Pacific Southwest Mennonite Conference
We are a community of Mennonite congregations across Arizona and California. We are a diverse body, gathering for worship in many languages and coming from all corners of the globe. We are Anabaptist Christians who embrace various expressions of worship and theological points of view - charismatic, evangelical, liturgical, pentecostal and progressive, among others.
Our Mission
Following Jesus, our mission is to create Spirit-filled healing community across boundaries, sharing God’s love, justice, and peace with each other and with our local and global neighbors.
Statements on Current Events
We are deeply grieved by the shooting death of Renee Nicole Good, a citizen who was performing constitutionally protected observation in support of immigrants who have been targeted by ICE.
As people of faith, we are called to lament -- to give public voice to pain, loss, and injustice before God, refusing silence, denial, or false resolution. Theologian Walter Brueggemann reminds us that in lament, suffering is named as real and unacceptable, God is addressed in faithful protest grounded in God’s own commitments, and the world is exposed as something other than it should be, creating space for truth, protest, and the possibility of renewed hope.
A Lament for Renee Nicole Good
O God, we bring before you the blood spilled on a Minneapolis street.
A woman rose that morning to watch, to witness, to stand in the cold.
And now she is gone.
The powers have called evil good and good evil.
They named a poet "terrorist."
They named observation "violence."
They named their bullets "defense."
How long, O Lord, will the lie wear a badge?
We grieve for Renee—mother, writer, watcher.
We grieve for her three children.
We grieve for a community that documented injustice and received death in return.
This death grew from billion-dollar budgets, from reckless commanders pressed to meet quotas, from a system fed on fear until fear became guns.
Remember, O Lord, those who stood before power and named its violence.
Remember Renee, who knew that bearing witness says someone is watching.
We have seen brutal systems give way.
We hope that many witnesses will rise where one was silenced.
In memory of Renee Nicole Good, we lament, we grieve, and we commit ourselves to action.
Amen.
Michael McKeever
Co-pastor, Mennonite Community Church, a PSMC member church
(with feedback and the sanction of PSMC Board members)
January 7, 2026
Non-Violence by Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd, UN headquarters, NY, NY
