Unconventional conventions?
From the editor
by Everett J. ThomasPrint Article Email to a Friend
A difficult experience at our national convention in Columbus, Ohio, in 2009 is now providing impetus to evaluate the way Mennonite Church USA gathers every two years. Executive director Ervin Stutzman addressed the issue in his April report to the Executive Board.
“The experience of Pink Mennos at Columbus in 2009,” Stutzman said, “introduced a new level of engagement in controversial matters. ... The techniques of social advocacy and confrontation that we have taught young adults in our schools has come to haunt our church’s most visible gathering, to the end that convention-goers feel immense pressure to take up sides against one another on [homosexuality].”
Rachel Swartzendruber Miller is the director of convention planning. In her report to the Executive Board, she said that some large congregations will send their youth groups to Pittsburgh 2011 but have said they will not participate in the future if activists “employ strategies similar to what took place in Columbus.”
Swartzendruber Miller also listed four other factors causing a decrease in youth attendance:
• Some groups now employ a four-year cycle that affords youth one convention and one significant mission trip during high school;
• Some churches send their youth on mission trips instead of to convention;
• The financial cost for attending convention;
• A shrinking youth population among Mennonite Church USA families.
Mennonite Church USA’s biennial gathering is more than a youth convention. It is actually multiple conventions: adult, young adult, youth, junior youth and children.
But the youth convention is its economic engine; it brings thousands of youth and hundreds of adult sponsors. Those numbers create a significant economy of scale.
Registration numbers from Columbus 2009 illustrate the importance of youth convention participation:
Adult convention: 2,536
Youth and sponsors: 4,200
Junior youth: 271
Children: 175
Were the youth convention to be disconnected from the adult convention, the adult convention could meet in a smaller venue. That is what some people want. Others like big-city venues and argue that it would be a great loss to bifurcate the youth experience from the adult experience.
Mennonite Church USA has had a decade with large biennial gatherings. Now may be a good time to take a hard look at the question. Here is one proposal:
Contracts are signed for Phoenix 2013 and Kansas City, Kan., in 2015. But if the 2015 contract can be renegotiated for a smaller attendance, have the youth convention gather in Kansas while the adult convention meets in conjunction with Mennonite World Conference’s assembly in Harrisburg, Pa.
Or, for those who think we ought to try regional youth gatherings, plan for those in 2015. Such a plan would allow for youth groups on a four-year cycle to pick which kind of convention they want.
The law of unintended consequences would certainly pertain to such a shift. One consequence might be a significant financial loss for the Executive Board. We may also lose the emerging sense of national identity growing among us.
But there may be positive consequences. Regional youth gatherings may strengthen relationships for area conferences participating in them. Unknown is whether more or fewer people would register for smaller regional gatherings.
As Mennonite Church USA turns 10 years old in July, it will be time to assess some of our conventional wisdom. Experimenting with “unconventional conventions” in 2015 could test whether our current practices are the ones that make us strongest as a church.
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Editorial: "Unconventional conventions?"
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There seems to be an assumption that only the youth are going to be involved in engaging in controversial matters. Also this perspective could be construed as just another attempt for Mennonites to avoid conflict instead of working at resolving it.
It appears that direct social advocacy is being spoken of as if it is negative. This attitude, which I have heard from the church before, continues to astound me. It was the church that taught me to stand up, speak, and act for what I believe to be right.
@Gary no it says that youth pastors come to convention for other things, like spiritual renewal or development. Maybe other issues need to be discussed at home congregations where the proper time and discernment can be given to them. 5 days is not enough to get into this with kids. It the grown folks want to let themselves bang there heads against the wall, so be it.
Brother Stutzman's comment on Pink Menno missed the principal reason the protest was so effective. It was not "techniques of social advocacy and confrontation" that made it remarkable, it was the sheer numbers and the relatively unplanned, grass-roots, ad-hoc nature of the movement. But if one speaks of strategy of confrontation: is there a form of protest that executive leadership prefers to the peaceable protest of Pink Menno? There are traditional methods of raucous confrontation that one would more typically expect of protest movements. Is the executive leadership expressing a preference for those? I suspect, again, that the issue is not with the techniques but rather with the widespread, spontaneous, youthful presence of the protesters. If Brother Stutzman views a peaceable protest group like Pink Menno to be negative polarizing influence, I struggle to see how he will realize his expressed goal of a diverse church.
Ray Fisher is right. The presence of Pink Mennos was altogether peaceful and actually quite upbeat, considering the shameful way LGBT people and allies have been treated by the church over the years. How is it possible that convention goers were "haunted" by hymn-singing and public prayer groups? This is a classic case of executive leadership over-reaction.
When I read the column, I found myself wondering what was really behind the brackets. As I understand it, the great excitement at the MCUSA gathering was not the issue of "[homosexuality]" but rather the MCUSA's discrimination program against sexual minorities. Many young Mennonites disagree with that kind of discrimination nowadays, don't they?
I'm confused. Most of this editorial seems to be about stewardship and demographic reasons that attendance by youth groups at national conferences is dropping. Certainly some churches have theological reasons to support other types of summer trips, to not spend resources at the rate required for attending conferences (which is higher than so many of our families' vacation budgets, if they have any at all) or involve youth as delgates in the "adult" sessions. Could we have started with one of those stories? Why is the reality of our aging church buried in a passing phrase instead of giving context with a few statistics? Why must I point out that the assumed norm which is described as changing is in fact the emphasized tradition of only one of the groups merged after current leadership were no longer youth, but before many of these were born? This seems to have been written in a way that highlights "controversial" aspects of the national conference as a scapegoat for wildly different reasons. Is this an effort to bring up issues which some people think can be changed (control of controversy, address costs, decrease polarization between "mission" trips and the activities of "conference"), or recognition of forces which require adapting (demographics, shrinkage of American middle class, decreased isolation of youth from issues in the digital age)? I am fascinated by the silence regarding the recent other discussion of attendance at upcoming conferences: risk taken by visible minorities (who may be harassed regardless of papers) and decisions made by those of the dominant culture who will choose to live within limits experienced by their siblings in the Spirit. Having spent my career studying adolescent development, I am most fascinated by the view of this age group implied. Through human history, those who are in this age group have been the ones to go out and explore what is different from what they've known - that's how we're built. Those of us who are older can give some guidance but do best to respect God's creative force in healthy development. Do I assume too much to think efforts to gather youth from across our diverse geography - coast and plains, urban to suburban to rural, rich to poor, 1st generation to 10th generation, thoroughly patriarchal to asumptions of gender equality, those who don't know family separations and those who've never met an intact family - has encountering diverse experience as high priority? That diversity will inevitably include those who have close family members and friends suffering from hatred of differences in sexual orientation, disclosed or open. The question cannot be whether there will be youth or adults engaging in controversial matters, but how prepared the adults are to walk through the questions with the youth. Suicide statistics and a Christian commitment to respect the gift of life require us to listen with praying hearts to the pain our youth present. Homophobia kills, and a dead gay is beyond any of our efforts to witness. Attributing the consideration of changes in conference planning to breaks in absolute exclusion of discussion is a lack of faith in our youth, our theology, and perhaps even our God-given sense.
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