Ted Grimsrud

It’s awfully hard to say what’s going to happen with Mennonite Church USA—especially as its largest Conference, Lancaster, nears the completion of its process to leave the denomination. It is a bit surprising to me that fully over 80% of that conferences bishops voted to leave MC USA—I wouldn’t have expected that much disaffection (but I know little about that Conference). The final step in the process will be a vote over the next few weeks by the Conference’s ordained ministers. As this vote only requires a two-thirds majority, it seems likely that Lancaster will make the move to split.

In the above paragraph we have a clue concerning the complexities of Lancaster’s relationship with wider denomination—that they would have a vote of “bishops,” a category of leadership that few if any of the other MC USA conferences have. The relationship of Lancaster with the larger denomination has always been tenuous and complicated, so this move now to leave should not be seen as unexpected.

The effort to keep Lancaster in MC USA

It does seem, though, that the effort on the part of MC USA’s leadership to keep Lancaster in the denomination has not been successful. While surely there are many elements to this struggle to retain Lancaster’s connection, one aspect of the dynamic strikes me as especially notable—and especially regrettable.  Continue reading “Mennonite Church USA’s moral crisis” →