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2007-07-03 issue:

San José 2007 delegates call for health insurance for pastors

by Everett J. Thomas

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SAN JOSE, Calif.—Delegates to the San José 2007 delegate assembly voted overwhelmingly in their final session on July 6 to continue working at a plan that could provide health insurance for all pastors in Mennonite Church USA. Of the 752 delegates who voted, 700 voted in favor for a 93.4 percent tally.

“This is a four-lap race,” Mennonite Church USA’s executive director Jim Schrag told the delegates before they voted. He explained that the first lap was their vote. The second lap is working with agencies and schools to enlist their participation. The third lap will be working with area conferences.

The fourth and final lap will be the most important: inviting congregations to participate.

“Enough congregations have to opt in,” Schrag said, “for the plan to be feasible. If critical mass is not achieved, it’s not worth trying to implement it.”

Schrag said he hopes to know within two years whether such a plan will work.

The delegate assembly was scheduled to consider a resolution on July 3 that called for Mennonite Church USA to support a bill before the U.S. Congress apologizing to Native Americans for their treatment. But during a morning worship service that day, Steve Cheramie Risingsun, a Mennonite Native American leader, told several stories about how his people were massacred and described the history of Native American suffering. Risingsun’s speech evoked a long and emotional standing ovation.

Several hours later in a business session, Mennonite Church USA moderator-elect Sharon Waltner declared that the church had shown its support for the resolution.

“We…support the joint U.S. Senate and House bills,” says the resolution, “that ‘acknowledge a long history of official depredations and ill-conceived policies by the United States government regarding Indian tribes and offer an apology to all Native Peoples on behalf of the United States.”

Delegates also supported a proposal to join Christian Churches Together, a fellowship of Christian churches in the United States. All but six of the 752 delegates voted for the action.

One resolution from the delegate body came to the floor through the resolution committee. Doug Kauffman, from the Benton (Ind.) Mennonite Church, sponsored a resolution that calls the Executive Board to “formulate a process that helps us explore our identity as Mennonites living in what many consider the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth.”

The resolution calls for conversations with Mennonites in Canada and Mexico in the process. Delegates suggested that any task force created to work at this issue also have conversations with Mennonites in Colombia and Northern Ireland.

The delegate sessions concluded with outgoing moderator Roy Williams giving a framed picture of a John Deere tractor to new moderator Sharon Waltner. Waltner and her husband are farmers in Salem, N.D.

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