from Lynda & Rod Hollinger-Janzen
October 4, 2025
To: Leadership of Mennonite Central Committee
Dear MCC leaders,
We are both alumni of your organization. Our work with MCC directly led to our calling in mission and development work focused on Africa, work that continues to this day. We are grateful for MCC, and for your desire to serve Christ and to contribute to shalom in our world.
We are also aware that not all is well with MCC, particularly in terms of how some of MCC’s own workers have been treated over the last number of years. We have been saddened to learn that MCC fired workers who were suffering and in need of medical care, and then, presented them with an NDA to hide those actions from public view. This appears to be a sign that MCC recognizes that some policies and decisions are causing pain and distress rather than shalom.
MAST (MCC Abuse Survivors Together) has identified 67 individuals who have experienced bad endings and associated trauma at the hands of MCC staff and leadership. We, personally, know of others who have not yet had the courage or energy to speak out. Most of those identified cases have occurred between 2010-2025. This suggests more than occasional problems but points to systemic issues that need healing.
We want to believe that MCC can continue to play a vital and life-giving role in the Mennonite community and beyond as we move into the future. But this is dependent on maintaining the trust of donors, volunteers and other supporters. You have lost our trust, and we have withheld support to MCC, including participation in relief sales. This is unfortunate in a world that desperately needs the services that MCC offers. However, we choose to give to organizations that don’t trample on the rights of some for the benefit of others. “When one part of our body suffers, every part suffers with it “ I Cor. 12:26.
Thus far, MCC appears to be choosing silence and obfuscation rather than transparency and vulnerability. Such an approach may seem prudent now, but it is a result of short-term thinking, and it is an ethically compromised approach that is doing great damage both to MCC and to the victims of abuse.
We urge you as MCC leaders to take concrete steps to re-establish trust by:
initiating an independent, third-party led, victim-centered investigation into all alleged cases of abuse;
accepting the mediation team’s proposed parameters for facilitated conversation with John Clark and Anicka Fast.
The fact that you have not yet taken these actions makes it seem that there is too much unhealthy denial- or fear- in the decision-making process. Are you truly aware of the heavy weight of responsibility you are carrying for the ongoing pain, suffering and trauma of these victims and their families? If, on the other hand, you do not feel that you are responsible for what has happened, and that the accusations of abuse are unfounded, to clear your name, why not agree to a third-party investigation? That will help us all to come to the truth- and we are promised that the truth will set us free.
We have given MAST permission to publish this letter on its website.
We are praying for you, MCC decision-makers, that you will have the courage to respond to this crisis with humility and with a desire to promote healing for all involved.
Lynda and Rod Hollinger-Janzen