This is the second of a series of posts on “Death and Grieving.” In my previous post, I reflected on the death of Mennonite Church leader, Ervin Stutzman, especially as it related to the father-in-law I never knew, H. Raymond Charles. However, the grieving I experienced was not simply over this personal connection. The death of Ervin Stutzman also reminds me of an ongoing series of losses for the Mennonite Church in the United States.
I have been thinking about how the theme of death and resurrection applies to the systems and institutions that we live under, particularly the church. Even though I didn’t know him well, I always appreciated Ervin Stutzman for his bridge-building work. Coming from an Amish and conservative Mennonite background, he eventually became a young pastor in Lancaster Mennonite Conference (now called “LMC”). Soon after that, he was tapped to succeed Raymond Charles as Bishop of the Landisville District of Lancaster Conference. He also had a key role (as had Raymond Charles) at Eastern Mennonite Missions (now known as EMM). Eventually, he was the Lancaster Conference moderator and then moved from Pennsylvania to assume a role at Eastern Mennonite Seminary (EMS) in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
As Mennonite Church USA was forming at the turn of the century, Ervin was the first moderator of that new denominational body. In 2010, he became the Executive Director of Mennonite Church USA. I remember thinking at the time that he seemed like the ideal person to hold together Mennonite Church USA in those turbulent years. The participation of Lancaster Conference in the larger denomination was always a bit tenuous. Not only was Ervin in a position to strengthen those ties, but he also seemed to be respected by both the more conservative and progressive parts of the denomination. Yet, as years went by, I could observe enough in the church media to discern that it was also hard for him. He took the heat from both sides in an increasingly divided church.
Looking back now, I also can understand the possible reasons why he was ordained a second time in Virginia Mennonite Conference in preparation for his new role. There were already signs that it was going to be difficult to keep the denomination together. Lancaster Conference was the biggest conference and was threatening to leave the denomination which it had only reluctantly joined in the first place.
By 2016, as Twila and I moved from my historic environment in Elkhart County, Indiana, to Williamsport, Pennsylvania where she spent most of her adult life, it was simply a formality for the split between Lancaster Conference and Mennonite Church USA to be finalized. Making our move as a couple, it seemed only right that we worship at Agape Fellowship, the LMC congregation that had nurtured her for thirty years. I was saddened to be coming into LMC at the same time that LMC was withdrawing from Mennonite Church USA. Yet, I felt it was God’s leading to be open to new relationships with LMC rather than clinging to my now far away ties to Mennonite Church USA. After exploring whether I could maintain ministerial credentials in both groups, I was told I needed to decide. I have made it a policy over the years, as much as possible, to formally join the church where I lived, so I took my membership to Agape Fellowship and my ministerial credentials to LMC.
Learning of Ervin’s death, I’m saddened anew that I had to choose sides. Of course, I am not the only one. Congregations switched conferences in a way that several years prior would have seemed totally illogical. Thus, for example, the large Landisville Mennonite Church which gave its name to the Landisville District that Raymond and Ervin led, is now in another conference that has remained in the denomination. And two churches in northern Indiana where I served as a Music Minister have withdrawn from a strong Mennonite Church USA conference and joined LMC.
I’m sad that U.S. Mennonites have not shared more fully in Ervin’s legacy of bridge-building and peacemaking. I dislike the labels we have created. I find it strange that we separate from other churches of like heritage which are geographically close to us and join another conference rooted in an area hundreds of miles away. I keep asking why we can’t keep talking with those right around us even when we disagree. Why can’t we cooperate in a common ministry where we do agree even though there may be areas where we differ?
Shortly after the news of Ervin’s death, my grief was compounded by another press release. It was entitled “A letter to MC USA members from Moderator Jon Carlson re: Mosaic Mennonite Conference process.” Mosaic Conference is the successor to Franconia Mennonite Conference in which I served as an urban congregational pastor for almost ten years in Norristown, Pennsylvania. Reading the press release, it looks like this conference which in recent years has embraced plenty of diversity will also likely be leaving the denomination.
This split is even more personal. I represented Franconia Conference for many years to Mennonite Church and then Mennonite Church USA biennial assemblies, More importantly, much of my own ministry was bridge building in that conference and in the small city of Norristown.
During that time, I was especially concerned about bringing together two very different types of congregations.
- First, there were “traditional” congregations. They were mostly ethnically white, many of them with a long Germanic Mennonite ancestry. These folks lived and worshipped in the rural but rapidly suburbanizing areas of Montgomery and Bucks Counties of Southeastern Pennsylvania, just west and north of Philadelphia.
- Secondly, there was my congregation and a few like it scattered in the urban areas of Philadelphia and surrounding cities. Here, persons were generally poorer financially, more ethnically diverse and sometimes unsure of what it meant to be “Mennonite.” In addition, there were many persons on the margins of traditional church life, including persons with disabilities, mental illness, and addictions.
The result of that ten-year sojourn was the closure of three small churches in Norristown, each led by a different ethnic group, but each having a more expansive vision of interracial and inter-cultural unity. Out of those closures or “deaths” came a new multi-cultural bilingual congregation with the name of “New Life,” now known by its full bilingual name of “Nueva Vida Norristown New Life” Mennonite Church. The church has been an inspiration and catalyst for the growing diversity of what’s now known as “Mosaic Mennonite Conference.” Yet, I ask myself and God what it means when Christian people embrace unity in one area only to experience fractures in another.
In the death of Ervin Stoltzfus, we observe the death of not only a person, but someone who represented the call of God for an increasingly elusive unity in the church. Several commentators have noted that only days before he died, he was giving leadership within Virginia Conference in its own struggle to remain united and a part of the larger denomination. Was Ervin’s ministry a failure? Or was it part of God’s larger movement that we can’t yet fully see and comprehend?
Ironically, the Anabaptist movement out of which all branches of Mennonites, Amish, Hutterites, several Brethren groups, and others descend is this year celebrating its 500th anniversary, remembering the first believers baptisms. That seemingly small event on January 21, 1525 has proven to be the beginning of a huge division in the universal church, called “Catholic.” Even other branches of this 16th century Reformation which acquired the labels “Lutheran” and “Reformed” denounced these “Anabaptists” as the worst of the heretics.
During the 1520’s, Ulrich Zwingli, pastor of the Grossmünster Church in Zurich, Switzerland, was a leading figure in the Swiss Reformation which paralleled Luther’s Reformation in Germany. Zwingli renounced his ties to the Roman Catholic Church and the authority of the Pope and placed himself and his reform movement under the authority of the Zurich City Council. However, as the Council grew wary of some of the reforms, some of Zwingli’s students became increasingly unsettled. The students of Zwingli were even more radical and insisted that the authority for church reforms should be the New Testament, not the City Council.
These Bible students were particularly troubled by the medieval tradition of baptizing all babies born in a supposedly “Christian” territory. They insisted there was no New Testament support for such a practice and that baptism was to be celebrated upon a conscious adult confession of faith. When they acted upon those convictions, Zwingli excommunicated them, banned them from the Grossmünster Church and all other churches in the Canton of Zurich, and launched a persecution which took away their freedoms, their lands, and even their lives. Yet they persisted and preached. And the movement grew.
500 years later, on May 29, 2025, 1,200 spiritual descendants of those early disciples who were nicknamed “Anabaptists” (re-baptizers) gathered at the same Grossmünster Cathedral, with hundreds more spilling onto the Zwingli Plaza outside. Also at the service were representatives of the groups that formerly persecuted these Anabaptists and hounded them all over Europe until many of them migrated to North America. The expressions of repentance, reconciliation, and spiritual unity in that worship service were remarkable, reflecting intense dialogue between historic enemies in recent decades. Anabaptist and Reformed leaders washed each other’s feet. Mennonite and Lutheran leaders anointed the foreheads of each other with the sign of the cross. The Swiss Catholic Cardinal leading the “Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity” read a statement from Pope Leo XIV. All speakers acknowledged that even though we don’t always agree with each other, we are all united in the peace of Jesus Christ and can learn from each other.
Thus, it feels disconcerting to return our thoughts to North America and realize that divisions continue to infect Mennonites–to say nothing about Christians as a whole. In fact, division is one of the great scandals of the Christian faith. I can’t think of any other religion that talks about unity more and seemingly practices unity less. What aspect of our common bond in Jesus do we not understand?
While I would like to celebrate this movement of reconciliation of the 500 years of Anabaptism more, it feels hollow and hypocritical to do so as long as we can’t even get along with our own brothers and sisters. Certainly, I’m glad that we are no longer physically killing each other in the name of Christ. I’m glad for the interdenominational dialogue that is taking place. But I continue to hope for an inter-Mennonite dialogue as well. And, I continue to grieve and wonder how it might have been if we had followed the peacemakers and bridge-builders that God has sent among us.
When the Apostle Paul was dealing with the factions in the church in Corinth, he put it this way: 18 For, to begin with, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. 19 Indeed, there have to be factions among you, for only so will it become clear who among you are genuine. (1 Corinthians 11:18–19 NRSVue) I would like to think that there is something genuine in almost all of our factions. I pray that what is genuine will clearly emerge in each of our own church bodies and that we will have the humility and grace to recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit among us. By God’s Spirit, let us come together and celebrate our unity in Jesus Christ.