Canadian Mennonite
Volume 5, number 15
August 13, 2001

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This issue completes our coverage of the July 11-14 Mennonite Church Canada assembly held in Abbotsford, B.C. For earlier reports, see the July 23 issue.

In working with colleagues to prepare reports, and in talking about the assembly in several churches, a number of questions and themes are coming into focus:

1. Presumption? In response to the well-chosen theme, "What is God doing?" the assembly declared, among other things, that God is gathering Mennonite Church Canada as a new denomination. How do we know that a specific history of merger and revisioning is in fact in line with what God is doing-and isn't just a human scheme motivated by factors other than God's intention?

We will probably never know with complete certainty, since God works through fallible humans who listen to more than the divine voice. We have some hunches about what God is doing; to that extent faith is, and needs to be, presumptuous. Some things, however, will become clear only with the test of time, as the church keeps asking what is "of God" and keeps making adjustments in line with the abiding and constantly fresh word of God.

2. Mennonite Church Canada as a new denomination? It will take some time for church members to get used to this designation, since for many years they have thought of themselves as a subgroup of a denomination (General Conference Mennonite Church or Mennonite Church) that spanned the Canada-U.S. border.

Near the end of their 18-year (1983-2001) courtship towards merger, these two "binational" groups briefly entertained the notion of a "one denomination-two country" model. However, when they gathered to make the historic merger decision in St. Louis, Missouri, in July 1999, they voted to form "separate and cooperating church bodies in Canada and in the U.S." The term "denomination" was dropped altogether. Now it's re-emerging, with a new mean-ing that refers to Mennonite Church Canada and Mennonite Church USA as national church bodies. (The former was created in 1999 and the latter this summer in Nashville.)

The "binational" level of church organization is being dismantled-a process which should be finished by the end of January 2002. This is a good development, in my view, with the potential of bringing the wider church structures closer to the pew, helping both Canadians and Americans to be the church in their own distinct settings, and making it easier for national church bodies in other parts of the world to relate to North America.

But these claims will need to be put to the test of time, measured against what God is doing in the world.

3. How long for unity? In reviewing the 18-year history which began in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1983, I'm struck by how long it took for two relatively similar groups to complete a merger process. What does this suggest for more substantial unity challenges facing the church?

One challenge in the General Conference/Mennonite Church merger was to bring together Mennonites from different European immigrant streams-Swiss, Dutch, Russian. Even while this prolonged process was unfolding, the churches were become increasingly multi-cultural-Hispanic, Korean, Laotian, Chinese, Vietnamese, and many others. And leaders in some of these "ethnic" churches are saying they are looking to be the church across cultures.

Ongoing unity work will need to draw on insights from spiritual forbears like the apostle Paul who tussled with the Jewish-Gentile division and wrote: "In Christ, you who once were far off have been brought near" (Ephesians 3:11-22). Paul reminds us that the unity which we work so hard to achieve has already been accomplished through Christ, "who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine."

-Ron Rempel, editor