The sad joy of advocacy: between conversation, silence, and Narnia

You may be wondering what is happening with MAST and allegations about MCC abuse these days. It has been quiet on social media during the summer, but MAST steering committee members have been busy:

• Meeting more survivors (our count is now at 70, including the victim of another very recent abusive and discriminatory termination)

• Organizing awareness-raising with regional Teal Ribbon Campaigns, including at MennoCon (MC USA convention)

• Getting to know new allies

• Featuring as guests on a podcast (more about this soon)

Some of us even met in person this summer for the first time!

For me (Anicka) personally, it has been restful to be a little less involved in heavy advocacy work over the last two months. This is largely because every conversation takes energy and involves a level of pain. There are three categories of conversation that are part of MAST advocacy for me. Each of them affects me in a different way.

1. Conversations with survivors who come forward to MAST to share their stories

Conversations with survivors are painful because of the discouraging revelations of new aspects of abuse. Sometimes this leaves me so shocked it takes days to recover. I recall a conversation a few months ago with someone who informed  me about the involvement of an MCC leader in sexual abuse and major financial fraud. There appears to be no way to safely report the evidence to anyone, given the lack of a safe and credible investigation. Meanwhile, people are getting hurt and funds are getting siphoned away from their intended use. This makes me feel sick. It gets deep into my system and calls forth rage and fear, shock and lament.

I don't rub my hands in glee to discover another aspect of the abuse. Rather, I feel like Jewel the Unicorn in The Last Battle. After being informed that the royal castle, Cair Paravel, has been infiltrated by enemies, he says, “So. Narnia is no more.” That's how I feel about MCC when I hear stories like this.

I have never before experienced so clearly how such contradictory emotions can coexist. I’m aching with grief about an institution I love; I feel rage with its tone-deaf leaders; and yet there is also joy in building connection and solidarity with people who have been feeling alone or ashamed. It’s a sad joy, one that I would prefer to do without. If only there were no other survivors. If only we were the only ones.

2. Conversation with MCC leaders

A second kind of conversation – conversation with MCC leaders – is the most terrifying and the most rare. Although there has been no such conversation yet, we still – perhaps insanely – keep putting effort and time into seeking and requesting one.

John and I invited an MCC board member to hear our concerns before we were even fired. Shortly after our termination in August 2023, we invited representatives of the MCC boards to meet with us in facilitated conversations, and we have not stopped reiterating that invitation. It wasn’t until after other Mennonite organizations got involved and after the publication of our open letter that the boards finally agreed to the facilitated conversations. We hoped to expand the scope of those conversations to include other survivors and to address broader systemic patterns of abuse, but MCC has not agreed to this.

Beginning in November 2024, Mennonite World Conference and Mennonite Mission Network leaders met with John and me to help us articulate parameters for the conversation and agree on facilitators. Facilitators were eventually chosen and MCC signed a contract with them in May 2025, but even with their help  (we’ve met with them four times now, and they have also met with MCC board members), we could not get to agreement with MCC about the parameters.

Eventually, the facilitators stepped in with their own proposal for parameters. We have agreed to these parameters for a conversation which would “focus primarily on the experiences of John and Anicka with MCC” while keeping the door open to “touch on other cases of harm by MCC,” but so far MCC has not. The remaining disagreement centers on whether or not we will be allowed a survivor advocate in the meeting and whether our conversations will be confidential. MCC has so far refused the survivor advocate and insisted on confidentiality; we and the facilitators feel that an advocate should be present and that participants in the conversation (other than the facilitators) should not be required to hold confidentiality because of the importance of transparency.

The work of trying to move this process forward – the emails, the conversations, the reviewing of minutes, the scheduling of conversations with facilitators, the editing of documents – is heavy and exhausting, partly because I don’t honestly know if I can actually face MCC leaders in a conversation. How can I do this without the witness and support of church leaders and MCC stakeholders who can help us by insisting that there is a broader systemic problem and ensuring that the burden of demonstrating this does not rest primarily on our weary shoulders? Why do I keep pushing for a conversation that terrifies me and that has so much potential to be triggering, destructive, and painful?

This summer I briefly got inspired to share a plea with board members, once again asking them in heartfelt language to meet with us and to accept the parameters. It took weeks to be able to articulate my thoughts. Maybe it will make a difference. But is it worth the emotional and mental cost?

3. Conversations with bystanders

A third kind of conversation is perhaps the most painful of all. It is with bystanders who continue to support MCC despite knowing about the allegations. Some of these people used to be friends or colleagues; others are strangers. I never know when I will encounter such a person, and this adds to my feeling of insecurity in public Mennonite spaces.

For example, in August I was visiting a Mennonite congregation in Ontario when someone asked me innocently about the teal ribbon I was wearing. I tried to respond straightforwardly that I was wearing it to protest the mistreatment of workers by MCC. Since the service was starting, I said I'd be happy to share more later.

She cut me off.

“Oh, I know about that.”

Silence.

End of conversation.

I sat through the rest of the service feeling exposed and alone.

I am a member of an MCEC congregation. Although MAST has had some conversation with Canadian regional and national church leaders, and we know some of them have expressed concern to MCC, they have not taken a public stand. They've made no clear statement of support for accountability and/or an external investigation, as have the Western District, Central District and Pacific Northwest conferences of Mennonite Church USA.

Theologian Carol Penner writes that when there is abuse in the church and the perpetrator is unrepentant, the church can provide relief and help to survivors by stating clearly and publicly what is wrong and what is right.[1] But – with some precious exceptions – that is not what most of MCC’s sponsoring denominational leaders are doing right now.

When church leaders stay silent, some church members who are sympathetic don’t feel empowered to speak, while others feel they are being given permission to write off the issue as unimportant or assume that because leaders are silent, the problem must have blown over or gotten resolved. And this betrayal by the church hurts. On some days it even hurts as much, or more than, the betrayal by individual MCC leaders.

What is the point of going out on a limb and exposing MCC’s abuse if the owners of MCC – the churches – are not willing to even insist on a credible investigation to determine if the allegations are founded?

Those, then, are the three kinds of conversations that make up my MAST advocacy work right now. As I participate in them, I feel a combination of sad joy, weary resolve, and dejected betrayal. It's not the conversations with survivors that hurt most. It's the church's silence that wears me out and on bad days comes close to convincing me that indeed, Narnia is no more.

I'm touched by the raw observation of Stephanie Krehbiel in a recent newsletter, where she reflects about the risk of burnout in abuse survivor advocacy work. She notes that even though conversations with survivors in distress are part of what is “supposed to” burn advocates out, what actually burns her out most is interacting with church leaders who are becoming increasingly proficient at protecting themselves from liability for abusive actions while justifying these damage-control efforts with a “theological veneer.”[2] It gets to a point where she wonders why she should keep hoping that church institutions can be capable of “systemic change” that would actually reduce harm – in light of all the evidence that they are actually getting worse, not better, at responding when abuse happens.

And yet I'm also moved by the words of Joanna Harader, who offers a reading of the Canaanite woman's conversation with Jesus (Matthew 15.21-28). This woman persists in her advocacy for her daughter’s healing, even when she is ignored, dismissed, and insulted, essentially saying to Jesus, “You can do better.” She holds him to it. Harader suggests that Jesus’ amazement about this woman’s faith comes from his realization that she has faith in him to “in the end… treat her with love and respect.” Harader concludes that “so many times compassion will win out if we give it just a little time, just a little space to emerge.” And she asks, “Can we have faith in other people to, eventually, do the right thing? Can we remain calm and give them encouragement and space to act out of compassion?”[3]

I hope so. I choose to have this kind of faith in you, dear bystanders, dear church leaders, dear MCC board members who should know better. I choose to hope you will do the right thing in the end. I'm waiting for it. Holding onto that faith is part of what heals me. Yet I’m also telling you that my faith is too precious to be trampled again.

—Anicka Fast (member of MAST steering committee)

[1] Carol Penner, Unburdened : A Lenten Journey Toward Forgiveness (Herald Press, 2024), 174. For valuable trauma-informed worship resources by Carol Penner, see leadinginworship.com.

[2] Krehbiel, Stephanie, “My Hope Is Too Precious for This,” So Sue Me, April 25, 2025, https://buttondown.com/stephaniekrehbiel/archive/my-hope-is-too-precious-for-this/.

[3] Joanna Harader, “A Canaanite Woman Challenges Jesus,” in Prone to Wander: A Lenten Journey with Women in the Wilderness (Herald Press, 2025), 142–43.