Ideas for any future summit
by Peter Epp, a Canadian Mennonite in Portland, Ore.
Thanks for your coverage of Mennonite Church Canada and Mennonite Church USA's recent efforts to address concerns about the Winnipeg summit (Feb. 3). Here are my own suggestions:
1. A future summit should address issues that are explicitly unique and integral to the binational community. We need workshops that face these questions: Who are we as a binational church? What should our relationship look like now? What can we do together that we can't do alone?
2. A future summit should offer a time for participants to work together to create something tangible for our home churches (national and local), governments and media. It should move beyond broad issues and into action.
3. A future summit should be clearly separate from one national church's assembly or delegate session, and the registration form, program book, schedule and content should reflect that.
4. A future summit should include equal numbers of Canadian and U.S. planners and speakers.
5. A future summit should strive to do more than just achieve a balanced U.S.-Canadian turnout. Perhaps what should have been most noticeable was not the low U.S. participation but the lack of diversity in other regards (cultural and socioeconomic, to name two types).
Associated Issue: Mennonite in America - Feb. 3, 2009
Associated Article: What went wrong with Winnipeg summit?
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