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2009-01-06 issue:

Western District Conference redefines vision, finds new models for churches

The conference faces shrinking church membership, repopulation issues, economic hardships and sustainability challenges.

by Anna Groff

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Over the last 30 years, Bergthal Mennonite Church, Pawnee Rock, Kan., suffered the most radical membership decline in Western District Conference (WDC)—without having a church split. Pastor Lynn Schlosser says about 25 people attend on a Sunday morning in a building that holds approximately 300 people.

Schlosser started as pastor in spring 2002 and felt like the church was “in a rut.” Bergthal began a visioning process in 2004.

“There was a fear that wasn’t named,” she  says. “Once we named that fear, we were able to go on.”

Bergthal members worked through their constitution, came up with a new mission statement, started some new committees and let some committees go.

One advantage of smaller congregations is a “greater freedom to try some new things” as well as the “acceptance that relationships take priority over doctrine or theology,” Schlosser says.

“We opened ourselves up to a lot of changes in a short period of time,” she says. “We’re not a dying congregation; we’re a living congregation. We are determined to live for as many years as we have left.”

Through this process, Bergthal found its niche, Schlosser says.

“We are a church that is very committed to our relationships with one another,” she says. “We are very committed to our peace witness and that takes very many different forms.”

Dorothy Nickel Friesen (pictured), WDC conference minister, says rural and urban churches face questions of sustainability not only in terms of spirituality but also with jobs, education, food and the economy.

“Rural versus urban is just plain wrong,” she says. “We have more in common in Mennonite Church USA than differences … we’re a richer body because we’re ‘both and.’ ”

Nickel Friesen names several new models for churches—urban and rural—facing membership decline: the house church model, community Protestant churches, the “commuting pastor” and a “voluntary service” model in which several people relocate to a community, offering a working and spiritual presence.

But the “community church” model may pose a problem for churches devoted to the peace witness, which is not popular, especially in rural areas, Schlosser says.

Some churches around her congregation have joined together—an option for Bergthal to consider. However, one of the churches strongly supports the military.

“We feel so strongly and rooted in our peace position,” she says. “I just don’t see that reconciliation happening.”

As a last resort, some congregations must close, Nickel Friesen says. The goal is to do that with “all the sensitivity that Hospice uses,” she says. “No matter who we are and where we are,” she says, “God’s not done with us and we’re not done with God.”

Lou Gomez (pictured below) is an example of a part-time commuting pastor. He lives in Newton, Kan., and is a pastor at Calvary Mennonite Church in Liberal, Kan.

Gomez describes the congregation as “our remnant,” meaning the people that have stayed and not left for other jobs or moved to nursing homes.

Many times, rural churches have survival attitudes—such as, “No one was here when we needed you, so we can do it without you,” which is “not always good for growing the church,” he says.

Calvary Mennonite Church members are still in discussion on how to increase membership and are considering opening a day-care center to bring in families and younger people.

“For us, it’s really a good move in the right direction,” he says. “Every person who comes and deals with the rural church has to step back and look at the big picture.”

Willmar Harder (pictured below): Another WDC congregation, Hoffnungsau Mennonite Church, Inman, Kan., is more than 130 years old.

“We’ve been the old flagship church in the past,” says pastor Willmar Harder.

Some members remember a choir of 50 people, but now the church has an ensemble of 10 singers. However, 10 years ago there was no ensemble.

Hoffnungsau members must stay positive and “celebrate the whole picture,” Harder says.

At its 125-year anniversary, the congregation had to rethink “what it means to be church” and make a list of its visions, Harder says.

One new vision included a preschool at the church. “It addressed the needs of the area,” he says.

“Those of us young people realized we will have to step up to the plate,” he says, “or we fold shop and go to the bigger churches around.”

And there are options. Within a 15-mile radius are 15 Mennonite- and Anabaptist-related churches.

Harder says the church members work to embrace the real numbers and statistics but “realize that God works within the smallness and in unexpected ways.”

Susan Jantzen, former interim pastor of Deer Creek (Okla.) Mennonite Church and currently director of ministries at Trinity Heights United Methodist Church, Newton, says, Mennonites must avoid “the tendency to associate size with success. Members in churches that are declining in size have had the opportunity to face and sort through significant issues in the Christian life that members in larger churches may not have had to face.”

Jantzen asks, “Is this a time when we can further develop our compassion for other groups that find themselves as cultural minorities who have experienced a change in economic status?”

She names immigrants and Native Americans as examples.

Jantzen says she hopes for more participation from low-number-count congregations in WDC.

“Their spiritual experience and their perspectives are important elements of our conference,” she says.