“Church and School: Compañeros in Growing People of Faith in the Anabaptist-Mennonite Brethren (MB) Tradition.”

“Church and School: Compañeros in Growing People of Faith in the Anabaptist-Mennonite Brethren (MB) Tradition.”

Presenter: Alfred Neufeld, Evangelical University of Paraguay

Summary: Neufeld summarizes a great many of the forces and ideas that are at work in the church-school partnership of forming people of God. Part of his concern is to address a growing anti-intellectualism by reminding us of important voices from the last century who have shaped theology and theologians such as himself. The theological fundamentals of the church-school partnership lists a short but powerful 6 thoughts relevant to the issue. These thoughts could be an agenda for ongoing developments in our mission as a movement. The conclusion lists values we as a movement might consider as underpinning theses for our enterprise. Neufeld’s paper asks a core critical question that pertains to our ultimate objective: does/should our enterprise impact our social surroundings? He would say yes.

Introduction

Looking back upon our short 150 year MB history, it comes to me that some strange paradigm shifts have been taking place lately. I might simplify and exaggerate a bit, but bear with me on the following five intriguing observations. We seem to have been a revival movement that lately again has moved from one place to another:

- From Christian ecumenism to apologetic anti-ecumenism.
- From pioneering the Christian school and Higher Education idea to skepticism about the Christian mission of academics.
- From conference-covenant community (‘Bundesgemeinde’) to the autonomy and priority of the local church and congregation.
- From team leadership with a rather anti-clerical mood to senior pastor licensed professionalism.
- From renewal of Anabaptist identity (new Spirit for the house of Menno) toward skepticism about Anabaptist radical perspectives among MB’s.

MB’s have been pioneers of contextual theology (Paul Hiebert, Hans Kasdorf). But they often have fallen into the two pitfalls of being or too reactionary (rebaptism by immersion; radical ban on alcohol) or too uncritical about their surrounding environment (abandoning Anabaptism in favor of modern common sense Evangelicalism).

The topic given to me involves three key concepts or assumptions:

a. Church and school can be partners.
b. The common goal of these two institutions is to ‘grow people of faith’.
c. There is something we rightly might call an Anabaptist Mennonite Brethren tradition.

Each of these three assumptions again involves a large field of possible debates and questions: church and schools should be partners, but have they really been so in the past? What kinds of workable models do we have available to make this partnership happy, successful, efficient, and in deep love with each other?

‘Growing people of faith’ again involves at least three assumptions:

- The whole Christian experience of conversion and discipleship can be theologically summarized in the word ‘growing’.
- The goal is to form a people. Although evangelism and education have as their main subject and object the individual, we want the outcome of both efforts to be sociological: the ability to live as people of God.
- People of faith can just mean what the original Greek term ‘pistis’ means: people of obedience, people who have handed over confidently their lives to the control of someone else, people who like Moses left Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger. It is said of him: ‘He persevered because he saw him who is invisible’ (Heb.11:27).

I. Brainstorming at our Faculty Meeting’s Leadership Team FAHCE/FALEVI about Relationship of Church and School

1. Jenny - Librarian: The church and the school ‘both have to function organically as a body and reflect the body of Christ’.
2. Chris – Coordinator English Department: Like with the Ingalls family (Little House on the Prairie) and in the Old Mennonite villages the same building and atmosphere is school during the week and church on Sunday.
3. Carlos – Student Pastor: School and church operate with the same Christian principles. They aim to produce change in lifestyle, change in cultural paradigms proposing a ‘Christian counter-culture’.
4. Mechi – Coordinator Department of Education: School is a support and an extension of church. Together with the family those three constitute the educational community.
5. Leidy – Administrative Secretary: The school should give continuity to the values held by the family.
6. Maia - Academic Secretary: Church and school both point towards formation of character.
7. Rodrigo – Vice Coordinator English Department: Although Jesus was a teacher and Rabbi, the different roles of church and school should not be mixed up too much.
8. Roland – Administrative Director: School and church grew out of the Synagogue tradition. School and church should operate according to the same logic.
9. Yamili - Psychologist/Human Resources: School and Church have the same purpose to restore the imago dei.
10. María Angélica – Coordinator Department of Social Work: School and church work towards transformation of social realities.

II. Basic Theological Issues involving the Church/School Partnership

Some theological dialectics require from us an ability to stretch and to hold in creative tension things that need to be together. Approaching the topic of education there are at least five sets of dual dynamics:

1. The dual dynamics of conversion and discipleship
2. The dual dynamics of creation care and creator worship
3. The dual dynamics of church ethics and public ethics
4. The dual dynamics of first creation and new creation
5. The dual dynamics of Christ and culture revisited: kingdom dialysis
6. The dual dynamics of the cross: victor quia victima

III. Redefining the Anabaptist and MB ‘Tradition’

There is still an ongoing debate in the community of scholars about the essence of the Anabaptist dissent of 1525 as well as about the essence of the MB dissent in 1860. But there is no question that both moments of breaking with tradition emerged from the strong desire to renew and reform all of the Christian church in the 16th century and all of South Russian Mennonitism in the 1860s.

In the case of MBs it is quite easy to see that their vision of renewal would be materialized by two ways: through evangelism and through the Christian school movement. Evangelism would result in conversions and in congregations of true believers and followers of Jesus; the Christian school movement would take the place of the old ‘Lehrdienst’, but open up minds and hearts to a change of lifestyle, to an openness toward Russian culture and to a more democratic and congregational way of handling church matters.

In ICOMB as well as in the MWC there has been strong academic work lately on our theological identity. The Shared Convictions, the ICOMB Confession of Faith, and two draft papers by the Faith and Life Commission are redefining the ‘Anabaptist tradition’ and seek to extend the Anabaptist identity to the four elements that shall unite our global community: fellowship, worship, service, and witness. In the three appendixes following I partly reproduce the three documents and suggest that they also can serve as foundation for a church/school partnership.

IV. A Mosaic of Memories

I’m not very good at narrative theology. But all of my theological work is profoundly biographical and contextual. Whatever I have to say has grown out of interaction with friends, readings, specific situations and historical contexts.

1. Manfred Siebald was my favorite songwriter-singer in the early 70s. Thanks to the newly invented tape recorder, far away in the Filadelfia Chaco bush, we were able to listen to the ‚Oh Happy Day‘ of the Edwin Hawkin singers and to the new songs for the legendary ‘Christival’ Christian youth festivals in Germany. Siebald wrote the lead song ‘Gott lädt uns ein zu seinem Fest‘, the very strong theological statement „Können wir heute schon feiern und tanzen, hat sich schon was getan? Ja, denn Gott will die Erde erneuern und fängt bei uns schon an” captured my memories and sounds in my ear till today: „Yes, we can start celebrating and dancing already today, because things are moving. God is renewing the earth and he starts with us.”

2. Wolfgang Vorländer, Federico Pagura: When we wrote the ICOMB Confession of Faith, Lynn Jost and I worked hard to introduce the eschatological hope as kind of ‘Leitmotiv’. For the first part (How God works in the world) as well as for the second part (where we covenant to be a ‘people of hope’). In my personal pilgrimage I even titled my book on an Introduction to theology ‘Vivir Desde el Futuro de Dios’ – Living in the light of God’s future’. Wolfgang Vorländers book ‘Gelebte Hoffnung’ and Federico Paguras famous ‘Tango of hope’ keep impacting me. We should learn from the Hebrews, and once in a while read our Bibles from the back to the front, or even better, from the future to the past, from Revelations 22 to Genesis 1.

3. Francis Schaeffer and Luis Lutzbetak: Hans Kasdorf introduced me to Lutzbetak’s revolutionary new concepts of culture as ‘design for living’ and as ‘mental roadmap.’ Francis Schaeffer in Switzerland impacted us with his profound conviction: People act the way they think. Ever since then I have believed in the primate of cultural ‘programation’, and humans’ everyday behavior and decision making.

4. Johannes Reimer and Miroslav Volf: I will never forget the first time I heard Miroslav Volf in London in the 90s and bought his book ‘Exclusion and Embrace’. And recently longstanding MB evangelist Johannes Reimer surprised us with his latest book ‘Embracing the World’. Both make a very strong point: that we are called to embrace those people who do not yet love the God of the Bible and the Lord of the church.

5. John H.Yoder: John H. has intrigued me again and again with his wonderful and masterly achieved integration of the Barth/Bonhoeffer reformed theology and Anabaptist community of believer’s approach. His conviction, that church ethics is public ethics, and that what is good for the church is good for the world, keep challenging our Mennonite preference to avoid the public light, to be happy in our ethno/religious colonies and identity, and out of convenience love to be ‘die Stillen im Lande’.

6. Werner Franz: Ever since our common years at the Filadelfia ‘Mennonitisches Lehrerseminar’ with Werner Franz and Victor Wall we have been searching for a renewal of the Christian school idea from a Mennonite perspective. Werner’s recent University of Wales doctoral thesis on Yoder’s ‘Body Politics’ church practices applied to business also can be very fruitful for our search to do school in an Anabaptist understanding of the priority of the church paradigms as metrics for our presence in the world.

7. Dieter Giesbrecht: Finally an MB theologian takes up the very daring, but modern topic of deaconal theology. In his recent Leewen doctoral thesis, longstanding friend and colleague Dieter analyzes Mennonite ‘diakonische Werke’ in Paraguay. He links Christian schools to the deaconal mandate of the church.

8. August Hermann Francke Schule/ Berthold Maier: With Berthold we studied together in Basel in the late 70s. At that time the Christian school movement in Germany was practically nonexistent. Berthold wrote his main paper on August Hermann Francke and was convinced, that his lifelong call would be to begin a Christian school movement in Frankes, Germany. The more than 100 new schools, that with his assistance emerged in the last 30 years, including among the Mennonite ‘Rückwanderer’, today have an unsuspected missional and ethical impact in this very secularized country. And the most surprising fact is that the government sponsors the largest part of the operating costs.

9. Fernheims Schulfilosofie/ Concordia Asunción Schulfilosofie: In my home colony Fernheim the more or less Christian civil colony authorities were in charge of the school system (Schulrat, allgemeine Schulbehörde). In Asunción our local MB and GC Concordia congregations founded the church based Concordia School. Both institutions wrote, and are rewriting permanently their school philosophy. Three foundational elements prevail: a. God is creator of all, is also the author of art and science.
b. School is an extension of the family mandate to educate.
c. Goal of a Christian school is a theocentric world view and a life that pleases God.

10. MB Mission schools – Albert Schweitzer, Gutenberg: Our MB conference operates by now three ‘mission schools’. The two driving forces here are church planting, evangelism, and Christian social responsibility. The schools are successful, but the results on the three goals are rather weak, and we are in a process to refocus.

11. Karl Barth versus G. F. Lessing: – ‚Offenbarung versus Erziehung.’ While studying in Basel and later in Fresno under the influence of Howard Loewen, who did his doctoral work on Karl Barth, the theology of grace and revelation, the impact and the ‘unendlich qualitative Unterschied’, the strong critique on Lessing and Schleiermacher and their project of the ‘Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts’ impacted me profoundly. Ever since then I keep wondering what it means to understand, that the church is a miracle of grace and not an educational project or institution.

12. The Fresno Pacific College Idea: In good tradition with the Christian college movement the ‘Pacific College idea’ defined that there is “unity of all knowledge under God, and the correlate that there can be ‘no ultimate contradiction between the truth of revelation and of scholarly investigation” (Toews, 1995, p.56). Nevertheless Delbert Wiens warns us that “the typical model of the ‘Christian college’ has been so deeply shaped by the Enlightenment version of the tree of good and evil that only a very profound rebaptism can reestablish its Christian relevance in a post-modern world” (Ibid. p.57).

13. Juancito Sieber - Impressions from Patagonia: Mennonite Church in the Southern part of Argentina is living a moment of remarkable renewal, similar to what MB’s experienced in Southern Russia in the 1860s. When I spent a week with them February 2011 in Chuele Chuel and Neuquen, I was impressed to see that church planting, social assistance and development, and a strong school movement are three simultaneous fruits of the spiritual and charismatic Argentinean renewal of the Anabaptist vision. Juan Sieber, conference president, promoted a new mission effort towards the Southern city of Wiedma, saying: “We have to go there so people will see how one lives the culture of the kingdom of heavens.” Church and school united, to make visible to society the values, paradigms and codes of the kingdom of God.

14. Sarmiento – How to learn democracy: 2011 is marked in Paraguay by the celebration of 200 years of independence. There has been a great desire for democracy, but a tragic absence of it. Nicanor Duarte Frutos in 2008 was the first democratic president willing to hand over power to the opposition party without blood shedding or revolution in these 200 years. The great Argentinean educator Sarmiento has been quoted again and again in this celebration, saying: “If people are the sovereign power of the nation, then let us educate the sovereign” (‘eduquemos al soberano’). From a Christian perspective, who educates for democracy?
15. Missions-theology for media: For the last decade I have been theological advisor and president of our conference board for media ministries. Four radio stations, an open TV station, missions through cell phone and Facebook are part of the challenge. It seems to me fair to affirm that media might be as powerful an educational factor as church, family, and school. How to be present in media with a strong belief that the church is God’s medium to communicate to the world, and even more, to make clear that the church not only delivers a message, but that ‘the medium is the message’.

16. Johannes Harder - ‚Aufbruch ohne Ende‘: I remember reading almost in one night during a teaching week at Bienenberg, Basel, the life memories of the legendary and picturesque Johannes Harder. Ever an educator, poet, novelist, the ‘Mennonitisches Jahrbuch’ editor was maybe the only German Mennonite really committed to the ‘Kirchenkampf and the ‘Bekennende Kirche’ during Nazi-Germany’s 30s and 40s. He also was the personal spiritual father to the later German ‚Bundespräsident‘ Johannes Rau, and controversial peace activist at the ‘Ostermarsch’ 1968 (“Im Land der Brüder Grimm regieren heute die Grimmigen”). This unadapted, unorthodox searcher for Anabaptist authenticity in culture, politics, and education keeps intriguing me.

17. Paul Mininger – MWC 1952 – What is Christian education? It is impressive how 50 years ago MWC already focused on Mennonite schools in their relation to the church: The goal of Christian Education is to form‘freie Menschen in Christus’, die in allen ihren Beziehungen in der menschlichen Gesellschaft den Willen Christi bezeugen” (Bender, 1953, p.320). Then he develops six specific goals for a human being marked by Christian Education:
a. His original nature is being transformed (umgestaltet) through the grace of God by a relationship of faith with the living Christ.
b. His life is marked by a complete surrender to the lordship of Christ, and his one declared goal is to do the will of God in the world.
c. His life is energized and strengthened by agape which comes from God through Christ.
d. He is willing to participate in a vivid and effective way in the work and fellowship of the redeeming congregation (Erlösungsgemeinde).
e. He persistently presents to the world God’s message of agape, giving testimony of the gospel and the life of the church.
f. He is willing, according to his gifts, to contribute to the cultural life of human society, making clear in all his doings, that ‘Jesus Christ is Lord’.

18. Helmut Isaak – Menno Simons and the New Jerusalem: Far too late finally the unconcluded Amsterdam doctoral dissertation of Helmut Isaak has been published. It makes clear what long has been suspected, that Menno, contrary to Schleitheim, envisioned a society and even political authorities completely identified and co- penetrated with the values of the kingdom of God and the presence of the New Jerusalem. “… a ‘Mennonite nation’ was a practical impossibility for Menno and his followers in the Netherlands, even though it seemed to remain a hoped for theoretical possibility for Menno, to the end of his life” (Isaak, 2006, p.107).

19. Hans-Jürgen Goertz – heavenly flesh and the possibility of holiness: Our semi-heretical Mennonite legacy, that we follow Jesus in holiness, has been well elaborated by Hans-Jürgen Goertz. Nevertheless he thinks that Menno correctly emphasized the ‘Rechtfertigmachung’ over against Luther’s ‘Rechtfertigung des Sünders aus Gnaden allein’. Goertz summarizes Menno’s understanding of redemption: “Der Mensch werde geläutert, die Macht der Sünde wird in seinem Inneren gebrochen, so dass er ein Leben im Glauben gegenüber dem Willen Gottes führen könne..... Die Täufer bemühten sich zu werden, wie Jesus war.” (Brücke, Nr. 3, 2011, p.30).

20. John Roth - Teaching That Transforms: Why Anabaptist-Mennonite Education Matters: Timely newly appointed MWC Faith and Life Secretary and Goshen College Professor and Editor of MQR brings us a book, which takes in good Mennonite tradition the model of incarnation as ´Leitmotiv´ of what church and school are called to do and to be in the world.

V. Theological fundamentals for the Church/School Partnership

Evaluating my own mosaic of memories, remembering our Anabaptist and MB heritage, and learning to hold dialectical issues together in creative tension, I would like to propose the following five theological groundings for the church/school partnership:

1. The church has a mission
It is God’s mission, the mission originated in the heart of God Father and God Creator, extending to the whole world and to all of creation. It is a mission of love and a mission of discipleship, redeeming love and redeeming discipleship. It is a mission which models itself after Christ’s way of incarnation, and Christ’s way of obedient ‘kenosis’, abandoning heaven and identifying with the culture of Galilee, bringing Christian counter-culture to religious Jerusalem. Christ Rabbi chose the pedagogics of discipleship by calling people out of their status quo and walking with them into the new culture of kingdom ethics.

God’s mission is his way to bring about his kingdom like the miracle of the mustard seed. Kingdom codes and kingdom values are contextualized in the ‘dialysis model’, where the church acts like a purifier and invigorator of the blood of the cultural body of society.

2. Humanity is called to ‘a life that pleases God’
Our Anabaptist heritage calls for those saved by grace to assume their new identity: ‘…created in Christ Jesus for good works which God has prepared beforehand for us to walk in them’ (Eph.2:10). The very crucial contribution of Anabaptism, and in that sense ‘neither Catholics nor Protestants’ were a conviction that the redeemed are able to ‘do the will of God’. Not always, not without grace, not without forgiveness, repentance and humbleness. But kingdom ethics is doable: they are meant to be teachable and doable. The new society of the redeemed is meant to be visible.

3. Family, social governance and economic wellbeing also matter to God
Mennonites have never developed a strong doctrine of the ‘four mandates.’ But from Calvin to Bonhoeffer Protestant theology has been aware that God’s reign also includes the dynamics of family life, of economics, and of social order. Even more so: while the central scope of salvation history is what Christ did on the cross for lost sinners, it might be fair to say that the biblical narratives in their vast majority cover topics of family, economy, and social order.

For an adequate view of the character and nature of God and his saving intervention in the history of humanity, it’s necessary to keep in mind what the Psalmist says in Ps.138:8: ‘You will not abandon, oh Lord, the work of your hands’ and in Ps.145:9: ‘The Lord is good to all; he has compassion to all he has made.’ Solid theology needs this overall view: Christ is not only priest to reconcile us with God, he is also the prophet, who teaches us how to live, and he is the king, who rules over all and brings about new creation. And the kingdom of God extends to the church, but also involves mandates for family, social economy, and political order.

I would propose to see church and school united in teaching all that is implicit to the three offices of Christ and the four mandates which the kingdom of God extends towards human existence.

4. People act the way they think
The incredible vigor and abundance of data that the new signs of cultural anthropology produced in the 20th century cannot be ignored, when we redefine the joint mission of church and school. Our every-day-life, our values in ethics, our behavior and our priorities – all that is dictated by the cultural programming our tradition and our social environment has installed into our minds and hearts. It is fair to say that culture is the absolute primate of human behavior. And consequently it’s correct to say that the good news of Jesus Christ impacts first of all our cultural mindset, our ‘mental roadmap’, our ‘design for living’. Now conversion and discipleship – the experience to be born again by the Spirit of God and the experience to learn to walk in all of his mandates, both on an operative level – impact our individual and our social culture.

Conversion and baptism are the ‘initiation rites’ to access God’s new society pioneered by the church. School officially has the mandate to initiate pupils and students into society. But a Christian school will be united with the mission of the church to introduce people to the concepts and paradigms of God’s new society.

5. Salvation history aims at the New Jerusalem
Menno was convinced that the New Jerusalem begins and ends on earth. Hans-Jürgen Goertz even goes so far to say that Menno kept looking for his own kind of ´Kaiser Konstantin’ and an authentic ‘christliche Obrigkeit’, who would renounce sword and violence and search for Christian ways to bring about a New Jerusalem of justice and peace (Brücke, ibid, p.30-31). For Menno, an Anabaptist renewal of society and his priority of ‘Busse, Wiedergeburt und Gemeinde’ are conceived as complementary and not as contradictional.

So far, churches as well as schools are of unsuspected political relevance. The New Jerusalem is nothing else than the result, definite and glorious, of the Lord’s Prayer: ‘Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth’. And this prayer has present and eschatological relevance. We must be careful to resist Aristotelian logic with its ‘excluded middle’ and very damaging polarization of a simplistic either-or logic: the kingdom of God is either present or it’s future. Our ICOMB Confession of Faith has maybe best captured among all Mennonite Confessions the eschatological tension of the kingdom of God – present and future.

6. The way of the cross

-The cross is a healing-place
-The cross is a reconciling-place
-The cross is a place of family-restoration
-The cross is a place of liberation
-The cross means triumph over evil

Church and school are partners in betting on the foolishness of the cross.

In our long Anabaptist and short MB history we have known a range of realities: power abuse in leadership, naïve cultural conservativism, unbiblical retirement from the world, ridiculous public behavior due to lack of education, and lack of access to academic intellectual and artistic formation. But there has also been lots of truth to the popular saying: ‘Je gelehrter, desto verkehrter’. We have to admit, that for example in the 30s best educated Russian Mennonites and MB’s like Prof. B.H.Unruh, Dr. Fritz Kliewer and Dr. Walther Quiring were unable to diagnose the intellectual shallowness, the ethical misery, and the diabolic ideology behind National Socialism.

Today more than one academic friend is tempted to leave our MB identity or even the Mennonite church because he feels there is no room for educated and critical minded intellectuals. That wasn’t the case 50 years ago. That is a topic needed to be addressed with urgency.

Conclusion

To church and school, masters of the culture of the kingdom of heaven:

1. We need to enlarge our concept of conversion: sanctification and discipleship are part of the conversion process.
2. We need to enlarge our concept of evangelism: evangelization of the culture is part of our evangelistic mandate.
3. We need to enlarge our concept of the church: there is church outside of our congregational structures.
4. We need to enlarge our concept of the kingdom of God: God is to be glorified through all of creation.
5. We need to enlarge our concept of salvation: a saved heart and a saved mind are evidenced by every-day-life and by perspectives on every-day-matters.
6. Church and school are partners in betting on the foolishness of the cross. The message is the same. The difference is the amount of time.
7. Cultural dialysis for the kingdom of God requires time.

Bibliography:
Bender, H.S. (ed.), Die Gemeinde Christi und ihr Auftrag. Vorträge und Verhandlungen der Fünften Mennonitischen Weltkonferenz 1952. Karlsruhe: Buchdruckerei Heinrich Schneider, 1953.
Bosch, David J., Transforming Mission. Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. Mary Knoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1991.
Die Brücke. Täuferisch-Mennonitische Gemeindezeitschrift. Nr. 3/2011. AMG (ed.), Stutensee.
Isaak, Helmut., Menno Simons and the New Jerusalem. Kitchener: Pandora Press, 2006.
Pöhlmann, Horst Georg., Abriss der Dogmatik. Ein Kompendium. 5. Auflage. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1990.
Rindzinski, Milka y Martínez, Juan Francisco (eds.), Comunidad y misión desde la periferia. Ensayos en celebración de la vida y ministerio de JUAN DRIVER. Buenos Aires: Kairos, 2006.
Toews, J.B., Pilgrimage of Faith. The Mennonite Brethren Church in Russia and North America 1860-1990. Winnipeg/Hillsboro: Kindred Press, 1993.
Toews, Paul (ed.), Mennonite Idealisms and Higher Education. The story of the Fresno Pacific College Idea. Fresno: Center for Mennonite Brethren Studies, 1995.

Appendix 1

MWC – Faith and Life Commission position paper
On the meaning of the Anabaptist tradition
(Hans Peter Jecker/John Roth- second draft)

VISION: Mennonite World Conference is called to be a communion (Koinonia) of Anabaptist-related churches linked to one another in a worldwide community of faith for fellowship, worship, service, and witness.

I. Preliminary Observation
“Those who do not know where they came from can easily end up somewhere else.” Throughout Scripture God repeatedly confronts his people with this insight: If you want to reach the promised land, then remember the path in which God has led you until now (Deut. 8:1-2). This look back to your own history with God fosters courage and confidence; but it also helps to orient and focus on the intended goal. The parable of the talents (Mt. 25) invites us to ask ourselves as Anabaptist congregations, what sort of insights and convictions have been entrusted to us as a treasure from our history, and what things should we readily toss aside in exchange for others.
In the choir of Christian voices who will give expression to that which has been granted to us? Could it be that certain important biblical perspectives have not yet been heard in the world simply because the fellowship whom God has entrusted with them does not nurture, develop or know to appreciate those gifts?! Could it be that even the “Anabaptist tradition,” with all of its weaknesses, holds within itself precisely these treasures, which are not to be buried but rather are meant to be developed?....

II……..

III. Central Theological Themes
“The” Anabaptists, as such, never existed. The movement was always colorful and multifaceted. Nevertheless, over time several central themes have emerged. These form the core of what can be called the “Anabaptist tradition,” which has steadily proven its relevance through the centuries and across geographical space. “Test all things; hold fast that which is good!” (I Thess. 5:21) – this will be the on-going task of MWC member churches in light of the following proposed central themes of the “Anabaptist tradition.”
1. The voluntary nature of faith and church membership:
- The practice of voluntary believer’s baptism follows from a rejection of obligatory infant baptism.
- A refusal to obey any government-imposed church attendance, or participation in worship or the Lord’s Supper.
- The call for the freedom of faith and conscience for oneself and for others leads to a rejection of every form of coercion in matters of faith and church membership.
2. The pursuit of an authentic personal faith:
- Receiving or accepting salvation does not happen through the mediation of the church, nor through the sacraments, nor through a simple affirmation of “justification by grace” or through belief based on the pure letter of Scripture, but rather through a personal encounter with God, a change of heart and a subsequent transformation of life, all made possible by the spirit of God.
- The point of departure for this is a refusal to assume Christian identity as a given; therefore, the call to repentance and faith and to Christ-centered discipleship is central.

3. The creation [building up] of “free church” congregations, independent from the state:
- God and His Kingdom are worthy of the highest loyalty in all questions of faith and life.
- In light of the competing claims to priorities, a critical, discerning distance over against the attempts of earthly “principalities and powers” (nation, culture, spirit of the times, etc.) to seize control is absolutely crucial.
4. The creation [building up] of local congregations in fraternal relationships:
- in a community of voluntary believers no one has everything; but everyone has something;
- the acknowledge of every person’s incompleteness requires the creation of structures in which the gifts of the individual can contribute to the wellbeing of the whole (for example, in biblical interpretation or in reaching decisions).
- This leads to the valuing and prizing of the “the least of these,” but also to sharing of burdens and the correction of the “strong”.
- Mutual encouragement and admonition are the foundations for pursuing a collective process of decision-making, conflict resolution and for becoming a forgiving—as well as a forgiven—community.
5. “Fruits of Repentance”:
- The visible and practical consequences of faith are important also for those outside the community; they are the expression of thanks for that which has been received.
- A consistency of word and deed supports the integrity of one’s position.
- Wherever the “fruit of repentance” encounters resistance as an expression of Christian discipleship, we must turn to Christ for civil courage and fortitude in nonconformity, as well as for compassion to others.
- “Fruits of repentance” also includes a transformed attitude toward people outside one’s own community: transparent solidarity with, and support for, the needs of others is crucial—first for those within the congregation, but also beyond it as well, even including one’s own enemies. “Seek the welfare of the city!” (Jer. 29).
-“Fruits of repentance” in Christian discipleship definitely also includes a transformed relationship to war and power: in the history of the Anabaptists the rejection of the oath and military service, as well as a refusal to support the death penalty, have often become some of the most important characteristics of their witness to the faith.

IV. The Flipside of the Coin: Weaknesses and Deficits
1. The Anabaptist emphasis on the voluntary nature of faith has sometimes led to an over-emphasis on human works. One’s own individual “yes” to God can become more important than God’s “yes” to humans. It is sometimes easy to forget that long before the human word of response to God stands the Word of God.
2. The Anabaptist courage that led to non-conformity has sometimes carried within itself a tendency to a “know-it-all” attitude, a notorious impulse to divisiveness, and to a “retreat from the world” into pious ghettos.
3. The Anabaptist emphasis on the “fruits of repentance” can also occasionally express itself as a tendency to an elitist posture, to debilitating forms of works-righteousness, and to ungracious expressions of legalism.
4. The high moral and ethical expectations of the Anabaptists have occasionally fostered a tendency to dishonesty and hypocrisy, to a pretense of personal piety, to an ungracious and debilitating self-deception, and to a denial of one’s own failures and shortcomings.
5. The Anabaptist readiness to suffer has sometimes led to bitterness vis-a-vis the government and society and occasionally finds expression in “traumatized” attitudes of fear, despair and timidity that are still noticeable today.
6. The Anabaptist emphasis on the local congregation and an uncompromising zealous grasp on biblical truth of scripture have sometimes led to a narrow perspective on the larger totality of the church of Jesus Christ. According to the plea of Jesus in John 17, the struggle for truth in his church should not happen apart from a struggle for unity as well.

V. Conclusions
Light and Shadows – this characterizes the distinctive history and theology of the Anabaptist movement. Several of the emphases noted above as present from the beginning have persisted until today with on-going relevance and impact. And some of the themes inspired by the “Anabaptist tradition” are assessed today in various ways, both by members of Anabaptist-Mennonite churches as well as by those outside the tradition. But when we consider ourselves as a global Anabaptist-Mennonite fellowship, in which each perspective is inevitably partial, then this could actually free us—both internally as well as in dialogue with other churches—to regard the differences of others not as a threat but as a useful supplement, and to accept these differences gratefully as an invitation to conversation and as an opportunity to reflect more carefully on our own convictions.

Appendix 2

A Holistic Understanding of Fellowship, Worship, Service, and Witness from an Anabaptist Perspective.
A theological grounding for the four standing commissions of MWC:
Peace, Mission, Faith and Life, and Deacons Commission
Alfred Neufeld, Addis Ababa, Taipei (third draft)
On the “Anabaptist Tradition”:
1. The “Anabaptist tradition” is a historical movement, rooted in the 16th century Radical Reformation, of how to contextualize the Bible’s apostolic and prophetic legacy lived out by the early church. Tradition is a historic witness of moments of renewal and contextualization, a dynamic in need of permanent perpetuation.
2. The 16th century Radical Reformation, based on a continuum with the historic medieval church and triggered by the Protestant Reformation, aimed to restore the church to a believer’s community, an ethic of love, and a Christian existence based on discipleship to Jesus. It understood the Christian church as the visible expression (body of Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit) of God’s character, plan, and presence in creation, moving, by the in breaking of God’s kingdom toward new creation.
On Fellowship (koinonia):
3. God’s saving intervention in the world is summarized by the word ‘reconciliation’ through the cross. ‘For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility . . . creating in himself one new humanity… thus making peace, and in his one body to reconcile both to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility’ (Eph 2:14-16). The peace of God, the reconciling work of Christ, and the new birth through the Spirit make possible Christian fellowship in the church, as well as peace which transcends the borders of the church and permeates the world.
4. The peace work and the peace witness of the church are based on God, who made us equal in creation and adopted us, in redemption, into God’s family, as well as on the way of Christ, who loved and blessed his enemies, and on the freedom of the Holy Spirit who makes possible the repentance of sin (2 Cor 3:17; Jn 16:8). Human institutions like social class, religion, nationality, economics and culture shall not produce “dividing walls of hostility”; rather the cross of Christ must “put to death their hostility.”
On Worship (liturgia):
5. Worship is the appropriate response of creation to honor the Creator and Redeemer, until time gives way to eternity.
6. The church expresses worship in deeds and words:
a. The words are used to praise God for his wisdom in creation, his holiness in character, his righteousness in judgment, and his loving mercy, while sustaining and redeeming the works of his hand. Worship is expressed by narrating God’s salvific story with humankind and with his chosen people. The church worships God by articulating, confessing, and making understandable for every generation who God is and what God is doing in the world, and it defines the condition and calling of humanity. The church does this in the spirit and written legacy of the apostles and prophets.
b. As important as words are deeds to praise and worship God, living out the life of Christ as his body. ‘In the same way let your light shine before man, that they may see your good deeds and praise your father in heaven’ (Mt 5:16). Practice and reflection both are liturgical activities and theological work commanded of God’s people (Ps.1:2-3).
On Service (diaconia):
7. Christ, our master, is our model for service leadership. By washing the feet of his companions (Jn 13:14), he was teaching and practicing, that authentic greatness is found in service (Mt 20:26; 23:11). The apostles urged the church to appoint deacons “full of the Spirit and wisdom” (Acts 6:3) in order to cover together adequately the need for prayer, proclamation, and service (Acts 6:4).
8. Christian service fulfills the great commandment of love (Lev 19:18; Mt 19:19; 1 Cor 13), and strives to bring justice, mercy and humbleness to a broken world (Mi 6:8). Jesus praised the merciful Samaritan over against the religious activities of the priest and the Levite. Christian service always is anchored in the lordship of Christ who as returning king in the Last Judgment tells us that we serve him by serving the most needy (Mt 25:31-40).
On Witness (martyria):
9. The church is God’s prophet and proclaimer in the world. As chosen people and body of Christ ‘before the watching world’ every disciple, congregation and the global church is called to bear witness to God’s salvation and his kingdom.
10. Being the missional and apostolic church of Christ, partaking in God’s mission and in the in-breaking of God’s kingdom into the darkness of an unredeemed world, means a willingness to sacrifice and to suffer as Christ did. As the people of God migrated, the mission of the pilgrim church implies a readiness to move. God’s covenant people witnessed from exile; the dispersed early Jerusalem church was scattered into Diaspora, thus becoming proclaimers everywhere; Christ sent out his apostles in the power of the Spirit to disciple all nations; Stephen suffered martyrdom, bearing witness unto death while seeing ‘heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God’ (Acts 7:56) – so the church is called to mission, martyrdom, and the triumph of the resurrection and the new creation.

Appendix 3
ICOMB Confession of Faith
Part I……
Part 2. How do Mennonite Brethren respond to God’s purpose?
The Mennonite Brethren church is rooted in the Anabaptist movement of the 16th-century Reformation, a movement that sought to recapture the faith and life of the New Testament church. The MB church was born within the Mennonite renewal in Russia in 1860. World mission and migration have produced a church that circles the globe. As a worldwide MB fellowship, we commit ourselves to be a people of God.

People of the Bible
The Bible is the authoritative Word of God and the infallible guide for faith and life.
• Worldview. The Bible provides the framework for our understanding of the world.
• Interpretation. Our interpretation is Christ-centered. We read the Scriptures with a New Testament perspective. The person, teachings, and life of Jesus Christ bring continuity and clarity to both the Old and New Testaments.
• Community of interpretation. Every believer is encouraged to seek to understand the Bible in order to discern God’s will for obedience. Since the Holy Spirit is present and active in all believers, we read and interpret the Bible and its demands for today’s life in community.
People of a New Way of Life
By God’s grace, the Holy Spirit calls people to a new way of life through conversion, discipleship, and ongoing renewal.
• Conversion. Christian conversion begins with new birth and always involves a deliberate personal commitment. As Christians we are called to turn:
• from a broken relationship with God to a personal relationship with the true God
• from bondage of sin and past mistakes to freedom, forgiveness, and healing
• Discipleship. In Christ, salvation and ethics come together. As Christians, we are called
• to turn from individualism to interdependence with others in the church
• to prove ourselves faithful to the life and teachings of Jesus in everyday life.
• Renewal. The Holy Spirit indwells every believer, testifying that we are God’s children, offering continual renewal and cleansing in order to empower for a life of witness and service.
People of the Covenant Community
In the church, the covenant community, believers commit themselves to worship together, pray as Christ taught us, fellowship, and care for one another.
• Believer’s Baptism. People from all cultures, nations, and languages who are willing to follow Jesus as obedient disciples confess Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord and are baptized by water into the fellowship of the church. The Mennonite Brethren church baptizes by immersion.
• Lord’s Supper. In the Supper, the church identifies with the life of Christ given for the redemption of humanity and proclaims the Lord’s death and resurrection until he comes. This Supper of remembrance expresses reconciliation, fellowship, peace, and unity of all believers with Christ.
• Accountability. The church interprets God’s will, discerning what is right and wrong. All believers hold each other accountable for a Christ-like walk of faith. The purpose of accountability is to heal and restore through repentance – not punish or condemn. The church excludes those who consistently disregard discipline.
• Priesthood of all Believers. The Spirit of God gives all believers gifts for service to build up the body of Christ. The church discerns the call of God and confirms servant leaders who equip people for ministry.
People of Reconciliation
Jesus came announcing the kingdom of God. The mission of Jesus was to reconcile humans with God, each other, and the world. The church is called to participate in God’s mission.
• Mission. Christ has commissioned the church to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to observe all his commandments. Jesus teaches that disciples are to love God and neighbour by telling the good news and by performing acts of love and compassion. Since Jesus is the only way of salvation, the evangelistic imperative is given to all believers.
• Peace witness. Peace and reconciliation are at the heart of the Christian gospel. Jesus calls the community of faith to be peacemakers in all situations. We believe that peace with God includes a commitment to the way of reconciliation modeled by the Prince of Peace. As Christians, we are called to turn from:
o lifestyle choices that harm us to choices that nurture wholeness, healing, joy, and peace
o hating enemies and ignoring neighbours to showing love and justice to all
• Family. God blesses singleness, marriage and family. God calls all people to live a sexually pure life. Marriage is a lifelong covenant commitment of one man and one woman. Godly parents instruct their children in the faith. The church nurtures family life and makes every effort to bring reconciliation to troubled relationships.
• State. God has given the state the responsibility to promote the well-being of all people. Followers of Christ respect and pray for government authorities but resist the temptation to give the state the devotion that is owed to God. The primary allegiance of all Christians is to Christ’s kingdom and his global church. In each state and society, Christians cooperate with others to defend the weak, reduce strife, care for the poor, and promote justice, peace, and truth.

People of Hope
The church belongs to the in-breaking kingdom of God. The citizens of the kingdom model an alternative community, challenging godless values of this world’s cultures. The people of God join in the struggle for justice, yet are prepared to suffer persecution knowing that sin, guilt, and death will not prevail. Confident in this hope, the church engages in mission until the Lord returns, empowered by the certainty that God will create a new heaven and a new earth.