wfn.org | Urban leaders call for commitment to city

[BethAH <BethAH@mbm.org>]

May 2, 2001
Beth Hawn
Mennonite Board of Missions
(219) 294-7523
<NEWS@MBM.org>

May 2, 2001

Urban leaders call for commitment to the city

MONTREAL (MBM) – While 30,000 demonstrators congregated in nearby
Quebec City to protest the free-trade negotiations of the Summit
of the Americas, in a sunlit room high on a hill overlooking the
St. Lawrence Seaway a more peaceful assembly gathered.  Church
leaders with a heart for urban ministry joined hands and spiraled
into a closely-knit group for prayer, bringing closure to two
days of productive interaction.

“This has been an exciting occasion,” said John Powell, Mennonite
Board of Missions director for Evangelism and Church
Development.  “It is the last meeting of the urban ministry
directors network as we now know it.  Next time, we will be
convening under the new mission agency.  We have taken an action
that will influence the mission of the Mennonite Church.”

Within the imposing edifice of the Sisters of the Congregation of
Our Lady in Montreal, 24 urban ministry directors, conference
mission leaders and mission agency personnel met together to
discuss the future of Mennonite ministry in urban areas.  The
April 20-21 event was sponsored by the ECD department of MBM.
The location was chosen to coincide with the conference mission
leaders meeting, Apr. 21-24.

In the first session, Powell gave voice to the frustration that
many urban church leaders feel as they read the provisional
documents that will provide the groundwork for the new Mennonite
Church USA.  According to the consensus of the gathering, there
is too little attention given in the documents to the unique
contributions and problems of the church in urban areas.

Prior to the Montreal meeting, an ad hoc committee was formed to
assemble a working paper proposing core values for an Anabaptist
urban agenda.  This paper – along with presentations by three
urban ministry directors (Brian Bauman, Allan Howe and Neftali
Torres) – informed discussion that led to the drafting of a
proposal that was sent to the executive board of the new
Mennonite Church.

The proposal requests that the executive board place high
operational priority on urban mission.  One of the points asks
for “the same … commitment of people and resources [to urban
areas] that has characterized Mennonite mission work overseas for
the last hundred years.”

Another point of the proposal urges “… current and emerging
Mennonite mission agencies to adopt goals and policies that lead
toward Mennonite congregational presence in urban areas that is
proportionate to the size of the general population living in
urban areas.”

In group discussion, Marco Güete, urban ministry director for the
Dallas-Fort Worth area, said, “Rural Mennonite congregations need
to commission the younger generation to be bridge builders in the
city.  Young people are going to the city anyway through
curiosity and to look for jobs.  Let the church orient them to
the city.”

“I’d go even further,” said Brian Bauman, urban ministry director
in California’s Silicon Valley.  “The urban congregations should
call the rural youth to the city.  Let the church get to them
before Apple or CISCO get them.”

Allan Howe, urban ministry director in Chicago, pointed out that
many of the most missional Mennonite congregations in North
America are of African-American, Ethiopian, Hispanic, Indonesian
or other ethnic backgrounds.  Their leaders can describe in
detail how they have restructured their congregations to promote
evangelistic growth.

“The missional church vision will be costly [for the established
Mennonite church in North America] ... it’s going to involve a
lot of change,” Howe said, calling for a season of listening to
and learning from churches that are already highly missional.

The costly nature of embracing the evangelistic heritage of the
Anabaptist movement was a repeated theme of the meeting.  Various
speakers noted that 16th-century Anabaptism originated in urban
areas and eventually retreated to rural areas.

Gracie Torres, who ministers in Buffalo, N.Y., cautioned against
thinking of mission as a one-way street.  “When we talk about
Anglos needing to listen, that’s right, but don’t forget the
strengths and distinctives of the Mennonite Church.  Yes, we want
church growth, but not at the expense of quality of faith.

“Servant leadership, the community [expression of the] family of
faith and solidity of biblical belief – these are what drew me
into the Mennonite Church,” she said.  “We, as a church, need to
remain focused on keeping the richness of the Holy Spirit in our
local congregations.”

A group of engineers in San Jose, Calif., who are friends of
Brian Bauman, have become fascinated by the concept of applying
Anabaptist values to the post-modern setting in which they live.
“What would the Amish do if they were here in our city?” the
engineers asked.

They pushed their experiment further and flew in a group of Amish
women from Ontario to give quilting lessons.  While the Amish
women couldn’t have taught a course on building community, they
knew how to live it.  The quilt created a space for listening and
conversation with people who would never have entered a church
building.

The Montreal meeting provided a welcome forum for sharing ideas,
encouragement and spiritual renewal as many urban church workers
feel isolated in their ministries, like “a Band-Aid in a sea of 5
million [wounded] people,” said Bauman.

In cooperation with Mennonite Church regional conferences, MBM
ECD staff appoint urban ministry directors, who carry the vision
for leadership and church development in specific urban settings.

* * *

Lynda Hollinger-Janzen      PHOTOS AVAILABLE