MCC boards have ended the facilitated conversations with John Clarke and Anicka Fast prematurely, even as board members in the conversations acknowledge some harm and recognize the need for systemic change.

After three sessions of facilitated conversation (Dec. 3, 10, and 17, 2025) in which John and Anicka began to carefully share their story with two MCC board members, the MCC boards indicated their unwillingness to extend the facilitators’ contract. This meant that the conversations had to wrap up after only two additional sessions, which focused on Q&A with the board members. These final two sessions (Feb. 10 and March 2, 2026) felt much more painful than the first three because John and Anicka no longer felt safe to continue sharing their story after the withdrawal of the commitment to hear them out; the need (on which all parties agreed) to hear some response from the board members to what they had heard so far was in sharp tension with the fact that board members were responding to a very partial and truncated narrative of the events in question. Read on for details and analysis of what was discussed – which included some admissions of wrongdoing by MCC board members and some growing awareness of systemic problems inside MCC – as well as full closing statements from all participants.

‍In late 2025, MAST issued a general call for letters to the MCC US boards ahead of their October meetings in Akron. More than 20 people responded with public letters, urging the boards to (1) commit to an external investigation of all allegations, (2) release survivors from NDAs, and (3) accept the proposed conversation parameters with John Clarke and Anicka Fast.

MAST has learned from a source that the allegations continued to be minimized and dismissed at the board meetings, while discussion focused overwhelmingly on anger that board members’ emails had been leaked.

In the week following the board meetings, the MCC US and Canada national boards agreed to the facilitators’ proposed parameters for a conversation with John and Anicka. And in December, the West Coast MCC board chairs invited another survivor couple, Kathryn and Dan Smith Derksen, to a “listening session” to hear their story. However, MCC has offered no response to the letter-writers’ requests for an external investigation and an end to the use of NDAs.

Overall, MCC’s “listening” continues to be limited in scope and unaccompanied by action for accountability and repair. MCC continues to try to control the timeline and the process of listening to survivors.

A Mennonite congregation has spoken out in order to call MCC to accountability through a listening process that follows stakeholder recommendations and is managed and overseen by a third party, including a “publicly available final report.”

Stirling Avenue Mennonite Church is a congregation of Mennonite Church Canada that has taken time to discern together and write a letter that comes from the entire congregation.

This letter names the fact that “many relationships have tragically been broken” following reports of abuse.

It calls MCC to “turn its vision of Restorative Justice on itself” by “honestly, transparently, and humbly address[ing] the concerns raised by many.”

The letter concludes, “As a Mennonite church, we are committed to walking this journey with you. We urge you to embrace the call to stop and pivot, to go all in, to move at the speed of trust, to seize this moment, and to increase your reach. These are not merely recommendations—they are invitations to live more fully into our shared values of humility, justice, and reconciliation. MCC can embrace this moment as a sacred opportunity for renewal. We pray that MCC will have the courage to lament, to listen, and to be transformed. We stand ready to support you in this sacred work.”

Read on for the full letter.