Five years ago, in 2021, over 500 members of the Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches signed an open letter asking the conference to hold an open discussion about LGBTQ+ inclusion. The conference refused.
That refusal led that same year to the creation of Time to Listen, an online gathering of Canadian MBs and other who wanted to talk about this topic.
Throughout that year, I wrote 10 articles on the topic for Anabaptist World. This included one about the decision of Artisan Church in Vancouver to withdraw from the conference over its decision to include LGBTQ+ people—the first of eight MB churches to either withdraw or be expelled since 2021.
(For the record, those are Artisan and Cedar Park in B.C.; Southridge and Free Church in Ontario; River East, Jubilee and FaithWorks in Manitoba; and Lendrum in Alberta.)
Since Anabaptist World is primarily an American publication, it couldn’t publish everything I wanted to write on this topic in Canada.
That led me to create this blog, a Time to Tell, in 2022, as a journalistic way to keep the conversation going—something that was necessary since the official publication of the conference, the MB Herald, would not cover it.
From 2022 to early 2024, I wrote 126 articles on the topic on this blog. The goal was to keep Canadian MBs informed—and also to shine a bit of light on something some conference leaders preferred remained dark.
(In that regard, I must have been doing something right; I was prevented from attending two provincial assemblies by conference leaders where LGBTQ+ was discussed. It didn’t work. People who attended furnished me with notes from both meetings.)
It was also to provide a first draft of history, some original source material that could be used by a future researcher who may want to write a book about this period in Canadian MB history.
I paused the blog in 2024 for a couple of reasons. First, I was exhausted by covering this topic. Second, the church I attended at the time (River East) was expelled from the MB Conference—why report about something I wasn’t part of anymore?
But now, five years after that open letter, I decided it was time to follow-up with some of the people I interviewed. I wanted to hear their reflections on that time, and see how they are doing now. Over the next while, I will post those reflections.
And if you have any thoughts on this topic related to the Canadian MB conference, feel free to send them to me at jdl562000@yahoo.com
Photo above from Getty Images.
