Introduction
I found the task of reviewing the polity of the Mennonite Church regarding conference-congregation relationships to be no small challenge. As I prepared this address I became aware again of the temptation to read contemporary perspectives and concerns into our history. I noted that some people read our journey as a church in terms of its abuses of authority, while others discover confirmations of a legitimate tradition. Interpretation of the role and function of conferences varies depending on what one is looking for. In the Mennonite Encyclopedia Rod Sawatsky wrote:

Authority...is a problem for Mennonites, not only on the larger theological level, but also on the operational level. Operationally, among Mennonites, authority is sometimes identified but more frequently is not identified; it is sometimes formulated, but typically only implied. The discussion of Mennonite understandings of authority...is largely a matter of identifying the implied (Vol V, p. 45).

Leonard Gross has suggested that distinctly different traditions of leadership and authority emerged from the Dutch Mennonites and the Swiss/South German Mennonites from whom the conferences represented here have their primary origin. He suggested that this difference is symbolized by the repeated reference to Matthew 18 in the Schleitheim Confession (centering discipline in the congregation), and the appeal to I Corinthians 5 in the Dordrecht Confession of 1632 (which emphasized the authority of church leaders).

Current integration discussions with the General Conference Mennonite Church highlight the congregationalism in the General Conference tradition in contrast to the MC pattern of church. The anomaly is that the descendants of the Schleitheim Confession are now characterized (or caricatured) as those with more tendencies toward authoritarian leaders and the descendants of the Dutch Mennonites as more democratic and congregational.

I speak, not as a scholar, but as one nurtured in the womb of the church and schooled from childhood in the ambiguities of polity. My father, whose parenting and memory I cherish, was feared by some of my contemporaries due to his authority as bishop and conference moderator for many years. I also speak as one who has visited all the conferences in an attempt to listen to their issues.

Three particular points of interest should be noted at the outset of this review. First, the history of conferences in the Mennonite Church date from 1725 (Franconia) to 1979 (Gulf States), if we do not take into account conferences which reorganized in recent years due to integration with the GCMC. It is interesting to note that six conferences have been formed since 1960. While their experience differs from that of the older conferences, in many cases their roots and nucleus of leaders have some origin in older conferences in the East.

A second issue which cannot be overlooked is that several of our larger conferences in the Midwest have strong influences from an Amish Mennonite heritage. Specific polity differences were blended in these conferences between greater congregational autonomy among the Amish Mennonites and the stronger role of conference for Mennonites.

Third, this address focuses largely on structural considerations. It is important to affirm that our structures for authority and church order are rooted in the confidence of Christ's presence in the body to guide and empower the community in decision making and living out the will of God. The scriptures provide the authoritative word, as interpreted by the Spirit in the community of faith, for leaders and people. This point dare not be overlooked lest we succumb to mere human strivings devoid of the transcendent presence of God in the working out of our polity.

Emergences of Conferences, 1527-1880
It is commonly stated that the first conference among the Anabaptists took place at Schleitheim, Switzerland, February 24, 1527. A group of leaders met together and drafted seven articles on which the Anabaptists differed from the Protestant reformers. These seven articles were developed in the local Anabaptist congregations, according to Leonard Gross.

The statement assumes many central doctrines--God, Bible, justification by faith- -and focuses on matters of ethics and order in the church. The Brotherly Union circulated widely in Europe influencing members of the Anabaptist movement and causing other reformers to write responses. Other conferences occurred in Europe in the early years of the Anabaptist movement where leaders reviewed issues of faith, strategized for mission, attempted to develop unity among divergent parties and tried to maintain order in the church.

The first conference in America took place at Germantown in 1725 where early Pennsylvania settlers met and adopted the Dordrecht Confession of 1632. Apparently the group was experiencing challenges to their beliefs and identity and needed to define a statement of faith that could be circulated among English speaking colonists, according to Beulah Hostetler. During this same era the leaders of the two oldest Pennsylvania settlements began to meet to confer on issues of common concern which eventually gave rise to the Franconia and Lancaster Conferences. In the 19th century other conferences emerged in Ontario, Virginia, Western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri-Iowa and Kansas-Nebraska.

The early conferences of Mennonites were meetings of leaders from autonomous or semi-autonomous congregations. The communities reflected close-knit sectarian characteristics, guided by unwritten understandings of faith and practice with authority expressed through leaders who were called out of the congregations. Without external threats or internal calls for change, conferences needed no formalized procedures or elaborate structures of authority.

One threat emerged in Franconia in the 1840s when a minister named John Oberholtzer wished to develop a new authority structure for congregations. Among the issues which precipitated the crisis was Oberholtzer's refusal to wear the plain coat normally worn by ministers, his desire for minutes of the conference sessions to be kept in writing and his call for development of a constitution for the conference body. Oberholtzer's vision also included ministerial training, Sunday schools, missionary activities and publishing materials for congregational nurture.

When Oberholtzer pressed for these innovations, a division ocurred in 1847 involving 16 ministers and deacons and one-fourth of the Franconia membership. The presenting issues appear to be a conflict between traditional and innovative ways of being the church. Decades later most of Oberholtzer's ideas were common practice in the Mennonite Church.

Was it merely pioneer thinking versus closed-minded and unchanging leadership? Perhaps. But Beulah Hostetler in American Mennonites and Protestant Movements, suggests the critical issue was the nature of authority in the church. Oberholtzer claimed only to recognize the authority of scripture. None of the issues he pressed for were prohibited by scipture. But conference leaders believed that it was the scriptures as interpreted by the church and expressed in certain practices which was most important to the spiritual health of God's people. They saw Oberholtzer disregarding the authority of the church. They feared that to keep minutes and preparing a constitution would undercut the congregationally-based discipline of Matthew 18, and could possbly place human patterns over scripture.

This 1847 schism in Franconia probably says less about the character of the modern General Conference Mennonite Church than it does about a fundamental issue faced by our conferences in the l990s. The foundational problem which our conferences still face is not the authority of scripture, which is generally upheld in our church. The key issue is who interprets the scripture? Which understanding of the scripture do we follow? What do we do when congregations and members do not agree on scriptural interpretation? And what is the role of conferences in addressing these questions?

Consolidation of Conference Authority, 1881-1962
Mennonites in North America experienced many changes in the 19th century. Gradually John Oberholtzer's ideas seemed more appealing. Another way of saying it is that the trend was to replace the informal unwritten sanctions of the church with more formal written codes. By 1881 Lancaster Conference developed a document entitled "Rules and Discipline" which grew from 27 items and 1481 words in 1881 to 57 items and 4677 words in 1968 when the last such statement was adopted by the conference. Leonard Gross says most of the conferences adopted some version of a discipline during this era, along with organizational constitutions to guide the corporate life of the church.

Among the forces which fed this process were the decline of a sectarian consciousness among Mennonites, the zeal for organizational and institutional development, the fundamentalist-modernist struggles around the turn of the century, and the thrust of modernity with new ideas and technology which created a need for sharpening the boundaries of the church.

Conferences took the lead in working at these matters. The bishops promoted the noble ideal of a pure church which could and should be maintained through clear expressions of discipline. The definitions of faith and practice were developed by leaders and, at least in some conferences, the rules and discipline were presented to the congregations for their approval.

The Amish Mennonite conferences retained a strong consultative relationship with their congregations. In the eastern conferences, the rules and discipline were read through in their entirety in a council meeting or preparatory meeting to the annual or semi-annual communion service. Members were regularly expected to declare their confession of peace with God and each other, along with a willingness to abide by the explicit discipline of the church. Practical matters, such as dress, entertainment, insurance, radio/TV ownership, and Sunday observance, were addressed in these statements of discipline. Some of us can remember this era with its more authoritative leaders and the sincere desire for a people nonconformed to the world and devoted to the simple faith of Jesus Christ. Some call the early to mid-twentieth century a doctrinal era with a more rational approach to faith.

While some members were excommunicated for failure to live up to definitions of faith and practice in their conference, others left voluntarily to join other denominations or to form new congregations. In some conference settings today there are General Conference Mennonite Church congregations which were developed by Mennonites who wished for a more relaxed way to live out their faith. In some communities independent congregations were formed by dissatisfied Mennonites. Over the years som congregations were reprimanded by the bishop for practices out of line with the conference expectations, such as special music in the church and Sunday school. In some instances whole congregations were excommunicated when their deviances seemed too pronounced. More common was a division in a congregation or withdrawal either by those desiring a more conservative or more progressive practice of faith. In the Mennonite Encyclopedia H.S. Bender says of Mennonite schisms, "none was due to a major issue in doctrine, all being due primarily to differences between progressive and conservative attitudes in church work or strictness in discipline or to miscellaneous and personal difficulties" (Vol III, p. 612).

A primary force shaping conferences during this era was the formation of the Mennonite General Conference in 1898. This structure provided a forum for the conferences to work together at common concerns and symbolized the beginning of the Mennonite Church as a denomination. While four conferences never formally joined the Mennonite General Conference, the provision was made for the bishops of these non-member conferences to be exoffcio delegates to the General Conference.

While formally General Conference remained advisory to the area conferences, strong voices called for uniformity among the conferences. One expression of this was the publication in 1914 by the General Conference of a revised and expanded edition of Daniel Kauffman's, Manual of Bible Doctrine, which gained broad acceptance and contributed strongly toward greater uniformity among the conferences. To challenge Kauffman's Bible Doctrine became more and more like challenging the authority of scripture. The Mennonite General Conference created a dress committee in 1911 to bring "all our people to the Gospel standard of simplicity and spirituality." While the authority of the Mennonite General Conference was formally weak, its influence was powerful in matters of faith and practice among the conferences.

In the late 1930s Illinois Conference heard rumors that the Mennonite General Conference was threatening their membership due to their more progressive practices. They were reassured in a letter from th General Conference in 1939. In 1943 the General Problems Committee brought a report concerning the lack of uniform adherence to accepted Mennonite practices of nonconformity among the conferences. An action was proposed that should any conference decide not to work in harmony with General Conference standards they would forfeit their place in the General Conference.

This action was tabled and a special session of General Conference called in 1944 to look at this proposal. After much time in prayer an action was taken in 1944 to visit conferences who did not keep the standards of the Mennonite General Conference with a view towards reconciliation and a desire to avoid any forfeiture of membership by conferences. Clearly the General Conference chose not to press its authority and bent every effort toward healing and unity. It is this conciliatory spirit which has largely characterized both our denomination and area conferences over the years (to the disappointment of some members).

Loss (and resurgence ?) of Conference Authority, 1963-1994
By the 1960s,the authority of a conferences had waned in the Mennonite Church. Rules and discipline were quickly set aside in favor of more flexible approaches to discipleship. l was present at the 1965 fall session of the Franconia Conference when there was not sufficient support to reaffirm the current discipline or to approve a revised discipline. As a result, in one day, a long era of conference discipline ended. In 1981, 100 years after the development of the first such statement, the Lancaster Conference made acceptance of the rules and discipline optional. In the 1990s we have a generation of members and pastors for whom conference discipline is a distant memory or unknown part of our history.

Many factors contributed to this rapid loss of authority by conferences and church leaders. World War II and subsequent wars resulted in the broader exposure of Mennonites to the larger world through CPS and other alternate service programs. Eventually the contextualization of the gospel in overseas mission was bound to alter the character of the North American sending churches. Training of pastors introduced professionalism in leadership with the desire to distinguish between faith and culture. Theron Schlabach observes that the shift from Daniel Kauffman to Paul Erb as editor of the Gospel Herald in 1944 symbolized the transition in leadership from formal authority and zeal for purity to a more educated leadership inclined toward greater flexibility and openness to cultural variety. Some conferences began in the 1950s and 60s to welcome a more representational authority through lay delegates to their sessions. Not to be overlooked in this time of change was the growing individualism in North American society and the challenges to established structures and designated leadership in a church where the boundaries were eroding rapidly. These changes wer also reflected in denominational structure.

The General Problems Committee which had been concerned with nonconformity, became the Church Welfare Committee in 1961, charged to address issues of diversity and unity. A new Confession of Faith was adopted in 1963 to provide a clear point of reference amidst rapid social change. At the 1967 General Conference held at Lansdale, Pa., communion was observed for the first time in a churchwide setting, symbolizing the shift from communion as a uniform practice of discipline toward a more open expression of fellowship in Christ. This same General Conference agreed to launch a reorganization which resulted in the current denominational structure adopted in Kitchener, Ont. in 1971. Institutionalization and organizational development in an era of unprecedented prosperity seemed to be one way to provide direction for the church in a time of rapid change.

The 1971 denominational reorganization assumed conferences would not survive the rapid changes going on in the church and built a system of regions as new structures for congregational affiliation. The assumption was that if conferences no longer functioned with the old authority of rules and discipline they either had no reason to exist or at least were expendable in favor of broader geographical groupings of congregations. We, of course, know today how mistaken these assumptions were. Beginning in the late 1960s and into the 1980s almost all conferences went through their own reorganization, often mimicking the structures of the denomination.

In spite of earlier assumptions, we have witnessed a quickening of life in the conferences with renewed commitment to provide services and vision for the congregations which make up the conference. A certain pattern of staff developed in many of our conferences. Usually a conference minister was employed first, followed by staff for youth, a mission staff person and then a conference executive. Some conferences also began to employ persons to work at nurture, stewardship and peace issues. The result today is that we have in some conferences an intermediate structure which parallels the ministries of the denomination. In addition to the conferences, associate groups have developed and urban councils are formed in some larger cities as other networks of churches with common interests. I might observe that the decline of churchwide ministries which began in the mid-1980s, due to shifts in allocations of funds by congregations is now being faced by the conferences who also are needing to modify programs and discem how to posture themselves for the twenty-first century. There seems to exist a dynamic synergy between canferences and the denomination.

What I have described in structural terms actually reflects a deeper theological shift that has gone on among us. To counter the excessive authority of conferences in the first half of the twentieth century, the 1963 Confession of Faith boldly declares, "the primary unit of the church is the local assembly of believers. It is in the congregation that the work of teaching and discipling is carried on." The confession goes on to state the scriptural legitimacy for conferences "to assist local congregations in maintaining biblical standards of faith, conduct, stewardship and mission." But the confession clearly shifts the accent from the conference to the congregation (Article VIII). Article X on the ministers of the church says almost nothing about bishops. It emphasizes the role of pastors and concern for the involvement of the "brotherhood."

The Bylaws of the Mennonite Church adopted in 1971 state, "the congregation is the primary unit of Mennonite Church organization." The conference serves as the main administrative structure A (mine) for the congregations. The shift towards the congregation is so pronounced that in the Mennonite Encyclopedia Beulah Hostetler writes that after the 1971 reorganization "there was a general return to congregational autonomy with conferences being advisory" (Vol V., p. 567). Personally I find advisory too weak a word for the conference/congregation polity which existed prior to the 20th century or following reorganization in 1971.

There is no question that congregations today are assuming more responsibility for their own life and mission. In this respect we parallel developments among all denominations in North America. There are healthy features to this growth in congregational responsibility and initiativeO There is no way we could have navigated the dramatic changes we experienced the last 30 years or accommodated the growing diversity among us without allowing a high degree of congregationalism. In every conference variety is permitted among congregations as a way to maintain both unity while recognizing diversity. The woman's veiling, divorce and remarriage, women as pastoral leaders, members serving in the military are examples of different issues where congregations are expected to choose their own course. (The current issue testing our conference unity and polity is homosexuality.)

To be sure some ministers and congregations were unable to allow this diversity and withdrew from conferences in Franconia, Lancaster, Virginia, Indiana and Oregon. Other conferences also experienced tensions. But the unity we have experienced overall is fairly remarkable. It should also be noted that some congregations and members left our conferences over the years because change was too slow and flexibility was not sufficient to accommodate their needs. Steering the middle course in times of rapid change was not easy. H.S. Bender made the case in a 1926 article that generally conferences and bishops were more progressive than many lay people (Goshen College Record Supplement). The difficult challenge facing many conference leaders has been responding to critics on both the left and the right within member congregations.

Every generation offers a corrective to the previous generation's successes. While the 1963 Confession of Faith and 1971 reorganization emphasized the congregat on, the new Confession of Faith and leadership polity which are currently being developed call us to see church as existing both in the congregation and in conferences and the denomination. Indeed some persons believe we have embraced an unhealthy congregationalism and are calling us to recover a sense of interdependence among congregations to temper the individualism of our society.

Coupled with this redefining of church are calls to recover the "office" of ministry with certain authority for leaders that exceeds a functional role. Pastors and overseers are to serve in response to the call of God and the church in a capacity that transcends the particular person in of fice or whims of a given age or situation. This recovery of the office of minister is again a corrective to the denigration of leadership in the 1960s and 1970s. While most of our conferences rejected the role and title of bishop, there is today a growing recognition of the importance of oversight ministries for congregations.

The reality is that our Mennonite Church tradition, while flirting with congregationalism, never developed a theological or philosophical rationale for the individual member or congregation such as developed in the General Conference Mennonite Church. Neither have we found the freedom to embrace the credo which informally guides General Conference Mennonites, "in essentials unity, in nonessentials liberty, in all things love." At times we have swung towards a stronger corporate authority and definition of church, but more recently we have moved towards towards greater congregational freedom. But the central pole against which divergence is measured has always been marked by an emphasis on interdependence or corporate authority.

We have a congregational base with certain synodal features. Currently our synodal character finds specific expression in two areas: first, conferences reserve the authority to grant credentials to ministers and to discipline ministers. Second, conferences normally determine the confession of faith expected of congregations, and reaffirm General Assembly statements or issues believed to be of a significance for the common life of the congregations. While conferences provide certain programmatic services, beyond these two specific points conferences have very little formal authority. Some conferences demonstrate greater flexibility than others in tolerating differences among congregations. As noted earlier we have a tradition of conferences disciplining congregations who deviate too far from the expected norms. But generally conferences are more inclined toward a conciliatory stance and bend every effort to seek some ground for unity when conflict arises.

Conclusion
In preparing this address I found myself often gravitating toward words like "balance," "tension" and "dynamic" in seeking to understand Mennonite Church polity. Our history has been one of attempting to hold in balance the congregation and conference, the individual and corporate body. Certain inherent tensions pressed us in different directions at different times. But the reference point for us has been the congregation and the conference living in a dynamic relationship. While greater weight shifted from one to the other at certain times in our history, our theology and practice never called into question the close wedding of the congregation and the conference. Sometimes a rigid legalism overshadowed grace. At other times correctives were needed for definitions of discipleship that were too shallow.

As we look toward the twenty-first century.new challenges face us. Much has been made of the different polities between the Mennonite Church arid the General Conference Mennonite Church which will need attention if we integrate our two denominations. But the more formidable task we face is how to be a church in a secular society where we no longer can assume the knowledge of Christianity or the reinforcement of our faith in public education, government policies or the media. If the church does not assume responsibility for defining and nurturing a life of discipleship, our members are left to both the vagaries of society and to authoritarian religious bodies all too eager to claim adherents. The Ayatollahs and Jerry Falwells have an allure in a context where identity is unclear because muted structures of authority. In his 1987 Comelius H. Wedel Historical SeAes, Rod Sawatsky writes:

• People will find authority someplace, if not in the right place then in the wrong place, if not in the church then possibly in the state, if not in God then likely in their egoistic selves, if not in orthodoxy then probably in heterodoxy.

Furthemmore the identity of a community must by definition be premised on a common set of assumptions - a common authority. If the authoAty is weak the identity is weak (p. 85).

Can we express an authority in our conferences and congregations that provides a clear identity in a secular world and offers a positve alternative to those for whom life is empty of meaning and for those who are attracted toward competing faith claims? Will our polity continue to affirm the presence of the living Christ leading the church in understanding how to live out the scriptures for our time? That seems to me is our challenge as we approach the 21st century.

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Mennonite Historical Bulletin, July, 1995