The goal of the new book On Holy Ground: Stories By And About Women in Ministry in the Mennonite Brethren Church, is to validate and promote the voices of Mennonite Brethren women in ministry.
As
I wrote in an article published in Anabaptist World, the book was
commissioned in 2020 by the Mennonite Brethren Historical Commission, a
ministry of the U.S. and Canadian Mennonite Brethren conferences.
It contains the personal stories of 15 women who served as pastors and leaders in American and Canadian Mennonite Brethren churches.
Through the stories, the women share about the challenges and joys of ministry along with the struggle to have their gifts and voices recognized and affirmed by the denomination.
In mid-March, the Commission was
informed by the Executive Boards of the U.S. and Canadian Mennonite Brethren
conferences that three pages in a story by Mary Anne Isaak, pastor of the River
East Church in Winnipeg, could not be published.
The reason given was because Isaak
raised the question about whether the silencing and marginalization of women’s
voices by the denomination for generations might be similar to what is
happening today to members of the LGBTQ+ community. That was deemed unacceptable.
The denomination ordered the Commission not to distribute
the book. But about 30 copies from the 300-copy print run had already been sent
out.
The original copies were destroyed and the book was republished without those missing pages. I was able to get copies of those pages from the original print run. Find them below, printed with permission.
To set the stage for the missing pages, Mary Anne first talks about her time at River East, sharing a story about her height and high heel shoes. This section is in the published book.
"River East Church is also where I came to understand part of the dynamic between pastoral voice and body size, or at least how it affects me. I am tall for a female, basically six feet. In Fresno, height was an issue shared by the pastoral team, as Bill had about another eight inches on me. We responded by raising the pulpit six inches to a comfortable height for the pastors and attaching a step on hinges. Shorter people simply swiveled that step into position when they came to the pulpit. In that context of taller-than-normal pastors, I didn’t pay much attention to comments about my height.
"A couple of years into pastoral ministry at REC, it was compassionately brought to my attention that my height was, perhaps, intimidating to some. What if I didn’t wear heels anymore, out of consideration?
"I never spent money on heels; nevertheless, I owned a closet full of pumps given to me by the widower of a woman at whose funeral I officiated. The widower explained that for weeks, facing her impending death, he and his wife had carefully examined the feet of women in the worship service, concluding that my long narrow arched foot was a match for hers. Several weeks after the funeral, he invited me over for a sacred act of shared grief. As I tried on pair after pair of her prized collection, he told me their stories. When I wore those inherited shoes, they carried me firmly in the footsteps of feisty Elda Plank.
"The proper response to others’ discomfort was to put those shoes into hibernation. A pastor’s size should not be a barrier to ministry, should it? In some ways, closeting those shoes was inconsequential; it didn’t really change my life. And yet, it kept niggling at me, niggling enough to debrief it, a year later, with the church’s new moderator for staff relations. Trudy Schroeder, executive director of Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, responded with insight from her role as a leader on the secular stage. She narrated for me how, at a workshop for female CEOs, the speaker asked how many had been told in some way that they were too large—too large a voice, too large a body, too large a personality. Every woman in the room raised her hand. Every single one! Was it perhaps my subconscious participation in patriarchy and not prudence that informed my decision to abstain from wearing heels? When are efforts to make men feel comfortable in my presence a healthy pastoral impulse, and when are they acquiescing to an unhealthy message that a woman should not take up more space than a man? I’ve found a new freedom to take my high-heels out of the closet."
The missing section begins below.
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In the North American society, gay, transgender, and queer folks are also finding a new freedom to come out of the closet. The church, as we take the deep questions of a culture to the Scriptures, is also wrestling with conventional answers of the past.
In my two-and-a-half decades of pastoral vocation, I have pastored three congregations. Each of the three faced decisions regarding homosexuality and church membership. Just as my response to women in church leadership evolved from a received tradition to my own understanding rooted in research, experience, and community discernment, so too my response to the LGBTQ+ community is developing.
My time at Peace Mennonite Church was shaped by the year-long Franconia Conference process to discern a response to the Germantown Mennonite Church, which accepted a married gay couple into membership. Vermont is a “peace and justice” state. Everyone in our tiny congregation was intuitively in support of Germantown, everyone except me. However, since my position as pastor was temporary and connected to the timelines of Jon’s education at McGill, I understood my role was to lead congregational conversation and to abstain from voting. The vote at Peace Mennonite was, therefore, unanimous and I submitted our yes, to keep Germantown within the Franconia fold.
Peace Mennonite represented the minority voice. Lament marked the tone of worship at the annual convention where Franconia formally removed Germantown from fellowship. Huge burnt logs resting on gunny sacks ran the length of the communion table—sackcloth and ashes before us, a choir keening with quiet hymns of protest circling the exit behind us.
By the time I began pastoring at College Community Church Mennonite Brethren, I had heard repeatedly that female church leadership was the beginning of the slippery slope to accepting gays in church. My resolve to demonstrate that women can be fine and faithful MB pastors eventually took on a secondary resolve, to resist the downward slide into secularism that I represented for some. So, ironically, my traditional position against gay marriage shored up my non-traditional position on inclusion of women in leadership.
Lynne Welton, a college student who had recently become a Christian and was leaning into active church participation came to me with a request. Her parents’ marriage had had its ups and downs over the years. Now, on a milestone anniversary, they wanted to renew their vows to each other. Her parents believed the church hated them, and she wanted to demonstrate the church’s loving character. Even though they weren’t churchgoers, would they be able to use the church for their covenant renewal? The moderator and I looked at the request from a variety of angles and, in the end, I told the college student that no, it would not be appropriate for her mothers to renew their vows in our sanctuary.
I count at least three consequences of that decision. First, although not an immediate and direct consequence of that decision, the college student and her husband eventually left the church and then the Christian faith. The love we preached wasn’t something they could access for their particular family systems. Second, when the church moderator’s son came out of the closet as gay, I wasn’t in a place to be trusted with that information for years. Third, I began to question my own understanding of God who preferred divorce for a gay couple rather than celebration of decades of hard-won growth in loving relationship.
On another occasion, visiting with a couple from our congregation, I shared my discouragement over the congregational discernment concerning a member who had quietly married someone of the same gender. Not long after that, the child of that visiting couple also came out of the closet. Again I realized I was helping to create a church environment that did not feel safe for families among us.
College Community Church took two years to discern what it might look like to authentically follow Jesus in the context of a gay couple among us and in the context of our conservative MB Pacific District Conference. During that process, Michelle Ferguson began church membership classes. She quietly told me her story of coming to understand herself as gay, realizing that celibacy was her life option and looking to the church as a community of connection, accountability, and intimacy to replace what a marriage could offer. She asked me whether CCCMB could be that kind of a church for her. My answer consistently was that God is present; trust the process. My respect for Michelle grew as I witnessed her wrestle to live out her faith in so many ways.
The years ticked on; we moved to Canada. Michelle continued her investigation of the Scriptures. Among other books, she read Bible, Gender, Sexuality: Reframing the Church’s Debate on Same-Sex Relationships by an ordained minister in the Reformed Church, Dr. James Brownson. When she married another woman, I was genuinely joyful that she found the community of deep connection, accountability, and intimacy that she had been diligently seeking for so long. Although it was a much slower shift than for my understanding of women in leadership, I found my perspective on gay marriage beginning to turn.
In a lunch conversation at the 2017 national convention of Canadian MBs, a sincere young man asked me what it felt like to be rebuked by the conference. Studying church leadership in a school directed by an MB Church in British Columbia, he was learning when and how to rebuke heresy. He wanted to understand the experience from the perspective of a recipient.
He was referring to the 2015 MB study conference on human sexuality where I was asked to respond to Bruxy Cavey’s presentation. In the last minutes of my response, I used 1 Samuel 8 and following to show how Scripture holds space open to validate two opposing visions of God’s dream for the world. When the people ask Samuel to anoint a king, his response makes it clear that a king is not part of God’s original plan for them. In fact, Samuel equates choosing a king with rejecting God as their king. Samuel warns the people of the consequences; they persist and God listens to the people saying, “For I have seen the suffering of my people because their outcry has come to me” (1 Samuel 9:15-16). Then, God goes a step further and actually leads Samuel to the person they shall crown king. Is it possible the church’s response to homosexuality can be compared to Israel’s adoption of monarchy?
The next day, I was called to the convention floor to respond to questions. No, I wasn’t trying to change the confession of faith. I was trying to open space for authentic conversation among people who hold Jesus at the center of life and faith and yet differ in their understandings of the Bible.
Six years after that study conference, River East Church, led by moderator Reyn Redekopp, has adopted a statement of inclusivity.
River East Church is a Jesus community for the world.
We invite everyone to live out this mission as followers of Jesus in the
Anabaptist/Mennonite tradition.
This invitation is extended to all persons, whatever
their ability, age, ethnicity, family status, gender identity, income level,
race, sexual orientation, or other identity distinctives. All are welcome to
full participation in the journey of discipleship.
We strive to live as a community of love, even as we acknowledge our different understandings of Scripture. In our diversity, we gather around the Lord’s Table to celebrate our unity in Christ.
In the year-long process, I, along with my pastoral colleagues and the congregation have read articles and books, discussed videos, participated in deep dives into Scripture, listened and listened some more to stories of families impacted by LGBTQ+ dynamics.
Across Canada, throughout the globe, our Mennonite Brethren family of faith is wrestling with the deep questions of the culture by taking them to the Scriptures. We are coming to different understandings. Can that be okay? What if a queer person who follows Jesus is the new Esau begging for a blessing from God and the family?
(End of missing portion from Mary Anne’s reflection. The lines below are in the adjusted book.)
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"After 25 years, I look back and recognize that I, a female pastor, have received a blessing from God and from my Mennonite Brethren family of faith. Yes, it is a costly blessing, but I’m not so sure it is more costly than a man’s. Every single pastor faces risks and costs. And yes, at some points my MB pastoral journey is not-so-sweet-a-deal as the journey of a male MB pastor. But again, the challenges and blessings for every pastor are unique, and at some point in the road, every single pastor faces a tumultuous upheaval of one kind or another.
"And even as I look forward to more years of ministry, I recognize that the future is unknown. This I do know, that I am deeply privileged to have been shaped by theMennonite Brethren denomination and to have a voice within this family of faith.
"As Emerson Cardosa, president of the Mennonite Brethren Conference of Brazil said in his plenary address at the 2018 Canadian Conference, Jesus is the center of our faith. Community is the center of our life. Reconciliation is the center of our work. May it be so,"
Mary Anne Isaak
