Readers Write: August 2024 - Responses to 'Involuntary'

From resigned MCC’ers

 

For 17 of the past 32-plus years, we worked with Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in four countries. MCC was instrumental in forming the values we try to live by today. We are grateful for this. 

 

On our last assignment, during which Dave served as an interim representative (overseeing programing in a country), he was informed that a termination without cause of a local staff person who had worked with MCC for 27 years would take place.

 

We never expected to witness MCC taking what we considered a non-restorative approach to a Human Resources (HR) situation. We felt it did not value "right relationship with God [and] one another," as MCC proclaims. We felt so betrayed that Dave refused to carry out the termination and resigned.

 

Two years later, alarmed by the stories in the open letter from former MCC workers (as reported in “Involuntary: Terminated MCC workers call for accountability and change,” July 2024), we signed the “MCC, stop harming your workers and partners now!” petition, to hold MCC accountable.

 

We were given an ear by senior MCC staff after Dave’s resignation. Sadly, it appears Anicka Fast and John Clarke were not.

 

When we challenged MCC, saying we did not observe restorative justice principles included in their HR policies, MCC eventually acknowledged this and wrote to us privately, stating they were committed to taking this omission into account, though the review would take time. 

 

MCC's practice of limited access to their HR policies is also problematic. Except for their Ethical and Professional Standards, and Whistleblower Policy, their policies are not accessible to a potential employee prior to signing an offer of employment or after termination, and they are not available to the constituency.

 

Ironically, in the Whistleblower Policy, MCC professes “the highest standards of transparency, integrity and accountability.”

 

Other secular organizations find their way. Doctors Without Borders provides a quantitative annual account on their website of reports of abuse and misconduct and their response. Just Outcomes works with organizations to align their HR policies with a restorative approach.

 

For many of our years with MCC, we were in leadership. Reflecting on our full participation in MCC systems gives us pause to consider how we may have caused harm.

 

We pray MCC’s leadership will find it possible to immediately and transparently respond to petitioners' questions.

 

We expect public reports on how restorative justice principles are incorporated into HR policies.

 

- Dave and Mary Lou Klassen, Kitchener, Ontario (Stirling Avenue Mennonite Church) 

 

Pendulum

 

I appreciated the article about Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) and HR concerns (“Involuntary,” June 2024). In my time with MCC, I did not have any negative experiences, but I and other colleagues noticed that MCC was becoming more “professional.” While there were positives in this, workers noticed a reduction in personalization.

 

I felt validated in these concerns as I read the “Involuntary” article and heard my thoughts echoed by Tim Lind.

 

An organization such as MCC needs to be critical when adopting what I would call colonialist, hierarchical business practices in which people do not come first.

 

I wonder if the pendulum needs to swing back and MCC needs to question the inherent power dynamics at play in business-modelled HR departments.

 

I also agree with the warning in the article about MCC becoming an “idol.” An organization must allow itself to be legitimately critiqued.

 

- Tina Fehr Kehler, Winkler, Manitoba ( Emmanuel Mennonite Church)

 

Transparency

 

I believe that MCC management and their dealing with employees need to be transparent to the constituency to whom MCC belongs.

 

The endowment funds that MCC have received seem to me to have had the effect that MCC management is less responsible to the Mennonite Church. I have also experienced what felt like a shunning from management when asking questions about management and Human Resources.

 

- Walter Quiring, Coquitlam, B.C.

 

Accountability

 

I had the immense joy of serving as director of Victim Offender Ministries with Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Canada from 1989 to 1998. This work became an ideal vehicle for my newfound peacemaking commitments.

 

My wife, Esther, and I have been supporters of MCC for many years. During our decade-plus of retirement, we have been greatly privileged to continue work under MCC B.C.’s End Abuse program.

 

However, things changed when the End Abuse program coordinator Elsie Goerzen retired last year. She embodied what we see as the classic MCC leadership style: respectful, embodying “power with” not “power over,” inclusive and collaborative. In our observation, much of that has now gone. The longstanding Advisory Committee disbanded, joint decision-making seems gone and Elsie’s leadership style seems a foreign concept.

 

Given this experience, Esther and I find ourselves at once grieved and gobsmacked by the alleged mistreatment of the former MCC workers mentioned in “Involuntary: Terminated MCC workers call for accountability and change” (July 2024). These sources appear credible to us.

 

In Esther Epp-Tiessen’s 2013 history of MCC Canada, she acknowledged that professionalization of its operation was on an increased mission creep. Perhaps this is not unlike the way early church pacifism was slowly displaced by Realpolitik (pragmatism over values) under Constantine. And of course, the mistreatment that has been alleged is power and control over: Realpolitik violence.

 

Will the MCC leadership, if and/or where it is deemed needed, rise to the challenge and repent, ask for forgiveness, make amends and commit to do no more harm?

 

- Wayne Northey Agassiz, B.C. (Langley Mennonite Fellowship) 

 

Disclosure

 

Recent investigative reporting by Canadian Mennonite has generated some internal distress for me.

 

Without the term being specifically named, it appears to me that MCC uses non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) as a tool for resolving personnel and/or Human Resources issues. While I understand the use of NDAs to protect sensitive product information generated within companies, the MCC circumstances are different.

 

I, and many others, have seen over recent years how NDAs have been used as tools by people or organizations with power to make people with less power be quiet and go away.

 

As a long-time supporter of MCC, and as a former two-term board member of MCC Ontario, I find myself chagrined by the current situation. My wife and I have decided that the bequest to MCC which is in our wills will be held in abeyance until such time as MCC repudiates the use of NDAs to “resolve” personnel or HR issues.

 

- John Finlay, Walkerton, Ontario ( Hanover Mennonite Church)

 

This is adapted and excerpted from a letter sent to the executive directors of MCC Canada and MCC U.S., and copied to Canadian Mennonite. - Eds.

 

A good, brutal people

 

In the ’90s, I was a manager for MCC B.C. I have also observed many friends and family who have served with the agency across the planet. I started a doctorate in organizational behaviour and completed a doctorate in Mennonite history and ethics. With all of that background, I find myself conflicted over the current situation.

 

I have observed instances in which MCC treated people in ways that I considered brutal. In my view, they were using people. I watched that happen to people I cared about.

 

As a manager, I experienced what felt to me like brutality and, much as it pains me to admit it, I contributed to it.

 

From what I know of MCC’s history, it was probably always that way and, to my dismay, I observed MCC making moves that in my view reinforced that approach to its staff, managers, volunteers and associates during my time with the agency.

 

However, as a Mennonite historian and ethicist, it’s also obvious that Euro-descended Mennonites are a relatively brutal people who combine high ideals with strong discipline and intolerance for difference or failure. Why should the organization be different from the people? 

 

Like all such organizational cultures, it tends to take its participants and either turn them into replicants or eject them.

 

On the other side, MCC does amazing work. The culture promotes high ideals, innovation and outcomes competence. I’m proud of the work I did for MCC, even though at the time I could feel and see the brutality. I don’t like the cost-benefit equation—the human costs are very high. On the other hand, there might not be an alternative if we want Mennonites to do good works.

 

- Bruce Hiebert, Abbotsford, B.C. (Langley Mennonite Fellowship)