Letter from the General Secretary

Dear Friends:

The Leadership Assembly of March 5-8, 2003 faced a huge challenge: to determine what ministries are most essential for a national church body to provide, and which of those ministries are possible with a budget reduction of $2 million. The results of that discernment have already been announced in email / fax / mail messages to the churches, in the Canadian Mennonite, and on the www.mennonitechurch.ca web site.

Call us

If you have questions or comments about these decisions, please feel free to contact me. And if your congregation or a group within the congregation would like to meet with someone to talk about MC Canada, please call or send me a note. We will try to accommodate all requests for staff or a board/council member to meet with you.

Changes

Very significant changes are being made to the ministries in which we engage. Those changes have implications for congregations, area conferences, Canadian Mennonite University and other agencies. Creative, alternative ways to deliver some of the terminated services are being imagined. But some things are not going to change:

1. Our vision still reminds us that “God calls us to be followers of Jesus Christ, and by the power of the Holy Spirit to grow as communities of love, joy and peace, so that God’s healing and hope flow through us to the world.”

2. We continue to understand Mennonite Church Canada to be a missional church. We have often said that being missional doesn’t mean we do more things, but it shapes how we do things. The vision that has energized us and many across the church has not been diminished. It will continue to guide us in our re-shaped ministries.

3. We have a budget of almost $5.5 million. That’s a lot of money. And if we are good stewards of it we can still make a very significant impact on the world.

4. We will continue to provide resources for missional Formation, to strengthen our congregations as they shape members into the image of Christ.

5. We continue to engage on behalf of our congregations in missional Witness “across the street and around the world,” though in more limited ways. International Ministries remains strong, especially for a denomination our size, and we continue to help congregations to identify and pursue the missions to which God is calling them. Although pastoral services to aboriginal communities will not continue, we will work to connect native peoples to our churches and in developing indigenous leadership. For example, native leaders Sam and Lorna MacKay will continue as pastoral interns in their home community.

6. Through denominational ministry, communications and the work of the General Board we continue to give leadership and forming our identity as Mennonite Church Canada.

7. And most important, God is not changing. God is still working. Our confidence in that is unwavering, even though we do not see clearly the way before us.

Thank you

Thank you for your support, for sending so many responses to the survey on short notice (they were and continue to be helpful to the Board), and for upholding in your prayers those charged with discerning what God is saying to us and where God is leading us through these trying circumstances.

Sincerely,

Dan Nighswander
dnighswander@mennonitechurch.ca
1-866-888-6785