Marc. “The Religious Component of Mennonite Peacebuilding.” In From the Ground Up: Mennonite Contributions to International Peacebuilding. Ed. John Paul Lederach and Cynthia Sampson, 233-255. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Rice, Chris. “Contested South Korean Identities of Reunification and Christian Paradigms of Reconciliation.” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 42/2 (2018): 133-142.

Reconcilers. Blog for Chris Rice. https://reconcilers.wordpress.com/.

Peacebuilding as presence: MCC assignments in “enemy” contexts

Featured

Posted on October 12, 2020 by mccintersections

Iran

As our plane landed in Iran about 20 years ago, my thoughts swirled with hope and fear. What will “blessed are the peacemakers” look like as our family’s daily work in a religiously and politically foreign land? My spouse, Maren, and I had just finished studying Persian, Shi’ite Islam and Women in Islam the previous months at the University of Virginia. We both had seminary degrees. Fear of the unknown swirled around our hope for maintaining and strengthening an MCC peacebuilding bridge of trust in Iran. Many MCCers had visited Iran before to lay a deep foundation of relationships with Iranian partners through earthquake relief efforts and short-term medical work. We were called to be the first MCC staff to take up residence in the country.

Our presence in Iran as the only Christians living in the religious capital of Qom was marked by hospitality: giving and receiving tea, fruit and words of honor and welcome

Entering Iran meant not only arrival into a religiously and politically different world. It also unfolded within a legacy of no diplomatic relations between Iran and the U.S. and strained Canadian-Iranian relationships. Both Maren and I were bicultural, something that helped us see two worlds. When we landed in Tehran, Maren had to put on a chador (“tent” in Persian) and I had to replace my gold wedding ring with a silver one.

Our presence in Iran as the only Christians living in the religious capital of Qom was marked by hospitality: giving and receiving tea, fruit and words of honor and welcome. How do we find and create shared meaning in the presence of our supposed enemies? Respect became a learned behavior in relationships.

Near the end of one meeting, a student said that he needed to leave early for the “Down with America” rally.” The word for “Down With” or “Death To” sounds a lot like the word for “chickens” in Persian, so I responded, “Do you mean ‘Chickens for America?’ Thank you very much.” He replied with a smile, “It is our seminary’s day of the month and the rally bus is coming soon—don’t take it personally!’

As we sought to build relationships, we focused on listening and answering questions as asked. We met many who wondered, “Why did you come here?” Over time, as trust was built in some relationships, legacy traumas and deep political and religious differences came on the table beside the tea. More time to listen, more words flowed. Some conversations went on for hours. After nine previous years in Egypt and Syria, I had come to enjoy this kind of conversation.

How do we find and create shared meaning in the presence of our supposed enemies? Respect became a learned behavior in relationships.

We usually had Friday lunch with other families. Each Tuesday I joined a group studying religions at the graduate level. I taught them some dimensions of Christian history and theology. At the end of each session, I noted one act of faith that changed the world. In one session I shared about Habitat for Humanity. The course coordinator researched Habitat online and came back the next session saying: “We need a Muslim Habitat for Humanity.” Maren spent time with various women at the Women’s University. We both studied Persian in the morning.

What do Mennonites, who seek in their daily lives to live out the politics of Jesus, do when encountering Iranian Shi’ites for whom the Rule of the Jurists (religious leaders) means the merging of national politics and religious practice? Many persons practiced their English with us and my knowing some Arabic helped a lot in conducting in-depth discussions about these differences.

Other MCC couples followed us to take up residence in Iran, while scores of Mennonites from Canada and the U.S. visited Iran as part of MCC-organized delegations. MCC also worked with Mennonite colleges, universities and seminaries in the U.S. in hosting Iranian delegations and in organizing academic conferences in Iran and Canada. Many other forms of encounter emerged, with Iranian delegations going to Canada and Iranian scholars-in-residence appointed for short terms at Mennonite universities in the U.S. and Canada. These delegations and exchanges continued—until the political winds changed here and there.

Evelyn Shellenberger (right) converses with a faculty member (name not provided) after a general meeting of MCC visitors with the faculty of the University of Shiraz in Shiraz, Iran. Photo was taken during an MCC peace delegation to Iran, December 28, 2007, to January 13, 2008. Shellenberger and husband Wallace Shellenberger lived in Qom, Iran, 2001 to 2004 as part of an MCC-sponsored student exchange program. (MCC photo/Doug Hostetter)

As I look back 20 years later, I hold more fear than hope. There are many ways to destroy the potential for peace and I am watching it happen stage by stage with increasing fervor on both sides. The Shi’ite legacy trauma of persecution has led to increased militancy in various countries. The U.S. assertiveness in the Middle East has shifted to Iran more intensely through sanctions and threats. There were and are forces very willing to sabotage peace on both sides, those very willing to push open the gates of hell and those working to close and seal them in acts of peacebuilding. We have yet to see the outcome.

Roy Hange worked with MCC for over a decade in Egypt, Syria and Iran. Together with his spouse, Maren, he pastors Charlottesville Mennonite Church in Virginia.

Learn more

Kauffman, Richard A. An American in Persia: A Pilgrimage to Iran. Telford, PA: Cascadia, 2010.

Pierce, Laurie Blanton. What is Iran? A Primer on Culture, Politics, and Religion. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2009.

Peacebuilding as presence: MCC assignments in “enemy” contexts

Featured

Posted on October 8, 2020 by mccintersections

Behind the Iron Curtain

In 1977, during our second year of marriage and study at Fuller Theological Seminary, we were invited to serve in what was portrayed as an innovative, daring, bridge-building peace witness in what was then Yugoslavia. To go behind the so-called “Iron Curtain” was the stuff of myth and spy fiction. We were among the first of what later became a sizeable group called the East Europe fraternity—a group of students who offered a Mennonite presence in at least eight Eastern European countries from 1977 to 1990. Ours was a peacebuilding venture largely comprised of on-the-ground presence and relationship building.

For Mennonite church leaders in the United States and Canada to assess that our people were vulnerable to fear and manipulation was both far-sighted and sober.

For people in Canada, the U.S. and western Europe, the specter of communism around the globe created widespread and often irrational fear. For Christians, including Mennonites, the fear was complicated by how political and economic threats of communism versus capitalism matched so closely with understandings of religious freedom and the persecution of the church under atheist regimes. For Mennonite church leaders in the United States and Canada to assess that our people were vulnerable to fear and manipulation was both far-sighted and sober. The way they chose to meet that danger was to send volunteers across the borders of the Iron Curtain to study at universities and spend time with real people on the ground—listening, offering friendship, assisting as invited and sharing the gospel of peace by being present and available for collaborative work when possible. We agreed to be among those volunteers, arriving in Yugoslavia in the fall of 1977.

This was truly an educational venture and we had student visas to prove it, but the education was meant to flow both ways. In the East, our message was meant to be that not all Christians see your land and your people as hated enemies. In the West, the educational thrust was to help our people see that real folks live with real challenges in socialist societies, but it is not the end of the world as we know it. A remarkable religious vitality is sustained in faith communities even though constrained by systemic and ideological challenges.

A couple and their daughter from the Orenburg Evangelical Christian Baptist congregation, Orenburg, Soviet Union (Russia) are looking at a scrapbook sent as a gift from Groffdale (Pennsylvania) Mennonite Church in this 1988 photo. An MCC delegation visited the Soviet Union from February 21 to March 4, 1988 at the invitation of the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians/Baptists (AUCECB). (MCC photo/John A Lapp)

Our assignment, though sponsored by MCC and Mennonite mission agencies, was not formally missionary or relief and development work in the classic sense. An embodied presence on the ground was deemed the most strategic way to work at relational peacebuilding. Sharing the everyday life of ordinary Christian believers in a communist setting seemed to be our best hope of subverting the fears and overcoming the ignorance of our own people back home. And indeed, as we would return home for brief visits, circulating in our sponsoring communities, people had real questions and showed genuine interest. We were not planting Mennonite churches or starting programs or institutions. We were instructed to come alongside existing communities of Jesus-followers, who became our best instructors. Baptists, Pentecostals, Lutherans, Methodists, Catholics and Orthodox, as well as Muslims and Marxists, were all helpful in showing us their complex realities.

Our assignment included freedom to pursue any contacts which could help us toward our goal. We traveled extensively in several regions, engaged with churches and helped with educational efforts in several schools. In addition to relating to primarily Catholic Croatian and Orthodox Serbian contexts, we spent two years in Muslim neighborhoods of Sarajevo. We were welcomed by active Protestant leaders who quickly embraced and included us in their educational efforts. And since we were not setting up our own programs, we could selectively bolster anything that was constructive, collaborative and designed to serve purposes larger than self-interest.

There were plenty of challenges as well. While we had directors from MCC and Eastern Mennonite Board of Missions and Charities (EMBMC, now EMM) to provide guidance from the distance, and the “fraternity” of our Mennonite peers in other East European settings, we didn’t have formal local partners. We observed freelance operatives from other Western parachurch and mission agencies whose work was not subject to review by any local group and became problematic. We worked hard to maintain relationships that could incorporate local accountability. There was also our own isolation as the only Mennonites in-country, including the need to negotiate what was best for our children in education, community and church life. Meanwhile, although the political ideology was explicitly egalitarian, the general culture was very patriarchal.

That MCC had a presence on the ground was crucial to mobilizing tons of material aid, peacemaking responses and refugee care in Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia in the wake of Yugoslavia’s dissolution.

It seems clear, looking back more than 40 years later, that the parallel assignments across Eastern Europe accomplished significant components of the goals we set out to achieve. The practical ecumenism of cooperating with people of other faiths was strategically fruitful during the subsequent war years in the Balkans. That MCC had a presence on the ground was crucial to mobilizing tons of material aid, peacemaking responses and refugee care in Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia in the wake of Yugoslavia’s dissolution. Evangelical faith communities came to see Mennonites as allies. They showed openness to Anabaptist theology and many made tangible commitments to peacebuilding in their local communities. And the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 symbolized the triumph of the hopes we came to share with many people in the region.

Gerald and Sara Wenger Shenk worked with MCC Yugoslavia (Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia) from 1977-83 and 1986-89 (jointly with Eastern Mennonite Board of Mission and Charities, now EMM). Sara went on to serve as president of Anabaptist Biblical Seminary and Gerald as professor of church and society at Eastern Mennonite Seminary.

Learn more

Jantzen, Mark. The Wrong Side of the Wall: An American in East Berlin during the Peaceful Revolution. Nappanee, IN: Evangel Press, 1993.

Training peacebuilding leaders: challenges faced and lessons learned

Featured

Posted on October 5, 2020 by mccintersections

As peacebuilding has grown and flourished as an academic field and a practical discipline over the past several decades, MCC has collaborated with Mennonite and Mennonite Brethren colleges, universities and seminaries in the United States and Canada in equipping church and community leaders from around the world with peacebuilding skills and knowledge. Through Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Canadian Mennonite University, Conrad Grebel University College, Eastern Mennonite University and Fresno Pacific University, MCC has sponsored hundreds of students for short-term peacebuilding training as well as academic degrees in peacebuilding over the past three decades (with a significant majority of those trainees studying at Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding and its predecessors). During the past quarter century, MCC has also worked closely with groups of committed peacebuilders who sought to organize contextualized peacebuilding training opportunities in their parts of the world. Over the following pages, peacebuilders in African and Asian contexts reflect on the challenges they have faced, the successes they have enjoyed and the lessons they have learned from organizing peacebuilding trainings in their regional contexts.—The editors.

School of Peace

Interfaith participants at the three-month School of Peace for young adults from across Asia typically hold a debate as an exercise in fostering critical thinking. Each year the debate resolution is different. One year the resolution was: “It is not necessary to do peacemaking.” Divided into two groups, the fifteen young participants were given a day to prepare to defend or oppose the statement.

Let’s not do peacemaking. Let’s transform the injustices that block peace from flowing.

As the debate began, those defending the resolution (that is arguing against the necessity of doing peacemaking) were having a difficult time finding good arguments that could hold up against the opposition. They were losing badly. Then one young woman stood up to make her argument in support of the resolution, offering this argument:

I live next to a small stream. When I was a child, we used to play in its crystal-clear water. We could even drink it. Later, the stream became polluted with plastic and other garbage. Our parents no longer let us play in it. We thought about finding some way to filter the water to make it clean, but we realized that the water originally was very clean. If we wanted to enjoy the stream again, we would have to investigate where the pollution came from and find a way to solve that.

As a Christian I believe that peace is a gift from God. It is here all around us. But so many people can’t experience it because injustices pollute it. We don’t need to do peacemaking. Rather we need to find out the source of injustice and transform that. Then beautiful peace, like a clear, sparkling stream, can flow to everyone. Let’s not do peacemaking. Let’s transform the injustices that block peace from flowing.

Her argument reflected one of the principal tenets of the School of Peace. During our intense three months together, we urge participants to seek the root causes of conflict and non-peace and be willing to work for structural change at the local and national levels. Only when our systems and structures emphasize justice and righteousness for all can God’s peace flow freely to all.

In the opening ceremony of the School of Peace in Vishtar, Indiai, Poli Drong of Bangladesh lights a candle from the center flame to place in the open spiral of flowers, symbolizing how the world expands as people learn to be open to those who are different from themselves. (MCC photo/Max Ediger)

Working for structural transformation is very difficult and requires much analysis and planning. While it may often be easy to respond to conflicts with simple models and projects, the result may not be long-lasting. Our goal must be to be effective rather than busy—and being effective requires creative strategies to address the roots of injustice.

As we explore more deeply the roots of conflict, we find that we must first look at the issue of identity. All of us have multiple identities and no two of us have the exact same identity. This diversity is beautiful and is generally celebrated. However, when any one of us begins to feel that one of our identities, such as a religious, ethnic, gender or ideological identity, is superior to others, the roots of conflict have been laid. Conflicts at the local, national or even global level can grow out of this sense of superiority because it gives us the supposed “right” to exploit or oppress the “other.”

If we recognize that identity can be the cause of serious conflicts, we also begin to realize that violence against others will not bring any lasting solution to conflicts. Identity is a social construct and thus can be changed through creative dialogue. It is of course not easy to transform social constructs, but if we wish to allow peace to flow freely to all, we must start here. This is one way to stop being busy and begin being effective.

Max Ediger directs the School of Peace. He worked with MCC in southeast Asia for about 40 years and now lives in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Learn more

Canadian School of Peacebuilding at Canadian Mennonite University. https://csop.cmu.ca/.

Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University. https://emu.edu/cjp/.

Center for Peacemaking at Fresno Pacific University. https://www.fresno.edu/visitors/center-peacemaking.

Great Lakes Initiative. https://www.gliinstitute.org/.

Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute. https://www.mpiasia.net/.

Northeast Asia Peacebuilding Institute. https://www.facebook.com/narpipeace/.

Peace and Conflict Studies at Conrad Grebel University College. https://uwaterloo.ca/master-peace-conflict-studies/.

Theology and Peace Studies at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. https://www.ambs.edu/academics/ma-peace-studies.

Training peacebuilding leaders: challenges faced and lessons learned

Featured

Posted on October 1, 2020 by mccintersections

Individual articles from the Summer 2020 issue of Intersections will be posted on this blog twice per week. The full issue can be found on MCC’s website. This article consist of five reflections which will be posted separately.

Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute (MPI)

Mindanao, the second largest island in the southern Philippines, has historically, geographically and socio-culturally been distinct from the rest of the country. It has witnessed colonial control and occupation over the past two centuries, leading to struggles over identity and governance. Conflicts between Indigenous political interests and external stakeholders have caused the area to become a crucible for violence and fear.

Several community leaders from Mindanao participated in Eastern Mennonite University’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute in the 1990s. Together, these trainees formed a critical mass of peacebuilders passionate about promoting peace in strife-ravaged Mindanao. Encouraged by a wide variety of peacebuilding practitioners and scholars, along with collaborative support from Catholic Relief Services (CRS), Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) and MCC, this group of committed peacemakers founded the Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute (MPI) with the mission of bringing together peace practitioners to learn from one another and of equipping people interested in becoming peacebuilders with knowledge and practical skills.

“I would like to change history for my children, the bloody history of conflict in Mindanao,” said Musa Sanguila of Kauswagen, Mindanao island in the Philippines. “We change something for good starting from inside ourselves.” Musa was among 165 participants from the Philippines and 16 other Asian countries attending the Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute (MPI) in Davao City, Mindanao, Phillipines from May 1 to 19, 2002. (MCC photo/Jon Rudy)

Creating a space for mutual sharing and support among peacebuilding practitioners has been central to the mission of MPI. Participants in MPI workshops learn not only from one another but also from the context of Mindanao, with participants visiting organizations working towards peace on the island and having practitioners from Mindanao teach and share at MPI courses.

MPI holds an Annual Training Institute for three weeks each spring during which an average of 100 individuals from the Asia-Pacific region and beyond attend courses in a residential setting. There are courses designed for newcomers to the field as well as advanced and innovative courses relevant to new conflict realities and peacebuilding challenges. Each year, around 20 nations are represented at MPI and this rich diversity is fully celebrated during evening activities. The openings and closings of each week of the Institute are festive, with cultural presentations from Mindanao serving as a highlight. The ambience and structure of the Institute are highly conducive to relationship building for solidarity among peacebuilders.

MPI is implementing a grassroots Peacebuilding Mentors Program to enhance the mentoring ability of on-the-ground peacebuilders as they nurture others in their own contexts.

Besides the annual training institute, MPI strives to provide relevant programs to strengthen peacebuilding. It has conducted a resource-based conflict and peacebuilding training program that focuses on the Indigenous peoples of Mindanao and the hazards they face from the mining industry. MPI continues to tailor training for specific sectors and regional issues. Currently, MPI is implementing a grassroots peacebuilding mentors program to enhance the mentoring ability of on-the-ground peacebuilders as they nurture others in their own contexts. These ongoing training activities are organized and coordinated by a small but highly motivated staff working in the MPI secretariat based in Davao, Mindanao.

MCC has been privileged over the past two decades to be a partner and friend of MPI and its vibrant network of peacebuilders committed to the nonviolent transformation of conflict in Mindanao and beyond.

Sriprakash Mayasandra is MCC representative for Chad. He has worked for MCC in Palestine and Israel, Syria and, most recently, across Asia as MCC’s regional peacebuilding coordinator for Asia and as interim representative for northeast Asia.

Learn more

Canadian School of Peacebuilding at Canadian Mennonite University. https://csop.cmu.ca/.

Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University. https://emu.edu/cjp/.

Center for Peacemaking at Fresno Pacific University. https://www.fresno.edu/visitors/center-peacemaking.

Great Lakes Initiative. https://www.gliinstitute.org/.

Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute. https://www.mpiasia.net/.

Northeast Asia Peacebuilding Institute. https://www.facebook.com/narpipeace/.

Peace and Conflict Studies at Conrad Grebel University College. https://uwaterloo.ca/master-peace-conflict-studies/.

Theology and Peace Studies at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. https://www.ambs.edu/academics/ma-peace-studies.

Training peacebuilding leaders: challenges faced and lessons learned

Featured

Posted on September 28, 2020 by mccintersections

Northeast Asia Regional Peacebuilding Institute (NARPI)

The Northeast Asia Regional Peacebuilding Institute has its ironic beginnings in the service of its director, Jae Young Lee, with the military of the Republic of Korea (ROK, or South Korea) in the early 1990s, when he first become interested in peace. Jae Young had been a marine for 26 months of mandatory military service at the age of 22, service required of all young Korean men. He was stationed along the border between ROK and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea), tasked with watching the North Korean side of the border through a telescope at the western edge of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). When the first leader of North Korea, Kim Il Sung, died in 1994, the fate of the entire Korean Peninsula was suddenly thrust into uncertainty, including the prospect of potential war. Jae Young had to spend an entire week in a trench with heavy weapons along with thousands of soldiers at the border to carry out the mission of shooting anybody attempting to cross it. During that week, he began to realize that true peace could only be possible through non-military approaches. No one can achieve peace by pointing a gun at another’s head.

After completing his military service, Jae Young went on to study at Canadian Mennonite Bible College and the conflict transformation program at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) in Virginia, completing a master’s degree at the latter. After struggling to understand the concept of Christian pacifism, Jae Young eventually came to agree with the Mennonite belief in the gospel of peace. As a result of his military experiences and peacebuilding training, Jae Young developed a firm conviction that peacebuilding training is a more practical way to make peace than investments in the military. In 2001, Jae Young became one of three founding members of the Korea Anabaptist Center (KAC), serving as its peace program coordinator. After witnessing the fragile peace maintained by North and South Korea at reciprocal gunpoint, and realizing that many of the peacebuilding organizations in northeast Asia were ill-equipped in conflict resolution and peacemaking skills, Jae Young wrote a working paper in 2006 outlining his vision for a peacebuilding training program for community leaders from across northeast Asia.

The bottom-up approach of peacebuilding education is slow, but it is also the path for sustainable change.

After a couple of years of discussion with MCC, KAC received a grant in 2009 to pilot this vision. Jae Young traveled to Japan, mainland China and Taiwan to meet people who shared a similar vision: to start a regional peacebuilding institute in northeast Asia. Representatives of several civil society peace groups from all over the region met together for the first time in 2009 to brainstorm what this regional peacebuilding project would look like. These efforts eventually coalesced in the formation of the Northeast Asia Regional Peacebuilding Institute (NARPI), with NARPI holding its first Summer Peacebuilding Training in Seoul and Inje in August 2011. NARPI has organized annual summer peacebuilding trainings in each of the subsequent years, moving the location of the training around northeast Asia. NARPI participants have come primarily from South Korea, Japan, Mainland China, Taiwan and Mongolia.

The NARPI Summer Peacebuilding Training is a 14-day program. Participants divide into three or four courses for five days, from morning to early evening. For the next three days, all participants spend time together on field trips. We have traveled together to a DMZ observatory, to peace memorials and museums, a ger (a traditional Mongolia dwelling in the form of a tent covered in skin and felt), sites of historical massacres and sites of hope. Following the field trips, there is a second week of training, also five days, during which participants continue to learn, divided into three or four courses, before departing for their homes.

Many peacebuilding institutes in the world are located in areas with current or recent direct conflict. While northeast Asia has not experienced intense direct conflict since the Korean War, the unresolved historical conflict (both the Asia-Pacific War and the Cold War) and the structural violence in the region affect people’s daily lives. Through NARPI, we have learned that people want safe spaces to talk about sensitive issues and to share their own perspectives and experiences.

From left, Yur-Shyuan Chang (Angela), Shiori Honzaki and Hirona Yaguchi stand in a circle
talking during an activity in the Conflict and Peace Framework course for participants in the
August 2018 Northeast Asia Regional Peacebuilding Institute (NARPI), held in Republic of Korea (South Korea). MCC funds scholarships for under-resourced participants. MCC and NARPI have partnered together since 2011 to provide training in peacebuilding, conflict transformation, restorative justice and mediation through the summer peacebuilding institutes. (Photo courtesy of NAPRI)

NARPI’s approach to peacebuilding assumes that durable peacebuilding starts at the community level. The bottom-up peacebuilding education approach is slow, but it is also the path for sustainable change. NARPI courses equip participants with both theory and practical skills to implement in their home communities. The field trips are also a powerful part of the training experience. People who have been taught different histories, written to increase nationalism and distrust of neighboring countries, come together to learn history first-hand, often from the voices of the victims of war. We have also witnessed that a new understanding of regional identity can grow from relationship building. Strengthening international relations is not just a matter for governments: it also needs to happen at the people-to-people level.

A simple goal that we have for NARPI is that this regional project will survive for ten years. This year, 2020, marks ten years, so we are nearly there! Survival may seem like quite a low bar to set, but it is also significant, since NARPI is the first regional peacebuilding institute in Northeast Asia, a region where the field of peacebuilding is still quite new.

We have witnessed how NARPI Summer Peacebuilding Trainings have had an individual impact on the participants. Many people apply their learning from NARPI to their work, family and community lives. Some decide to join local peacebuilding efforts or peace studies programs after their NARPI experience. The relationship-building aspect of NARPI has been powerful for participants, serving as the basis from which they start to form a new sense of regional identity. As NARPI grows, the number of returning participants also increases, a sign that this is a valuable time of learning, sharing and networking for people who are seeking to build an alternative future in their communities and in this region.

We have witnessed that a new understanding of regional identity can grow from relationship building. Strengthening international relations is not just a matter for governments: it also needs to happen at the people-to-people level.

Several of NARPI’s challenges resemble challenges faced by other peacebuilding organizations. Most years we face a funding challenge. Although a program fee is required from NARPI participants, these funds do not cover all training expenses. We have chosen to keep the program fee relatively low so that NARPI trainings can be accessible to people from all parts of the region. MCC offers scholarship funds each year to provide partial support for individuals who would otherwise not be able to join NARPI.

One unique challenge to NARPI, as a mobile peacebuilding institute, is that the planning each year is shared between the local host and the NARPI administrative team. Distance and language barriers make the planning work more complicated, but we are grateful for lessons learned as we work together to overcome these challenges.

The greatest challenges for NARPI, though, do not come from funding or from technical planning aspects, but from ongoing political tensions in Northeast Asia. We aim to provide safe space for all people who gather at NARPI, but in reality it is impossible to create a completely safe space for everyone. We therefore work to provide the most positive space possible within the realities of our region.

We continue to work toward a dream that one day there will be more peacebuilding institutes than military academies in Northeast Asia. In 2019, Nobuya Fukuda, who hosted the 2017 NARPI Summer Peacebuilding Training in Okinawa, Japan, and has also joined NARPI several years as a participant, opened the Okinawa Bridge Builders Institute (OBI) to offer educational opportunities to explore how to build peace in the colonized and militarized context of Okinawa. We see OBI as one of the fruits of NARPI, and we hope that peacebuilding efforts in northeast Asia will multiply.

Jae Young Lee directs the Northeast Asia Regional Peacebuilding Institute. Karen Spicher is NARPI’s communications coordinator.

Learn more

Canadian School of Peacebuilding at Canadian Mennonite University. https://csop.cmu.ca/.

Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University. https://emu.edu/cjp/.

Center for Peacemaking at Fresno Pacific University. https://www.fresno.edu/visitors/center-peacemaking.

Great Lakes Initiative. https://www.gliinstitute.org/.

Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute. https://www.mpiasia.net/.

Northeast Asia Peacebuilding Institute. https://www.facebook.com/narpipeace/.

Peace and Conflict Studies at Conrad Grebel University College. https://uwaterloo.ca/master-peace-conflict-studies/.

Theology and Peace Studies at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. https://www.ambs.edu/academics/ma-peace-studies.

Intersections

MCC theory and practice quarterly

Category Archives: English

Serving in the name of Christ today:challenges and opportunities facing the church

Featured

In the name of Christ: keywords and excerpts from MCC’s missiology across the decades

Featured

Defining identities: MCC and Mennonite World Conference

Featured

Peacebuilding as presence: MCC assignments in “enemy” contexts

Featured

Iraq

Peacebuilding as presence: MCC assignments in “enemy” contexts

Featured

DPRK (North Korea)

Peacebuilding as presence: MCC assignments in “enemy” contexts

Featured

Iran

Peacebuilding as presence: MCC assignments in “enemy” contexts

Featured

Training peacebuilding leaders: challenges faced and lessons learned

Featured

Training peacebuilding leaders: challenges faced and lessons learned

Featured

Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute (MPI)

Training peacebuilding leaders: challenges faced and lessons learned

Featured