{"id":7918,"date":"2022-02-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-02T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mwc-cmm.org\/crossing-climate-barriers-to-assembly\/"},"modified":"2025-03-24T23:41:03","modified_gmt":"2025-03-24T23:41:03","slug":"crossing-climate-barriers-assembly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mwc-cmm.org\/en\/stories\/crossing-climate-barriers-assembly\/","title":{"rendered":"Crossing climate barriers to Assembly"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThis idea of the people of God being in all places is very real,\u201d says Benjamin Isaak-Krau\u00df, pastor of Frankfurt Mennonite Church. The half-decade Assemblies of Mennonite World Conference are an opportunity to experience this reality. But, as members consider the looming climate crisis, some worry about the environmental costs of travel.  <\/p>\n

MWC spoke with two Mennonites in Germany who are thinking about these issues.  <\/p>\n

No peace on a warmer planet<\/h3>\n

\u201cClimate change is the peace issue of our time. There\u2019s no just peace on a planet that is three degrees warmer,\u201d says Benjamin Isaak-Krau\u00df.  <\/p>\n

David Lapp Jost, an American working with the German Mennonite Peace committee, agrees: \u201cDroughts and rising temperatures cause direct conflict between groups at a local level. That played a role in the war in Syria\u2026 and will surely play a role in many others. Displacement of people and suffering is very harmful.\u201d  <\/p>\n

Mennonites should oppose exploitative system due to climate issues and our legacy of settler-indigenous relations, David Lapp Jost says. \u201cI hope making the church an authoritative and powerful responder to climate change becomes an important part of who we are over the next decades.\u201d <\/p>\n

A Pentecost imperative  <\/h3>\n

Furthermore, in a globalized world with rising nationalism, it\u2019s important \u201cto have this concrete experience of worshipping with Christians around the world who look and talk and believe differently but we are still connected through Jesus and the Holy Spirit,\u201d says Benjamin Isaak-Krau\u00df. <\/p>\n

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\u201cIn an increasingly atomized world, there\u2019s a scarcity of positive space for constructive discourse across international, social and political difference,\u201d says David Lapp Jost. \u201cHopefully, MWC is a voluntary the voluntary grouping of people who choose to be together and can learn from and share life with each other.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cI would love to be in Indonesia just to have a new chance to encounter people who are implicitly showing the way; how to keep openness to connection across really big differences.\u201d <\/p>\n

Much of the work of the church is at the local level, yet if we aren\u2019t connected with the global church, David Lapp Jost says, \u201cwe don\u2019t experience the Holy Spirit the same way as embodied in Pentecost.\u201d <\/p>\n

The church has been an international institution since Pentecost. \u201cIt\u2019s ingrained in mission of church to be together across national lines and learn from each other,\u201d David Lapp Jost says. <\/p>\n

A global communion of actual people <\/h3>\n

As a teenager, Benjamin Isaak-Krau\u00df didn\u2019t just attend the Global Youth Summit and Assembly 15 in Paraguay; he spent half a year in Paraguay to get to know Mennonite communities there.  <\/p>\n

Attending MWC Assembly turned his sense of community from local to global. He formed lasting friendships, and, for Assembly 16, organized a minitour for German youth to spend weeks in the USA getting to know Mennonite communities \u2013 urban and rural, conservative and progressive. <\/p>\n

It was transformative \u201cto see siblings in Christ in another place,\u201d culminating in GYS \u201cwith all these people who are my age, from around the world, and Assembly with more people. It makes the idea of a global communion into something you can perceive and interact with \u2013 with actual people.\u201d  <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not the planned things that change us; it\u2019s the encounters,\u201d says Benjamin Isaak-Krau\u00df. Those are easier to have with in person gatherings, but even an online Assembly, well planned, can make space for those intersections of our chosen paths and the others we encounter there.  <\/p>\n

Climate change and Assembly <\/h3>\n

Natural disasters around the world now take place where friends live.  <\/p>\n

The aspect of community that Mennonites espouse as core to faith and practice is key to our response to climate change.  <\/p>\n

David Lapp Jost hopes MWC can \u201cfoster conversation about how climate change is affecting the Global South, that can try to bring the Global North into solidarity.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be really sad if people concerned about climate don\u2019t come to MWC events anymore,\u201d says Benjamin Isaak-Krau\u00df. \u201cIt would be better to come and wrestle with the fact we are one body with people affected by climate change.\u201d <\/p>\n

As a peace church, Mennonite World Conference members must \u201cwrestle with how are we part of this global movement to repent and turn around our broken systems.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cHopefully, the Holy Spirit makes it happen,\u201d says David Lapp Jost. <\/p>\n

Practical steps <\/h3>\n