Michael Danner explains that MC USA is not a membership association but a community of co-laborers in Christ, where congregations, conferences and the national church work together to support pastoral leadership, safe church practices and congregational vitality.
Michael Danner is associate executive director for Church Vitality in Mennonite Church USA.
There’s a framework that sometimes creeps into conversations about Mennonite Church USA — one that treats the denomination like a membership association. Pay your dues, get your benefits, and opt out if the value proposition no longer makes sense. It’s a tidy model. It’s also the wrong one for the church.
Congregations don’t derive their purpose from MC USA. They derive it from Jesus. The mission of a local congregation isn’t granted or validated by any denominational body — it flows from the call of Christ and the life of the Spirit in that community. Area conferences exist because congregations have collective needs that are better met together than apart. And MC USA exists because conferences have collective needs they can’t as easily meet on their own. The purpose flows upward from the congregation, not downward from the national office.
That changes everything about how we should think about what MC USA is and is not.
MC USA is not an independent organization with which congregations and conferences choose to affiliate, like a trade association. We’re a community of co-laborers in the gospel. Our “why” is rooted in that primary relationship — supporting conferences so that they can support their congregations and their congregations can thrive in their calling. We don’t exist apart from that purpose.
This isn’t just an organizational philosophy. It’s a theological commitment.
What it looks like in practice
When you understand MC USA this way, the practical support we provide isn’t a menu of benefits to evaluate — it’s an expression of what it means to serve together. The support MC USA provides falls under the category of things done better at scale. I’ll talk about three such things.
Through the Ministerial Leadership Information (MLI) process, MC USA helps conferences navigate one of their most consequential responsibilities: finding and vetting pastoral leadership. Background checks, MennoData record-keeping, and search support mean that conferences aren’t starting from scratch or building parallel systems. This creates consistency across area conferences and ensures that pastoral leaders are equipped to serve local congregations in healthy and helpful ways. Even conferences that have separated from MC USA often still seek access to the MLI and MennoData systems.
Safe Church is another place where the co-laborer model becomes concrete. When a congregation faces a misconduct complaint, MC USA provides support — including a regional team response that draws on other conference leaders. Training for staff and volunteers on safe sanctuary policies and best practices is available to every MC USA congregation. When something goes wrong, you have experienced people to call. That isn’t a perk. It’s the body of Christ functioning to support one another for the benefit of congregants. When misconduct does occur, we have a centralized database that all congregations and conferences can access that ensures misconduct in one part of the church is known throughout the whole.
The Church Vitality office extends this further by helping local congregations and area conferences to do their work well. We provide ministry resources, congregation/pastor evaluation support, pastor salary guidelines and more. Additionally, any MC USA congregational or conference leader can call and talk with someone about what they’re facing. That direct, personal support is an essential ministry because that relationship is the whole point.
More than resources
None of this is best understood as a benefit package. It’s what co-laboring looks like across a denomination — congregations, conferences and a national office, each serving others, all of it grounded in a shared calling that none of us invented.
There is also something real and meaningful in belonging to MC USA and to an MC USA area conference. For local congregations, this belonging is important. Identity and community have value. Being part of what MC USA is — and what it is becoming — the relationships, the shared witness and the sense of being a people on mission together, matters in ways that may be hard to measure but are no less true.
MC USA exists to support conferences in supporting their congregations. When we’re doing that well, the whole body benefits.
To find out more about what MC USA is doing on behalf of area conferences and congregations, please visit Church Vitality and subscribe to PeaceMail, our biweekly email newsletter.