October/November 2008: Gospel Evangel

A clearing in the woods

by Sarah Schlegel

I want to invite you to close your eyes and imagine that it’s a beautiful fall day. You can smell the crispness in the cool air, so you put on some walking shoes and grab a jacket before you head out the door.

You end up at a nearby park, with many trees and several walking trails. You come to this place often, to think and reflect and be in God’s nature. The trails are well marked and familiar.

You get caught up in your own thoughts, and before you know it, you find yourself standing in the middle of a clearing. There are no trails. Nothing is set up to mark out where you are to go next. What will you do? Where should you go? This doesn’t seem like a good place to be.

On Sept. 6, approximately 50 people met with consultant Alan Roxburgh for a leadership training event at Olive Mennonite, Elkhart, Ind., at the invitation of the Transition Team. Most of these individuals were nominated by participants at Annual Sessions in June. The event was designed to help people discern whether they have a calling to serve on one of three leadership teams in the new structure: the Missional Leadership Team, Advisory Council or Gifts Discernment Team.

After a time of Dwelling in the Word with Luke 10:1-12, Alan led the group in reflecting on what it means to be missional by using a variety of images and illustrations. There was a lot of positive energy as people shared around tables their ideas, dreams, questions and concerns about the future of the conference and about what missional leadership looks like in our context.

Throughout the day, Alan used the illustration from the beginning of this article. Church has been like someone taking a walk in the woods. The paths are well known. The trees are familiar. We know the best rocks to walk on to cross the stream without getting wet. Suddenly, everything changes. We find ourselves in the middle of a clearing without directions to tell us where we are going.

We are living in a time and place and culture where there are no clearly defined paths to travel. The clearing is not familiar to us. We don’t know how to be church in this space where everything is changing at a drastic rate.

To understand the culture in which we find ourselves, we have to be willing to begin experiments. How do we live like Christ in this technological age? How do we share the message of the Gospel with people who don’t believe in absolutes? How do we work together to understand what it means to be a missional church?

So, we experiment. Alan recognized that the church is in a time of massive change, which can be scary. We really don’t like to fail. However, the beauty of experiments is that you don’t have to understand all the pieces to learn and grow from the experience. You don’t have to get everything right the first time for the experiment to be a success. An experiment is a process of learning what does and doesn’t work, with space to adjust and modify and adapt and tweak along the way.

Our conference is in a clearing. We are ready to begin experiments. The new leadership bodies -- the Missional Leadership Team and Advisory Council -- will be invited to experiment and explore new possibilities of how we can be church together.

Hmm ... maybe it’s not so bad to be in the clearing after all.

Transition Team update

- The Transition Team (TT) has invited people to serve on the new Missional Leadership Team and the Gifts Discernment Team. They continue to discern together via e-mail other significant positions on the Advisory Council and Ministry Credentialing Teams. Please continue to pray for discernment as people are asked to serve in these new leadership positions.

- TT members have identified the remaining tasks that they (or task forces they appoint) will work on during this fiscal year. An updated timeline is in the works.

- A task force has begun work on the regional conference minister job descriptions and logistics of decentralizing. The following two subgroups have been formed to work separately on each of these items: Regional conference minister job descriptions: Denise Colona, Peter Janzen, Eldon Stoltzfus and Ross Weber; and Logistics: Jim Carpenter, Randy Detweiler, Eldon Stoltzfus and John Troyer. Eldon will serve as chair when the subgroups meet with each other.

- A task force will address what it will mean in the new structure for Amigo Centre and Bethany Christian Schools to be owned by the conference and to be viewed as integral arms of the church’s mission.

- A task force will be identified to define a basic constitution for the new organization.

- During the TT’s Oct. 6 meeting, conference regional ministers Nancy Kauffmann and Tim Lichti shared with the team. It was helpful to hear from them what people are saying across the conference and to make sure that the important aspects of their positions are not neglected during this time of transition.

-- Compiled from updates from Sarah Schlegel for the Transition Team and from minutes of IN-MI Executive Committee meetings