MCC responds to report of facilitated conversations
“Despite extensive safeguards, intentional efforts to ensure balanced power, and the goodwill of all participants, these facilitated conversations resulted in further harm from MCC to John and Anicka, re-traumatizing them. In our view, this outcome stems from the MCC Board’s failure to engage in trauma-informed practices, inattention to power dynamics, and lack of a culture of accountability.”
Summary statement from Facilitator’s Report
As published on this site previously, Mennonite Central Committee agreed to engage in a set of facilitated conversations with John Clarke and Anicka Fast. Anicka and John requested a meeting with the boards of MCC to speak with them about the termination of their term of service with MCC in Burkina Faso after they were fired with no apparent cause in August 2023. They wrote the boards a detailed, documented explanation of all that had gone on and asked to please be given an audience so that a restorative process could be engaged in for the healing of this seismic crack. The boards did not respond favourably; Anicka and John were not given a hearing. In the following months (autumn 2023) Anicka and John repeated their request on more than one occasion, outlining what needed to be in place to make the conversation a safe space for them to share their story.
Finally, more than two years later, conversations were set up. MCC hired facilitators chosen by John and Anicka who worked to define parameters that both parties could agree to. This proved to be difficult because MCC was unwilling to agree to parameters that would make the conversations as safe as possible.
Following further pressure from MAST and its allies, MCC boards agreed to the parameters and the story could begin to be told. Facilitators Cory Lockhart and Rus Funk led the conversation compassionately, wisely and competently throughout the five sessions that took place via zoom beginning in December 2025. However, before the full story was told, MCC aborted the conversations without giving any reason. Notwithstanding, the facilitators wrote their report and this has been made public [here on the MAST web-site]. MCC responded and their response was published by The Canadian Mennonite and Anabaptist World. They say,
MCC continues to approach the situation with John Clarke and Anicka Fast as workplace conflict rather than abuse. In fall 2025 MCC agreed that two board representatives would join John and Anicka (along with their support people) in a facilitated conversation. The goal was to listen, acknowledge and understand John and Anicka’s perspective on the conflict. Before beginning, everyone agreed to a process designed by the facilitators. We are sorry that the time the facilitators contracted was not used in such a way that five multi-hour meetings were insufficient for listening to John and Anicka’s story.
There was also no space to share MCC’s story in this process, including the perspectives of other people who were harmed in this situation. We lament the trauma experienced by John and Anicka – and by others whose voices have not been heard. John and Anicka have much to offer the broader church and their communites, and we pray God’s blessing on them.
MCC Boards and staff have addressed these concerns internally and externally and legally. While there were ways we failed in timely and clear communication, this situation does not constitute systemic abuse. We are grateful for opportunities to look more broadly at our policies and processes, and we have made numerous changes over the past five years. Those changes have included trainings in being a trauma-informed organization, and clearer processes for reporting and investigating harm.
We covet the prayers of the wider church community – for wisdom and grace – as we continue to care for our staff, partners and program participants in our worldwide ministry.
In a letter to Anabaptist World, Stephanie Krehbiel challenges MCC’s denial that there is systemic abuse within the MCC structure and dealings. Speaking of John and Anicka’s case she says, “The case is symptomatic of abuse. The evidence of systemic abuse is in the totality of the 93 cases that MCC Abuse Survivors Together (MAST) has meticulously documented. That number keeps climbing.”
In a letter to Canadian Mennonite Julene Fast expresses distress that when presented with failure and wrongdoing, MCC typically responds with denial and dismissal. Instead they choose to highlight their track record of good behaviour. She writes, “When MCC leadership comments on the report, they speak of their generosity in allowing for five sessions of conversations and blames the insufficient time for listening on the facilitators. As the facilitators point out in the publicly available report,... a significant reason that this process took as long as it did was because of the Boards’ reluctance to agree to parameters.’”
In another letter to Anabaptist World, Lynda and Rod Hollinger-Janzen agree with Stephanie Krehbiel that the abuse suffered by Anicka and John is symptomatic of broader systemic issues. They state that “if MCC participates in uncovering the unjust and un-Christlike practices that exist in the organization, MCC would better preserve their reputation than through the slow, insidious erosion that is currently taking place as some former supporters are withholding their contributions.”
Nowhere in MCC’s response can one hear a contrite heart – a heart that has heard the well-supported and firmly stated critique of it’s actions. MCC chooses not to speak to the core issues presented by the facilitators of the conversation. The short concise summary statement at the beginning of the facilitator’s report (cited above) should have been enough to get the whole of MCC’s leadership hurrying to find their way to a deep humility that seeks to repent, to pivot and to begin the long road of accountability.