Can a congregation actually be a discerning community? How can a body of a hundred members make decisions together?

From its first days, the Assembly has said that discernment is an integral part of worship. In a typical Protestant Sunday morning worship service, the meeting builds up to the sermon, and then, not long after the sermon, the service comes to a close with the benediction. The Assembly has had a service of at least two hours to provide for celebration, preaching, and discernment. The sermon is often in the middle and is then followed by a time of testing, discernment, and, sometimes, movement toward consensus and action.




The Assembly emphasized the importance of ending a service, not with preaching or teaching, but with discernment and action.


Sometimes there have been issues that have required more intensive study and the leadership of smaller task groups. The first and most important of these would have been involved in the preparation of the "Covenant" and "Understandings," two foundational documents expressing in writing commitments Assembly members have made with one another. From its beginning, the Assembly has had both a "Covenant, " a kind of statement of faith, and "Understandings" outlining implications of its basic Christian beliefs for the time and place in which the Assembly finds itself.

In its discernment, the Assembly has tried to take the atypical characteristics of its location and situation seriously.

For example, the Assembly has been located near Mennonite educational institutions and churchwide boards. It has, consequently, had the advantages of many leaders in its membership, but also the challenge posed by the higher-than-usual mobility among its members. The Assembly's emphasis on small groups that is reflected in its "Understandings" is due in part to its need to find ways of incorporating mobile members into full participation in its life quickly.

The Assembly did not want to be a parish church in the mainline Establishment tradition. But neither did it want to be a "sect"--it wanted to be Christian, and it made a universalistic claim. The last paragraph of the "Understandings" document expresses this most clearly:


The Assembly knows it has some beliefs not held by most people who call themselves Christian around the world. For example, it believes Christians should not kill one another or others. But it does not see this as a belief for only itself--it makes a universalistic claim about this. It believes that no Christians should be killing their fellow human beings anywhere.

The Assembly's first covenant document was brief. In 1993, the congregation, led by a task force, followed a process that led to the adoption of the congregation's present fuller covenant statement.

In preparing the "Understandings" document, task groups did the initial work on some of the individual points, and the position papers they prepared can be found in the Assembly's handbook. In each case, the position papers and the understandings they supported were presented to congregational members meetings, discussed in the congregation's small groups, and then, after needed editing, adopted by the whole congregation in members meetings.

The first project for which a member's time was reimbursed was led by Tom Rutschman, a Goshen College student, early in the Assembly's life as a congregation. Rutschman was asked to assess needs in the Goshen community as a background for congregational reflection on its mission in the community. Rutschman prepared a remarkable and substantial report, which was then studied in congregational members meetings. Arden Shenk, executive director of LaCasa, a major Goshen community agency and an Assembly member at that time, ¹ has said:


In the early years, the Assembly clusters and congregation had task forces clarifying mission and outreach foci of the congregation. In the light of its proximity to Goshen College, the congregation--and particularly the Campus Cluster--saw a special calling in welcoming students and providing them, as well as older members who had not had good opportunities previously, with "internship" experiences in the kinds of church leadership for which they were gifted.³ For most of the first decades of its history, the director of student development and the campus pastors of Goshen College were members of the Assembly.

The so-called "sexual revolution" in the West and the increasing incidence of divorce and family disintegration in Mennonite circles and their concomitants in the Assembly led to major congregational teaching and study projects. Two members of the Assembly had been involved in leadership in a major project in the [Goshen] College Mennonite Church before the advent of the Assembly. The College Church work had included consultation with Mennonite scholars and other leaders--the Assembly did not need to duplicate that effort, and instead prepared an extensive report of its own (including appendices) utilizing resources from the College Church's earlier work on the subject. An Assembly leadership group later took a 1985 Mennonite churchwide study document, "Human Sexuality in the Christian Life," as a basis for a seven-week series of Sunday morning Assembly sessions on the subject.

The Assembly's sexuality sessions provided helpful teaching on matters that would otherwise not have received focused attention in the congregation's liturgical year. They led to what seemed to be a reasonable consensus on all subjects except homosexuality, a subject on which the churchwide study document presented three options rather than a consensus and conclusion. In its seven-week series, the Assembly dealt with the major topics in the churchwide document except for homosexuality--it was not particularly that the congregation sensed great disagreement on homosexuality in the first series, but rather just that the latter needed more considered attention on its own at a later time.

The congregation did return to the subject of homosexuality at a later time. Outside resource people brought presentations. It became clear that the congregation was not ready to affirm a consensus. There was agreement that brothers and sisters of homosexual orientation were not of that orientation by choice and should be welcomed into the church. There was agreement that sexual promiscuity was wrong. But there was disagreement on whether or not people who entered lifelong covenantal relationships with same-sex partners should be recognized as members in the church.

After clarification of the areas of agreement and disagreement, the Assembly dropped the matter for a few years. In the meantime, the Mennonite Church (at Purdue) and the General Conference Mennonite Church (at Saskatoon) general assemblies adopted statements (1) encouraging further conversation and (2) indicating the persons in homosexual covenant relationships should not be recognized as church members. Further clarifications by the respective general boards indicated that the encouragement of further conversation was not meant to indicate a denominational openness to change on the attitude toward covenantal relationships among gays and lesbians.

The Assembly tried to move toward consensus. An outside process leader helped as facilitator. The effort was not successful, at least at that time. In 1996 the congregation adopted a statement calling for a seven-year "sabbatical" moratorium during which it would be recognized that the issue was unresolved, but in which persons in homosexual covenant relationships would not be excluded from membership. The process was difficult. Some left the congregation because the agreement was not conclusive and did not indicate that people in homosexual covenant relationships would always be welcomed as members, even after the seven years; others left because they felt homosexual persons in covenant relationships should not be included as members within the seven years. (It happens that to date there have not been persons in homosexual covenant relationships requesting membership--some who might have requested membership may have been offended by the inconclusive character of the agreement.)

In the meantime, the fact that the Assembly did not conclusively indicate that persons in homosexual covenant relationships could not be members meant some strains with some other sister congregations and the Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference. Later conversations have led to greater mutual understanding.

Some Assembly members have noted that they and Mennonite generally have learned some things about homosexuality that were not generally known 20 or 30 years ago. We are not able to foresee learnings in the next 20 or 30 years. If, over a century ago, it took the Quakers 75 years to arrive at consensus on slavery, maybe we will need to pray for further light over a longer period of time in the years ahead as we seek to discern the Lord's leading in this area. In the meantime, some of the influences of the wider American culture on our Mennonite attitudes and behaviors in the areas of sexual promiscuity and family life are matters involving much greater numbers of Mennonite members and would seem to be calling for attention on the part of all of us in the more immediate future.

In the course of its short history, the Assembly has at times had a congregational task forces on "wealth" or on "affluence and poverty." The congregation has position papers behind the understandings on the one-percent funds used for needs abroad and in the local community. In many annual calendars, the congregation and small groups have provided for sharing and discernment among individual members and family units on "time, talents, and money," and the sharing on finances has sometimes included small group sharing on sources and amounts of our incomes and our expenditure budgets.

The Assembly has been blessed with members with leadership gifts and experience. It has also had students, spouses of church leaders, and other members with gifts but little previous opportunity for the development and exercise of their gifts. The congregation's vision from the outset was for a congregation of covenanted members who were active and growing in the ministries for which they were gifted. Many members were invited to participate in Sunday morning services. The small groups gave settings in which more reticent participants had a chance to find their voices.

Early leadership patterns evolved in practice-they were not developed first in study documents. In most of the short history, important leadership groups were the groups of representatives of the small groups.

It was probably inevitable that a question about members who had previously been ordained in other contexts should arise. At one point when the Assembly had about a hundred members, it had eleven who had been ordained--none of these had been ordained in the Assembly, but the Assembly may well have had a higher proportion of ordained members than any other congregation in the Mennonite or General Conference churches! Other congregations had not ordained any of Assembly's women. One member of the congregation, Marlin Miller, was president of Goshen Biblical Seminary and of Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, and principal writer of the Mennonite Church's official document, "Leadership and Authority in the Mennonite Church."

In this situation, the congregation was asking whether it wanted to recognize any kind of ordination. If it wanted to recognize ordinations, did it want to ordain any of it own members? Then Goshen College wanted to have its president, also a member of the Assembly, on the active list of the ordained. As a matter of polity, the Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference ordained people only with the support and upon the request of a candidate's congregation. Did the Assembly want to request the authentication of another of its male leaders without asking whether other men or women with gifts and ministries within the congregation were not appropriately authenticated? These questions led to a congregational task force and the preparation of a 23-page study document affirming the clear authentication and recognition of the gifts of leaders for the benefit of the whole congregation and of the larger people of God.

Another study arose from the sense of "burn-out" among some members in the congregation. The kind of broad participation in leadership groups of all kinds that had been seen as good in the earlier years of the Assembly seemed to begin to feel like a burden for members who were no longer students and young couples, but who were now parents with developing careers and young and high school children. As a result, the number of leadership groups was reduced and those groups that were re-formed were given more clearly designated responsibilities.

The consolidation of the two Assembly clusters into one ten years ago led to a designation and appointment of a three-person "pastoral team" working with the congregation's elders as the leadership team of the congregation. Upon request of the congregation, Mary Lehman Yoder, Lois Kaufmann, and Karl Shelly have been ordained and are recognized by the district conferences in the Mennonite Church USA.

Can a congregation of 100 or 150 members make decisions together? Can they deal creatively with challenges from the changing cultural environment in which they live and minister? Anabaptist Mennonites have the self-image of existing in hermeneutical communities or communities of discernment. Yet some Mennonite congregations have only annual members meetings attended by fewer of one-fifth of the membership at which there would be even a chance of congregational involvement, and a meeting a year does not provide an opportunity for the kinds of process that require work over time.

The Assembly has tried to be among those Mennonite congregations that have worked with corporate discernment seriously. It did not shy away from difficult questions. From its beginning in 1974, the Assembly has made all major decisions with full congregational involvement and, with the exception of the difficult action providing for the sabbatical on homosexual covenant unions, by consensus. The foci of most of the Assembly studies have been on practical life issues, but the preparation of the covenants dealing with the shaping and expression of the congregation's theological beliefs and most of the other studies have included biblical and theological background work.


Footnotes

1 The current executive director of LaCasa is also an Assembly member, Larry Gautsche. The organization now has 26 employees.

2 Rutschman has joined the great number of Assembly alumni who are in ministry, mission, and service around the world; he and his family are currently in a mission assignment under the Mennonite Mission Network in Sweden.

3 The Assembly saying was, "If a 17-year-old barely out of high school can become a high school teacher or a nurse in four short college years, an appropriately-gifted 17-year-old out of the Mennonite Youth Fellowship should be able to develop congregational leadership appropriate to his or her gifts during those same growing-up years!"