A Beginning Road Map – Virginia Mennonite Conference

VMC only exists to serve the congregations. How do we live more fully into this identity?

A beginning road map for charting possible journeys toward healing and wholeness as VMC

VMC Liaison Team summary of counsel, February 8, 2023

Following the Gilliam & Associates “Listening & Learning Feedback” presented to VMC delegates on February 4, 2023, the VMC Liaison Team met on Tuesday, February 7, 2023 to discern together what counsel to provide the interim Conference Leadership Team (iCLT) and Conference Council (CC) about possible next steps on a healing journey. A distillation of their guidance is offered below:

VMC only exists to serve the congregations. How do we live more fully into this identity?

We want to re-center God’s mission of healing and wholeness through Jesus both culturally and organizationally, but as we do so, we must also directly address and confess internal failures and divisions. While moving deliberately on these points, we must also slow down to rebuild relationships of trust and move towards our strengths in service and outreach.

Examining and confessing institutional failures.

While we want to center on equipping pastors and resourcing congregational missions, we must not avoid addressing the pain inside our system. Can we re-energize our focus on mission while also dealing courageously with internal failures, systemic cultural issues, and structural breakdown? With courageous clarity, we need to name our failures and listen honestly to the concerns and desires of our pastors and lay-people.

Re-centering mission

Perhaps ironically, several past VMC conflicts—including the topics of Sunday School, women in leadership, and military membership—arose out of a desire to reach out to new groups of people in mission. Today, mission in VMC seems to be more driven by our local congregations than in the past. What are the mission opportunities we are being given? Can we refocus Conference efforts on resourcing people and congregations who are serving in different ways?

The Conference does not exist to control congregations but to resource each congregation for mission in their own local contexts, while providing accountability and support. We might think of congregations as being connected like the links of a chain—for both differentiation and strength. Can we remain committed to being linked together to share the love of Jesus with each other and beyond for more effective ministry in God’s mission?

We offer several ideas for iCLT and for the Conference Council to reflect on to provide greater definition, with clarity of purpose and a publicly stated timeline provided within the next month (tbd).

iCLT Recommendations

Cultivate a culture of trust

First, we ask the iCLT, a trusted group, to cultivate a culture of trust.

Our mandate as a Liaison Team has now ended (though iCLT/CC could call us back into action if needed). We believe the iCLT has the trust of the conference and the skills needed to move forward as the leaders of this process. We urge the iCLT to consider a retreat to reflect together on the “Listening Learning Feedback” to discern what the team feels called to offer as next steps. Here are some emerging suggestions from the Liaison Team:

Develop Startegic Communication Plan

Develop a strategic communication plan (strategic, transparent, focused on spiritual growth and ministry opportunities)

Keep reminding folks of the “Listening and Learning Feedback” resource; encourage every congregation to engage with the report and write a public one-page response.
Encourage everyone to slow down to give time to relationship building.
Connect the dots; help people see what you’re doing, and why.
Name what you’re doing with clarity, while not pretending anyone or any process can be perfect.

Resource a Special Spring Assembly

Resource a special spring assembly—not a business meeting—for listening, lament, discernment, and relationship building. It could include:

prayer and lament,
honest acknowledgement of conflict,
confession of personal and institutional failures,
shared discernment and listening to what the Spirit is saying to gather generative ideas for the Conference’s direction,
presentations on contentious issues from different perspectives (the MC USA relationship, human sexuality, ecclesiology, etc.) followed by discernment,
the discussion of statements on key issues of our day which we agree on, including rising civil violence in our country; wars in Ethiopia, Ukraine, and Myanmar; economic stratification domestically and internationally; the mistreatment of immigrants and BIPOC communities; etc.

Create Spaces and a Process

Create spaces and a process with psychological safety to address hurt, harm, anger, and trauma related to earlier conference processes and personnel.

Create listening/learning circles in various regions and groups on topics needing attention.
Find and empower persons/facilitators/investigators who can ask the hard questions to uncover where breakdowns and abuses occurred in the recent past.
Special attention should be given to those groups highlighted in the “Listening and Learning Feedback,” including women in ministry, BIPOC communities, and youth.

Focus on Ways to Empower and Equip Churches

Focus on ways to empower and equip churches at the local level, with more emphasis on resourcing pastors and congregations in local ministry.

Highlight quality educational opportunities; host conversations about orthodoxy and orthopraxy.
Work with existing committees or commissions to provide interpersonal relationship building; some key topics may include peacemaking, growth in leadership, and accountability/support.

Other Possible Ideas

Conference Council Recommendations

Examination of Internal Breakdowns

Develop a Process to Examine Where CC Failed

Develop a process to examine where Conference Council failed in the accountability it was responsible to provide the former Executive Conference Minister (ECM) and the conference as a whole.

Find and empower persons/facilitators who can ask the hard questions to uncover where the breakdowns and abuses occurred.
Examine the structure and the culture that enabled a “papering over” of “stuff that should not have been papered over” in the previous evaluation of the ECM.
Review ways in which leaders of CC and Faith and Life Commission (FLC) operated informally and inconsistently.

Examine FLC’s role in the failure to hold the ECM accountable, and how FLC might work more cohesively and effectively as a team going forward.

Consider inviting Gilliam & Assoc. to Assist CC

Consider inviting Gilliam & Associates to assist CC in addressing past failure and designing more transparent accountability and communication structures to rebuild trust in VMC going forward. It would build trust in the system for CC to have support and accountability in this process from outsiders.

Also look at our ecclesiology; for some there’s discomfort with the bishop system we inherited, while others do not want to move to a fully ‘board model’ with CC overseeing all decisions, including theological ones. Oversight and leadership is needed, but we are divided as to how best to provide it. We know our model needs to change, but how?

Show Courageous Clarity in Communicating

Show courageous clarity in communicating—state clearly “this is what we’re doing, and why.”

Reflect on what communication and individual or corporate confession would be in order to address past failures. We thank David King for modeling confession on Feb 4.
Regularly update conference delegates on CC work, inviting counsel and feedback. CC sessions are open to the public according to our bylaws, which allows transparency as a check and balance.

Form a Personnel Committee

Find Ways to Rebuild Trust

After doing the internal examination and confessional work outlined above, find ways to rebuild trust by clarifying leadership expectations, accountability and structure that is clear about power, authority and decision-making, with appropriate boundaries and transparency.

Refine or draw up a structural proposal to clarify power, authority, and decision making for delegates to act on.
Review how districts are functioning and offer proposals for improving their function.

Form a Search Committee

Form a search committee to begin work on new conference ministry leadership that models trust, stability, compassion, and faithfulness to Jesus; someone or a group who brings calm, and can elevate the desires of God and the Conference above their own priorities.

The shift from a single leader to a team model with iCLT is being well received; consider building on this return to a traditional Anabaptist model of multi-voiced leadership.

The Gilliam Report and Liaison Team Recommendations

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On February 4 at the 2023 Winter Delegate Assembly, Gilliam & Associates presented their report, which is available on our website virginiaconference.org. We now have decisions to make, to decide what next steps will help us become healthier as a body—and how, in this new season, we might more wholeheartedly minister healing and hope in our desperately needy world.

The VMC-based Liaison Team* served as an advisory group to Gilliam & Associates, helping to shape the information gathering phase of their work. The attached document is the Liaison Team’s recommendations to the interim Conference Leadership Team (iCLT) and Conference Council for ways to move forward. These recommendations mark the end of the Liaison Team’s work. The iCLT has received the document and are planning a one-day retreat on February 24 for a concentrated time of discernment. Conference Council has also received the recommendations and will review the recommendations in their upcoming monthly meetings.

VMC leadership acknowledges the widespread mistrust across the conference. Outside consultants, Gilliam & Associates, were engaged to help provide an overall perspective, reflecting many voices from across the conference. From December 2-10, 22 listening circles were held across the 8 districts and included 173 participants. In addition, VMC members participated in a survey and in one-on-one conversations for a total of over 218 participants.

The VMC-based Liaison Team was largely chosen from nominations provided by VMC delegates. The team included 14 mature leaders from across the conference who have an ear, heart and voice for the good of the conference. The team includes: Andrew Fairfield, Caleb Schrock-Hurst, Chuck Hostetter, Clair Good, David Brubaker, Howard Miller, Jim Hershberger (as link to Hispanic leaders), June Miller, Leslie Francisco, Maren Hange, MaryBeth Moore, Matthew Bucher, Sara Wenger Shenk, Vivian Stevens-Lyons.

February 13, 2023
June Miller

Download PDF of Liaison Team Recommendations

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