Executive Board approves statement on the calling and affirmation of women for leadership
KANSAS CITY, Mo.-- At its March 21 to 23 meetings near Kansas City, Mo., the Mennonite Church USA Executive Board approved a statement titled “The Calling and Affirmation of Women for Leadership Ministries in Mennonite Church USA.” The statement was shared with members of the Constituency Leaders Council, which includes representatives of Mennonite Church USA area conferences and constituency groups and met in conjunction with and after the Executive Board. The statement is included below.
The Calling and Affirmation of Women for Leadership Ministries in Mennonite Church USA
Recently many persons across the church were disheartened by the narrowly defeated proposal of the Board of Bishops of Lancaster Mennonite Conference by the voting body of credentialed persons in the conference. The Board of Bishops had discerned and recommended that their districts and congregations be given the prerogative to ordain women for leadership ministries.
In recognition that the calling and ordination of women continues to be discerned across our church, the Executive Board of Mennonite Church USA wishes to highlight the important issue of leadership across Mennonite Church USA, particularly for congregations. One of our four priorities for application in all parts of Mennonite Church USA states, “Leadership Development: Church members with leadership gifts are called, trained and nurtured in Anabaptist theology and practice in order to fulfill the church’s missional vocation. (Exodus 18:13-23; Ephesians 4:7-16; Article 15, Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective).”
If we lack adequate leadership in both numbers and unique Anabaptist conviction across Mennonite Church USA, our missional vision will languish and our effectiveness for witness from an Anabaptist-Mennonite interpretation of the Gospel will diminish. We are convinced that women and men together are needed to fill our need for leadership. When we fail to call women to positions of leadership and fail to affirm their call with recognized signs such as ordination, we are ignoring a gift for ministry that God has made available to us.
We understand it is the prerogative of our polity for congregations and area conferences to call and affirm pastoral leaders and other leaders by requesting licensing and ordination of those leaders and holding their credentials. We call upon all congregations and conferences to support our priority to find and equip leaders by calling, licensing and ordaining both men and women for all positions of leadership.
We know that our gifts of both unity and diversity are respected when we recognize that faithful Christians may disagree in their interpretation of scripture on the call and affirmation of women to leadership ministries. We state our position that aligns with the broad discernment of our former bodies, the Mennonite Church and the General Conference Mennonite Church, who spoke in 1995 of an equal call and affirmation to both men and women in the statements of the Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective. In 1996 our joint MC/GC polity for ministerial leadership stated the same direction, call and affirmation. These statements represent the accepted and normative aspirations and direction of Mennonite Church USA. We regard particularly the Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective in the way the confession itself commendsas a body of instruction to provide inspiration, direction and counsel, and to foster unity of purpose that is open to the continuing discernment of the body of the gathered church.
We call upon congregations to consider the call and gifts of women for ministry on an equal plane of discernment with men. We call upon conferences to encourage this view among congregations and to respect the discernment of congregations who call women to leadership ministries in the same manner as they have respected this call to men, by the same process of examination and granting the same credentials in licensing and ordination.
In the Executive Board and its churchwide agencies and institutions, we pledge to be an example of the practice of selecting and affirming leadership, irrespective of gender or racial origin. We are open to the counsel of any part of Mennonite Church USA toward the fulfillment of our commitment.
The Executive Board of Mennonite Church USA
Kansas City, Missouri
March 21-22, 2007
Photo Release: Letting the light shine
Mennonite Church USA Executive Board members Patty Shelly and Jim Harder share the light during board meetings March 21 to 23 near Kansas City, Mo. Harder, president of Bluffton University, shared about the recent bus tragedy in Atlanta that claimed the lives of seven people, including five Bluffton students. Shelly, professor of Bible and religion at Bethel College, was the Mennonite Church USA representative on a U.S. religious delegation visiting Iran, Feb. 17 to 25, to meet religious and political leaders in the hope of improving relations between the people of Iran and the U.S. Harder expressed his gratefulness for the outpouring of support for the university and the families involved from the Mennonite community and from others across the country. Shelly said a lamp like the one pictured was given to leaders the U.S. delegation to Iran met as a sign of peace and as a commitment to pray for each other. Board members prayed for Harder and Shelly, for the students and the families at Bluffton University and for peace between the United States and Iran. Photo by Mennonite Church USA.
