Mennonite Weekly Review

The Lancaster Mennonite Conference Board of Bishops has reached an understanding with a bishop who was reprimanded for ordaining two women before a new policy allowed it.

The understanding includes a two-year period of accountability in which Linford King, bishop of Lancaster District, will meet with two other bishops the board appointed, Lancaster Conference News reported in its July-August issue.

The bishops, including King, had several conversations mediated by Marcus Smucker and David Brubaker of the Eastern Mennonite University Center for Justice and Peacebuilding in Harrisonburg, Va.

During the conversations, King told his story of the events of the previous year and how “God was leading in the churches” of Lancaster District, he said in a telephone interview. King had ordained Elizabeth Nissley of James Street Mennonite Church in Lancaster, Pa., on June 24 and Janet Breneman of Laurel Street Mennonite Church in Lancaster on Jan. 20.

“It was all about being faithful to God and honoring the very careful process of leaders and lay leaders of the congregations,” King said of receiving requests from James Street and Laurel Street to ordain their pastors.

“I had to make a choice of how I sensed God was leading in the churches, which meant I could not be loyal to the bishop board,” he said.

King felt that the bishops had listened to him in the mediation.

In turn, other bishops described to King how his actions caused pain in some parts of the conference, Lancaster Conference News reported.

“We experienced God’s presence and blessing as we listened more carefully to each other,” the bishops wrote in a June 20 letter to the conference’s credentialed leaders.

In additional to committing to the accountability period, King joined all the bishops in committing to heed the counsel of the board of bishops in the future, the report said.

The Board of Bishops acknowledged “a failure to communicate in a helpful and timely manner to Linford about these matters,” according to Lancaster Conference News. “The board desires to restore the trust that has been broken.”

Lancaster Conference implemented a new credentialing policy May 16 that ends the restriction on women’s ordination. That policy narrowly missed the two-thirds approval required to adopt it in a vote of active ordained and licensed leaders in January 2007.

King had received a letter of reprimand — the first step in Mennonite Church USA’s disciplinary process — in August 2007 and another letter warning of further discipline in January if he ordained Breneman.