Statement by Southridge Community Church to the Ontario Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches prior to the February 25 vote to remove them from the Conference

 

Prior to the February 25 vote to remove Southridge Community Church from membership in the Ontario Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches (ONMB), the following statement from the church was read to the delegate body. 

To our ONMB Family, 

First off, we want to acknowledge that our annual convention is intended to be a time to unify and galvanize around our common cause in Christ together, and we know that adding conversations of revoking church memberships, in some ways, takes our attention off that focus. 

As a local church, we want to help contribute to our collective movement towards Christ, not sideways or backwards in determining what a denomination even is these days. Know that we know that, and we are sorry for the additional challenge that these conversations, in some ways, have created. 

As we understand it, one of the goals of ONMB leadership is to establish clarity on these subjects. Please know that we, as a church, are clear. We’re clear that the MB Confession of Faith is something member churches are expected to align to. 

We’re clear that Confessional matters are not to be treated as disputable ones. And we’re clear that doing that has consequences and can even threaten the very status of your membership as an MB church. 

As a local church, we’re clear—and share in the same clarity that our ONMB leadership is desiring to provide in this season. We don’t disagree with the clarity they seek. 

Our divergence in perspective comes from two places. 

First, while we all seek Confessional alignment, we’ve never understood the MB Confession of Faith to be an air-tight set of absolutes or the single centre of what binds us together. 

When it comes to friends, family members and church or mission partners in Ukraine these days, for example, I wonder how many of us are praying for and actively supporting them compared to how many of us are insisting that they stand down in spite of Russian onslaught—because that’s what Article 13 on love and nonresistance upholds. 

And the fact that there are different views on how to respond to war among our MB family, churches, and leaders isn’t something resulting in church memberships being revoked. There’s always been some unity-amidst-diversity among our MB family even when it comes to the interpretation and application of the Confession in our local contexts. 

Second, we believe that our ONMB family is just that—a family. We believe that we’re bound together by three dimensions: shared relationship, shared mission, and shared beliefs. We believe that to be part of our family is to share in all those dimensions—but appreciating that we share them in varying degrees. 

So we feel that divergence on one or a couple articles of shared belief shouldn’t result in full removal from the family, because we feel like our family identity is about more than this one or couple articles. 

Southridge Community Church is an MB church, full of MB people, because of the whole complement of what we share together: our relationships, our mission, and our Confessional beliefs. 

So, especially when you consider the unity-amidst-diversity that already exists regarding our Confession, we don’t feel that divergence on one or a couple Confessional articles needs to sever our identity as a family.

At this point—Convention 2023—the motion put forward by our ONMB leadership obviously illustrates that we see this differently. And while our church views Confessional alignment and Conference identity differently, we do respect our Conference leadership and will respect the decision of our collective delegate membership. 

And if it’s determined that, as a result of our delegate vote, Southridge is no longer a member MB church, our MB people will continue to participate in our extended family as we’re allowed, leveraging our shared relationship for shared mission to do together what we otherwise couldn’t do alone. 

Our hope is, as we continue to engage with our MB family as a non-member church (if that’s where this vote lands), that you will respect our position as well, where—in the context of our local church’s membership and community hermeneutic—our people are ten-to-one in favour of moving forward to create equal, free and full expression of both the affirming and traditional views on marriage. 

If, as a result of your decision, Southridge ceases to be a member MB church, we hope you’ll continue to welcome, include, and partner with us for the sake of our shared mission as we’ve done together for decades. 

This, in fact, is why we haven’t voluntarily withdrawn our Conference membership, and are submitting the decision to a Convention delegate vote—because our people want to continue to be part of the only denominational family we’ve ever known. Our church wants to continue to be an MB member church. 

We love all of you very much. We love our shared history. We love our shared identity. We loved our shared relationships, our shared mission, and our shared beliefs. Regardless of the outcome of this Convention delegate vote, those things will continue. We love you. We respect your decision. And we’re sorry for the difficulty this has added to our mutual work of ushering in the realities of the Kingdom of God on earth and across our province as it is in heaven. 

As a local church, we’re trying to do just that when it comes to the inclusion of LGBTQ+ people and those who hold affirming views on the biblical definition of marriage. We’d love nothing more than to continue doing that together with all of you. And we’ll continue to as much as we can together—being spiritual family and realizing the answer to Jesus’ one prayer for unity among all his disciples in spite of differences.