Spark Renewal: Too little? Too late?

About a month ago, I wrote about my own lack of hope for a pause or stop to the Mennonite Church USA building plan in Elkhart, Ind. So much can change in a month! In that time I've been part of launching the sparkrenewal.org Web site which has had over 6,500 pageviews and dozens of people adding their heartfelt support. Can the tide turn?

Guest blogger and Spark Renewal organizer Nekeisha Alexis-Baker looks at the massive weight of inevitability with two weeks to go before ground breaking and the hope on the other side.

"Now, more than ever, this deserves another look and some simple honesty with the staff and constituency…However, the ship left long ago on this decision. Ground is breaking soon, and this will happen no matter the questions raised."
— Russ Neufeld on sparkrenewal.org

Like my former co-worker Russ remarked in his "Add your name" comment, I too had burned out on registering my resistance to the new Mennonite Church USA denominational building since the project was announced during my otherwise three good years at the Mennonite Mission Network. Over the past few months of my renewed involvement in calling for a pause to this project through conversations with campaign coordinators and denominational leaders, and on this public Web site, I have at times been tempted to think that our efforts—although not too little—might be too late. And yet, I and the other incredible people who have come together for Spark Rewnewal persist in our call to 1) put the planned building project on temporary hold 2) not break ground in June 2010 as planned and to especially 3) initiate a thorough review of the process, including a broad invitation for public comment and suggestion of alternatives. What compels us to continue to advocate these three recommendations? Why do I continue to believe that it is not too late?
 
Since Spark Renewal's March 15, meeting with campaign coordinators I have continuously been drawn to the image of Saul on the road to Damascus. Although the story told in Acts 9:1-8 is usually related to the anti-racism work of Mennonite Central Committee in our denominational context, throughout this dissenting process, it has come to symbolize for me the possibility of an unexpected turning around from a path that one has set and a sign that it is never too late to take a new direction.
 
Saul was so invested in and zealous for his mission and he had established both his reputation and his identity around it. Acts 8:3 reports that before heading to Damascus, he had already done a great deal to drag followers of The Way to prison, scattering them from place to place as he went. By the time he was ready to make his trip, he managed to go to the high priest to draft a letter for him to take to the Damasucs synagogues so that he could bind them and bring them to Jerusalem. Although the text does not give much more background information on his other preparations, I can only imagine what else he might have done to get ready and how much time, planning and effort it might have taken. Did he buy new gear or spend time sorting through the old? Did he have to talk to lots of people before he could get in touch with the high priest? Is there a chance he had asked other nameless, faceless people to join him in the hunt for the Way followers? How much time had he spent proving he was for the task before he could get to this point in his service? What did it cost him personally, financially and otherwise to set out on this journey? I imagine that for Saul, the answers to these questions were put in a new perspective when he found himself being unexpectedly questioned and subsequently compelled to change directions.

Now like most analogies, comparing the turning around of Saul on the Damascus Road to the turning around we at Spark Renewal hope to see with this building project is not without its dissonances. Although we have tried to be prayerful and discerning in our critique, neither I nor other Sparkers believe that we are the definitive "voice of Jesus" akin to that which stopped Saul in his tracks on the road. And although our conversations with leaders of the building campaign and the denomination have been tense at times, we most certainly don't view them as "persecutors" but instead, see ourselves sharing the same hope that the future of our church will be vibrant and Spirit-filled. The lesson that I think Saul teaches me that keeps me coming back to his conversion story is that it is never too late to change a decision and plot a new course—not even when the plans are laid, the bags have been packed, the letters have been signed and the journey has begun.
 
In conversation after conversation, we at Spark Renewal have been told by people within and outside of the campaign that there isn't anything really that can be done to stop or halt the building project. Three boards have approved the project. A breaking of the ground date has been set. Money has been spent. Blueprints have been decided upon. And each time I am reminded of Saul.
 
We at Spark Renewal don't want to trivialize what has been accomplished with this campaign up to this point or belittle the work that individual people have done over the past six years or underestimate the kind of effort that will be needed to address the concerns we and others have been raising since the initial idea for a building began to germinate. However, I truly believe that the sooner we pause to evaluate our process, to determine whether this project really does reflect our denominational priorities, to take seriously the lessons we have learned from similar projects and to determine how this building will affect the future generations the campaign claims it is doing this project for, the sooner we can truly begin to join together to invest in a new hope.

- Nekeisha Alexis-Baker

Tim Nafziger is a activist, writer, organizer and web developer. He lives in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago with his wife Charletta where he attends Living Water Community Church. He is the administrator for the Young Anabaptist Radicals blog and serves as Outreach Coordinator for Christian Peacemaker Teams. For more about his life, read his first blog post.

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