After eight episodes and over 16 guests, A Time To Listen: LGBTQ+ Stories of the Mennonite Brethren Church, is shutting down.
The online series provided an opportunity for LGBTQ+ people and their allies to share about their experiences as part of the Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches (CCMBC).
The last episode was March 1.
A Time to Listen was started in May 2021 after the CCMBC turned down an open letter request from over 500 Canadian Mennonite Brethren church members requesting more conversation about LGBTQ+ in that denomination.
John Unger, a former Mennonite Brethren pastor from Winnipeg helped create the open letter.
“I thought that if we can’t have that conversation, then at least we can take time to listen to LGBTQ+ people,” he said of the reason for working with others to start A Time To Listen.
Listening, he added, “is the first act of loving people well.”
Almost all who shared were part of CCMBC, or had been part of it at one time, he said. This included members of the LGBTQ+ community or their parents and siblings.
All the episodes were meaningful, Unger said, recalling how sad he felt to hear people talk about being excluded by their Mennonite Brethren churches over their sexuality, or fearing what might happen if they came out publicly.
It was also hard to hear parents share the pain and rejection they felt from their churches when their kids came out.
Early on, Unger said he noticed Mennonite Brethren church leaders tuning in. But that dropped off over time. They may have listened later to the recordings, he said.
All that CCMBC would say about the series is that they “had nothing at all to do with it,” Unger said. “They distanced themselves from it.”
As for why they are shutting down, Unger said it “feels like the season for listening is done for now.”
The number of people attending the webinars has also plateaued at about 60, he said, adding that the episodes were also beginning to sound similar to each other.
“We felt they might be losing their impact,” he said.
The work and time commitment for planning each episode was also a factor, he said.
As for the future, A Time to Listen could come back in a different format or for a different goal, but for now “it seems to me it has run its course,” Unger said.
Click here to listen to past episodes from A Time To Listen.
I’ve filled out that websites contact us form a few times to take them up on resources specifically offered in the videos. Heard nothing.
ReplyDeleteI put myself on their list so I’d be invited to future events. Heard nothing & learned about the Mar 1 meeting after the fact.
Unfair to claim lack of interest as a reason to shut it down when they ignore folks who reach out to them.
Reply from John Unger: I'm sorry about your experience. Evidently we haven't monitored the site carefully enough. I will try to follow up.
Delete