How much evil throughout history could have been avoided had people exercised their moral acuity with convictional courage and said to the powers that be, “No, I will not. This is wrong, and I don't care if you fire me, shoot me, pass me over for promotion, or call my mother, I will not participate in this unsavory activity.” - Joel Salatin BMC was started by a Church of the Brethren man, Martin Rock, who had worked for the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) for nearly a decad

It is an honor to be here and represent the larger BMC community. This seems a beautiful way to end BMC’s 40th Anniversary year; it just may be that our years of exile are finally ending. The New York Times op-ed columnist, Gail Collins, was once asked how difficult it was for her to be the first woman to head the NY Times Editorial Board. She responded that it was actually pretty easy. She said (paraphrased): “I kind of walked into the job. After all, I wasn’t the one who ha

This article was originally posted on Pink Menno's blog. Chester Wenger’s “An open letter to my beloved church” in 2014 was a beautiful, poignant reflection by a man who dedicated his life to the Mennonite Church on why he had chosen to perform the marriage ceremony for his gay son Phil. He documented the way he had come to believe the church must bless LGBTQ people’s marriages, made a powerful argument for his position, and explained that now at age 96 he was finally ready t

My senior year of high school, I was talking to a school counselor about an experience I had earlier that year with another classmate. As I finished my explanation, he told me that what I had experienced was emotional trauma. I can’t recall what I said to him, but I remember feeling surprised. No one had ever framed my story that way. That word, “trauma,” framed the experience in a way that allowed me to understand the weight of it, that it wasn’t just “high school girl drama

Bethel College Convocation, November 16, 2015 On June 26 of this past summer, at my dining room table with my spouse and several of our friends, I opened a bottle of champagne and poured a toast. We had just heard the news of the Supreme Court ruling that affirmed marriage equality for same-sex couples as a protected right enshrined in the Constitution of the United States. By that point, given the series of appeals court rulings against state bans on same-sex marriage, we we

When the trailer for the Hollywood-produced movie “Stonewall” was released this past August, activists on the internet took to dismantling the narrative the trailer presented. Featured at the center of the historic narrative is fictional Danny Winters, a white gay man who moved to New York from Indiana after being kicked out of his home. The trailer depicts Danny throwing a brick through the windows of what is supposed to be the Stonewall Inn and galvanizing the crowd, framin

​Losing faith is not the same as losing belief, but it can break the fragile tether between a person and her innocence just the same. -- Alexandra Fuller ​ In 1971, the Ford Motor Company released the Ford Pinto, a subcompact car that was quickly developed and rushed to market to counter the strong competition from Volkswagen. Designed to be light weight and inexpensive, the car was well received and made a tidy profit for the company. But there was a problem with the desig

It was a neat and nearly perfect circle of deniability. Denominational leaders would grimace and carefully explain to us how the church structure concentrated power in the Conferences and not in the national offices. Much as they might like to help, much as it might pain them to say it, denominational leaders assured us of their powerlessness to affect change as far as the inclusion of lgbtq people was concerned. Conference Ministers, on the other hand, would point to the con

Response to IMMC Statement of Charge against Karl Shelly ​Greetings to you, sisters and brothers in Christ on the IMMC Ministry Credentialing Team. I greet you as a fellow servant in God’s kingdom and on behalf of my congregation, Assembly Mennonite Church, where it has been my privilege to pastor for over 15 years. ​ My congregation Assembly has been a part of Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference for all of its 40 years of existence. Today it is the spiritual home to over

This sermon on 1 Corinthians 7 and Matthew 19 was given by Phil Stoltzfus at Faith Mennonite Church, March 6, 2011, during a series on Family, Singleness and Marriage. ​ Today our theme is singleness. Now, I am not single. But I used to be! And I would imagine that close to 100% of us here either are single or used to be single at one point in our lives. And later in life some of us who are married are going to find ourselves to be single once more. So this topic is relevant

"Living Side By Side With Difference" was written for and presented at Central Plains Conference (Mennonite Church USA) Leadership seminar on January 9, 2010. ​ Thank you to the planning committee for inviting me to be part of this important gathering here in Central Plains Conference. And thank you to Kent and Mathew for the tremendous time and thought they put into their presentations. It is an honor to be among such company here. Though Central Plains congregations can be

I work for Richmond Beach Congregational Church of the United Church of Christ. It’s the middle of my third month here, and slowly as can be I’ve been learning names and occupations and individual values and the culture of the urban/suburban Pacific Northwest, so different from my rural Kansas roots and Southern social justice education. I’ve learned some tools that help me do my job well (or better than when I began, anyway), and I’ve begun to pin down a couple of the quirks