Mennonite Weekly Review

Celebrations of blessing and belonging on a grand scale lifted spirits in a year of financial struggle for Mennonite families, congregations and institutions.

With banners from around the world decorating the balcony, worshipers sing on opening night at the 15th Mennonite World Conference assembly. — Photo by Paul Schrag/MWR

In Paraguay — a country of little note to most of the world but for Mennonite immigrants a ref­uge from war and worldliness — the global Anabap­tist family praised God together.

“This gathering unites us with glad hearts,” said Ditrich Pana, an indigenous Paraguayan Men­non­ite evangelist, speaking to 6,200 people from 63 nations at the 15th Mennonite World Con­fer­ence assembly in Asuncion in July.

“We belong to each other and to [God] this week as brothers and sisters and friends.”

MWC’s assembly, its first since 2003, was the Mennonite world’s signature event, but in terms of attendance it wasn’t even the big­gest meeting of the month. Two weeks earlier, Men­nonite Church USA, the largest North American Men­non­ite denomination, drew 7,500 people to Co­lumbus, Ohio, for its biennial convention.

“We have witnessed the Spirit among us,” said Joel Miller, pastor of Cincinnati Mennonite Fel­lowship and a worship leader at the MC USA assembly. “We have been blessed with the breath of God.”

The global and national gatherings offered occasions to count the churches’ blessings in the midst of an economic downturn that cast a shadow of scarcity.

Colleges, conferences and mission agencies cut budgets and laid off workers as the recession took a bite out of contributions and other income.

Mennonite Central Committee saw a dramatic reversal of fortune. It went from looking for ways to spend a surplus in 2008 to cutting its international programs by 10 percent in 2009.

Congregations across the United States felt the recession’s pinch. Among the regions hardest hit was Indiana’s Elkhart County, a leading Men­nonite population center, where unemployment last spring reached 20 percent, more than twice the national average.