Columbus

So after a week of reflecting it’s time to post on Conference. Two weeks ago I headed to Bethel to drive the 13+ hours to Columbus OH to participate in the MCUSA biannual conference. The trip started off a bit rocky when we realized that we had seven people for our seven-passenger van, despite what Dale told me, so I made the long trip sandwiched between Brittany and Karey, no big deal, we survived.
Conference began Tuesday evening but it was pastor’s day so I helped Tom and Lois with one worship service and watched all the Harders give an awesome concert. In between those two events was a rather traumatic experience involving me loosing (or so I believed at the time) my wallet and my frantic search for it and the many phone calls to cancel credit cards. As I was getting to my last card and had just told the wonderfully nice customer service rep to cancel my card, Hillary got a call from Tom saying that they had found my wallet in the bag that I had brought along for the day, right where I had left it. Talk about feeling stupid.
I’m not entirely sure how to organize this so it might seem kind of random. I attended the youth worship services throughout the week and was quite unimpressed. The band was louder than in the past and most of the time were simply performing rather than worshiping. I was disappointed to see Jeremy Kempf who is very humble, up on stage performing. The worship leaders talked too much and didn’t know when to leave things alone. We had some great speakers with powerful life experiences and stories and the worship leaders felt the need to compare their own stories, extending the service and, for me at least, ruining the impact of the speakers. I can’t completely blame them because they were forced to make decisions in a committee format, so I think I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. As I said, we heard some very good speakers including Shane Hipps, Shane Claiborne, and Leonard Dow to name my favorites. Other worship highlights were the Upside Down King performance and the joint hymn sing, even if it was painfully slow.
Also while in Columbus I was very involved with the Pink Menno Campaign which, for those of you who haven’t heard, was a group who wore pink to visibly support the LGBTQ population and achieve the following goals:
-Full LGBTQ inclusion and participation in the Mennonite church (including full membership, ordination, and marriage).
-Apology from Mennonite church for silencing and/or committing to spiritual violence against LGBTQ’s
-LGBTQ issues addressed at home congregations
-Church statements revisited/issued on these issues.
As you can see these are very ambitious goals and they were pursued very strongly by a dedicated group of supporters. Out of these goals, the central focus for Columbus was probably the first point, inclusion and participation. This was hard because the Pink Menno delegation, along with the BMC and the Open Letter to MCUSA delegation were not allowed a space in the convention center exhibit hall and were forced to hold all their events in a hotel across the street. I was a very active participant in the efforts, wearing pink every day but one, passing out information, and attending several of the seminars on the issue. I met some really great people and made wonderful connections. There were times when I felt very good about the direction that the church seemed to be moving, but I was surrounding myself with people who believed the same things I did, and Friday changed my perceptions of all of that.
Friday was not a good day for me in more ways than one. I wore my official Pink Menno shirt for the hymn sing and I became involved in several destructive conversations. First, while we were waiting to go into worship Friday morning I was approached by a man who asked what my pink shirt meant. I told him the goals, focusing on inclusion and participation and he proceeded to pull out a pink brochure and point to where there is a statement that there is disagreement in the church about the “inherently sinful” nature of the LGBTQ population, which, looking at it now, confirming what I thought then, does not say what it thought it said. He made the issue about sin and how he believed that it was a sin. I did my very best to be respectful and be an active listener when he was talking. I did not attack his points and tell him that he was wrong, instead I used I statements, I believe this way or I interpret that passage differently. Unfortunately I did not get the same respect from him. He attacked me with everything he said and did not listen to any of my points, instead he was flipping through his bible to find the next scripture that he was going to quote to me. A couple of highlights of what he said, once comparing homosexuality to alcoholism and people who are premeditated towards murder, and when I said something about Jesus love and acceptance he turned to Sodom and Gomorrah. I tried at several points to end the conversation/argument tactfully by saying statements such as, we have very different view points on the issue and I don’t think that either one of us is going to change our minds, with a sense of finality, but he did not get the message. Finally Tom came and helped me to end the conversation, using I suppose his pastoral authority to help me to just walk away.
This incident bothered me much of the day. I didn’t eat lunch because I had lost my appetite and felt in a bit of a haze. Later I went to some more pink activities and processed the experience with some people and I was feeling better until I heard two youth in a discussion with the “man in the straw hat” who had a particularly bad reputation and had even told one youth he was going to hell because he was gay. I did not get involved in the conversation but just listening to it made me sick to my stomach. Having not been involved in that one I will just go to my last story of the day. It was the intermission of the Upside Down King and I was talking to some of the youth when the man sitting next to us, someone who I know, asked me about my shirt and if I supported “that.” I replied with an of course, yes and he gave me a very disapproving look, shake of the head, and moved several chair down the row. He didn’t even have to say anything to bring me down.
I would not have made it through the day without Aspen and having her around to calm me down and just be there even though we didn’t really talk about it too much. Also processing the experiences with Tom and Lois helped a lot. Despite this help, I was too burned out to wear my last pink shirt on Saturday. I felt as though I would have had a severe emotional breakdown if I had been attacked one more time.
Saturday was our last day and it was exhausting. Our servant project was that afternoon and it was one of the highlights of the week, despite the exhaustion looming over my head. We went to a local homeless shelter that was having a barbecue and we helped a little but mostly just played games and talked to people. This allowed me to reminisce on my summer in Denver and all the work that I did with homeless at that time. I had several good conversations with people and avoided several others that would have been destructive. The youth all did a wonderful job with the work and I was amazed at how easily they took to the task and the many connections that were made during the time we were there. I wish that I had more to say about the situation, as good as it was, but other events of the week overpowered the experience. Later that night was the final worship and the Kutless concert. I feel as though I did not enjoy the experience as much as I would have due to my complete exhaustion, but I still enjoyed the music.
The week ended on a high note after I got back including events that have occurred since, but that’s not something that you have to ask me about in person.

Peace,
Daniel