oppose Christian evangelism programs and other forms of religious proselytizing

(6) Quaker Theology Group

Nathan Shroyer shared a post.

28 December 2019 at 02:07

How to become a non mission driven universality

Marginal Mennonite Society

27 December 2019 at 04:07

The monthly posting of the Declaration of Mennonites for the Preservation of Religious Diversity:

We are Mennonites who oppose Christian evangelism programs and other forms of religious proselytizing. Sharing one’s journey with an interested inquirer is fine, as long as the initiative comes from the inquirer and efforts to proselytize are off the table. But it is unethical, in our view, to approach folks who haven’t solicited your input and try to get them to trade in their religion for yours. We ask missionaries this question: How would you feel if people from other religions moved into your neighborhoods and tried to convert you and your children?

We love human diversity and seek to preserve it. We think the world would be poorer if all adherents of other religions were converted to Christianity. Therefore, we reject mission boards and mission agencies, no matter how well-meaning they claim to be. “Charity work” performed under the banner of “missions” always has proselytization as part of its agenda, and therefore is not true charity at all. “Mission work” under the banner of “charity” is more insidious, because it amounts to proselytization by subterfuge. Sending “teachers” to Asia who are really missionaries-in-disguise is shady churchwork.

We contend that proselytizing non-Christians was not part of the original Anabaptist program. When the Anabaptists went out and invited people to join their movement, they were addressing fellow members of the Catholic community. Their goal was to radicalize fellow Christians, not to convert Jews or Turks or other outsiders. Most Anabaptists were advocates of religious liberty for everyone. Felix Manz, for example, said people of other faiths should be left undisturbed to practice as they saw fit. While Anabaptists were seeking freedom of belief and freedom of association for themselves, they believed non-Christians should be able to enjoy those freedoms as well.

We are universalists. In our view, everyone who has ever lived gets a seat at the celestial banquet table. We reject the notion of a vengeful deity. We do so using the reasoning powers that God gave us. For us the concept of eternal punishment is irrational. How can pacifists believe in a God who would torture her own children? How could any empathetic person enjoy the afterlife knowing friends and family are in torment? We assert, with Anabaptist leader Hans Denck, that compassion and mercy are God’s defining attributes. Any teachings or texts that contradict these attributes carry no weight with us.

We reject the authenticity of the so-called “Great Commission.” We just don’t think Jesus said it, because:

1. Statements attributed to the post-crucifixion Jesus must be called into question, for obvious reasons. Every version of the Commission in the gospels was supposedly uttered by him after coming back from the dead.
2. The global scope of the Commission is contradicted by Jesus’s instructions in Matthew 10:5-6 to steer clear of Gentiles. The activities of the historical Jesus did not extend beyond Israel.
3. In Mark, the Commission is found in the “Marcan appendix” (16:9-20), which wasn’t part of the original version of Mark. In other words, the earliest version of the earliest gospel did not contain the Commission.
4. Jesus’s brother James (head of the Jesus community in Jerusalem) didn’t know about a mandate to reach Gentiles. If Jesus told the disciples to “make followers of all nations,” wouldn’t his brother know about it? Sure he would. Thus, the impulse behind the Commission didn’t come from Jesus, but from the early churches.

We are people who’ve come to know and love folks from many paths: Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Sufi, Native American, and more. We recognize the common qualities that make religions more alike than different: compassion, mercy, empathy, humility, forgiveness, generosity, etc. These qualities, no matter where they’re found, emanate from the same place: The Source of All Truth and Beauty in the Universe.

Therefore, we call on Christian missionaries to:

1. Renounce the doctrine of eternal punishment as inconsistent with God’s mercy and compassion.

2. Change their mandate from “conversion of the masses” to “the preservation of mass diversity.”
3. Make amends to people harmed by missionizing practices, including “missionary kids.”
4. Send representatives around the globe to investigate the truth and beauty in other religions, and bring new insights back for the edification of folks at home. Without proselytizing.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A publication of the Marginal Mennonite Society Tract & Propaganda Department. Last revised December 25, 2019. Written by Charlie Kraybill, MMS Page Administrator.


46You, Margaret Bywater, Hank Fay and 43 others
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Barbara Richardson-Todd Me too. I am a quaker but find much in these too



Doug Hamilton This is Quakerly in its way and very profound. Thanks for sharing this.
“We are Mennonites who oppose Christian evangelism programs and other forms of religious proselytizing.”




Nathan Shroyer We just may consider sharing how Way has been opened for our faith when we were invited and interchanged with our testimony of community and equality. If we also are truly in Simplicity, Integrity, and Peaceful existence it’s true that a creation based in Christ may rise from these good ideas and right sharing

'미국 교회 쇠퇴'라고 소수민족 이민 교회까지? - NEWS M

'미국 교회 쇠퇴'라고 소수민족 이민 교회까지? - NEWS M

'미국 교회 쇠퇴'라고 소수민족 이민 교회까지?

박정주
승인 2010.05.06 03:50

<뉴스 M 아카이브>는 나누고 싶은 과거 기사 ‘다시보기’ 코너입니다.
라승찬 교수의 [ The Next Evangelicalism ]로 본 미국 교회의 미래
----

얼마 전, 앤이 나에게 책을 한 권 보여주며 '정주, 이 책 알아? 저자가 한국인이라는데' 하며 <The Next Evangelicalism>이란 책을 건네주었다. (앤은 내가 머물고 있는 집의 호스트다.) 라승찬? 들어보지 못한 이름인데. 대학교 때 신앙인의 삶을 시작하고도 교회 안에 머물러있는 편이 아니었던 내게, 유명한 사람인데 내가 모르는 이름일 수도 있단 생각을 하곤 책을 한 번 슬쩍 살펴보았다. 그런데 한 번 살펴보고 덮어 버리기엔 너무 매력적인 이야기들이 나를 사로잡아 버렸다.


"당신이 만약 지금 이 시대에 선교사가 되고자 하는 백인 기독교인이라면, 그런데 당신에겐 백인이 아닌 스승을 가져본 적이 없다면, 당신은 선교사가 되지 못할 것이다. 대신에 당신은 식민주의자가 될 것이다. 그리고 복음의 소식을 세상으로 가져가는 대신에 미국화 된 복음을 가지고 갈 것이다. 만약 누군가가 약자들이 사는 곳에 머물러 본 경험이 없다면, 그들의 삶에 백인 이외에 스승을 가져본 적이 없는 단순하고 기본적인 예를 통해서라도, 그들은 고난의 신학을 경험하지 못한 채 축복의 신학만을 경험하고 있는 것이다. 이러한 상태는 서구 문화, 백인 중심에 사로잡힌 교회 아래에서 불행한 반면, 그것은 다음 복음주의를 위해서는 전혀 받아들일 수 없는 상태이다." (<The Next Evangelicalism> 중에서)



▲ 라승찬 교수는 < The Next Evangelicalism >의 "진정한 목적은 과거와 충돌하고 현재에 대한 걱정하며, 미래에 대해 혼란스러워 하는 미국 교회에 화해와 갱생을 가져오기 위한 것"이라고 밝혔다.



혼란에 빠진 미국 교회의 화해와 갱생을 위한



일상의 현장에서 만난 사람들이 들려준 생생한 이야기들이 현재의 역사라고 믿는 내게, 그것을 고찰할 수 있는 잣대가 될 수 있는 자료가 있었으면 좋겠다고 생각하던 차였는데. 저자 라승찬 교수는 어릴 때 부모님과 함께 미국에 이민을 와서 자신이 경험한 이민자 사회 그리고 사회적 약자로 미국에서 살아왔던 경험을 바탕으로, 그가 펼쳐가는 이야기들을 좀 더 힘 있게 전해주고 있다.


사실 그가 다루는 이야기 하나하나가 미국 사회를 잘 반영하고 또 미국 기독교의 모습을 비추고 있다고 고작 8개월 살아본 내가 그렇게 말한다는 것이 조심스럽기는 하다. 그래서 미국 기독교인으로 살아온 앤에게 물어봤다. "앤, 이 책 어떻게 생각해?" 집에 놀러 온 앤의 친구와 나에게 앤이 말했다.


"솔직히 말하면 이 저자가 하는 말이 거의 사실이야. 부끄럽지만 우리가 인정해야 하는 이야기이고 귀담아 들어야 하는 이야기이지. 미국의 많은 기독교인들이 이 책을 한 번쯤 읽어봤으면 좋겠어. 듣기에 불편한 이야기들도 많겠지만 말이야. 그리고 정말 놀라워. 미국에서 이민자로 살아온 한국인이 이런 책을 썼다는 게."


인종주의, 미국 사회의 원죄


정말 앤의 말대로 이 책 곳곳에는 미국인, 그리고 미국 기독교인들이 성찰해야 할 이야기들이 많이 있다. 미국에 잠시 거주하고 있는 나에게도 물론이거니와.


저자는 미국인들이 돌아봐야 하는 많은 영역 가운데 가장 깊이 뿌리 박혀있는 원죄(original sin)로 '인종주의'를 이야기한다. 아프리카에서 노예로 부리기 위해 납치하다시피 데려온 흑인들, 그리고 선주민들(Native Americans)에 대한 학살까지 서슴지 않으며 빼앗은 땅. 이 핏빛 역사는 여기에서 그치지 않는다. 이 후에 건너온 아시아인들에게 서부 지역 개발을 위해 행한 노동착취. 슬프게도 미국의 죄는 거기에서 멈추지 않고 현재까지 계속 되고 있다. 중남미에서 온 이민자들과 전 세계에서 온 제3세계 가난한 노동자들에게까지 말이다.


그런데 저자가 이런 이야기를 아시아계 학생들이 있는 한 학교 강의에서 나누자 학생들의 반응은 이러했다. 현대를 살아가는 그들은 이렇게 말했다. ‘과거에 있었던 일이고 나는 한 개인으로서 그런 죄를 지르지 않았다. 게다가 나의 조상들은 그때 이 나라에 살지도 않았었다. 그런데 왜 내가 그 죄에 대한 반성을 해야 하는가?’


저자는 학생들의 반응에 이렇게 답한다. 지금 우리가 미국에서 누리고 있는 풍요와 온갖 혜택은 어디에서 오는 것인가? 공짜로 얻은 땅, 그리고 자원을 얻기 위해 투입된 공짜 인력. 그렇게 쌓아온, 쌓여온 정의롭지 못한 순결하지 않은 문명의 혜택을 누리는 것은 그 죄를 돌이키지 않고 계속 행하고 있는 것과 다를 바 없다고.


또 한 개인이 저지르지 않은 죄이지만 한 개인이 공동 행위의 결과로부터 누리는 이익이 있다면 그것에 대한 책임은 함께 져야 한다고 저자는 말한다. 이 세계를, 현재를 살아가는 그 누구도 이 답변을 피해갈 수 없을 것이라고 나는 생각한다.


백인 교회만 들여다보고 미국 교회를 논하지 말라


미국에서 백인이며 적당한 직업을 가진 사람들을 일컬어 '주류'라고 한다고 할 때, 미국 주류에 속한 기독교인들은 미국의 기독교 인구가 줄어들고 있다고 생각한다. 또 일종의 기독교 문화의 쇠퇴기에 처해 있다고 생각하고 한편으로 우려 아닌 우려를 하고 있다.


하지만 내가 만난 미국의 기독교인들은 백인에 중산층에 속하는 이들만은 아니었다. 부모님 세대가 자메이카에서 건너와 지금 자메이카 교회를 다니는 내 친구 니키. 한 번은 니키의 교회에 예배를 드리러 간 적이 있다. 교회에 도착하기 전 니키는 내게 몇 번이나 강조를 한다. '정주, 예배가 정말 길고 또 사람들이 아주 적극적으로 예배를 드릴거야. 그 모습에 놀라지 마.'


미국 흑인과 자메이칸은 다른 정체성을 갖고 있다고 생각하는 친구 니키. 그래서 나는 나름 조금 이해는 갖고 있다고 생각하긴 했는데 장장 4시간에 걸친 자메이칸 교회의 예배는 정말 적극적이고 굉장했다. 또 한 가지 내가 놀란 것은 400여 명이 넘는 교인들이 작은 예배당 안에 가득 찬 모습이었다. 이에 반해 미국에 있는 화려한 외형을 한 교회 건물들은 텅텅 비어가고 있다고 하는데, 그래서 작은 옆 건물에서 예배를 드리고 방문객들이 있을 때만 본당을 연다고 했다.


그런데 도심 끝자락에 있는 이민자들의 교회들은 부흥하고 또 열성적인 교인들로 인해 교회 공간이 모자랐다. 내 친구 니키 이외에도 다른 친구 아이티에서 온 페기도 아이티 교회를 다니는데 내가 경험한 한국 교회보다도 더 많은 교회 모임과 예배로 바쁜 시간을 보냈다.


내가 살고 있는 필라델피아에서는 이처럼 이민자들로 이루어진 교회들이 많다. 캄보디아, 에티오피아, 한국, 중국, 베트남, 인도네시아, 이집트 교회까지. 내가 알지 못하는 더 많은 이민자들 교회가 있을 거라 생각한다. 모든 교회라고 말할 수 없지만 많은 교회들이 질적 양적으로 성장하고 있다.


미국의 백인 교회 이외의 교회들의 성장은 고려되지 않은 채 주류 사회의 기독교인들의 쇠락만을 사회 현상 분석에 반영한다는 것은 그 자료에 타당성을 떨어지게 하는 일일 것이다. 더 큰 문제는 자기 지역에만 머무르며, 더 넓은 범위에서 일어나는 일에 대해서 관심이 없고, 또 그것에 권한을 부여하는 것을 꺼려하는 많은 기독교인들이 지금 미국 기독교에 어떤 일이 일어나고 있는지 모르고 있다는 사실이다.


미국 곳곳에서 부흥하고 있는 다민족 교회들



▲ 한인 2세인 라승찬 교수는 시카고 North Park Theological Seminary의 부교수로 있으면서 교회 성장학과 복음 전도에 대해 가르치고 있다.



한국전쟁 이후 미국의 원조를 경험한 한국인들 그러니까 우리들은 그 뒤에 경험한 경제 개발 시대를 거쳐 그리고 지금에 이르기까지, 반세기가 훌쩍 지났음에도 '미제가 최고다'라는 생각에서 벗어나질 못하고 있다. 그만큼 미제가 질적으로 좋은 것일까 아님 미제를 많이 가진 사람들이 한국사회에서도 기득권으로 자리 잡고 있기 때문일까?



미국에 와서 미국 교회 목회자나 사역자들과 이야기를 나눌 기회가 있었는데 그분들은 한국 교회의 눈 부시는 양적 성장의 비결을 궁금해 했었다. 그런데 그 현상을 좀 더 자세히 들여다보면 한국의 많은 교회들은 미국의 대형 교회의 모습들을 닮아가려 애쓰고 있다는 걸 알 수 있다.


교회 건물에서 예배, 홍보, 소모임까지 교회를 만들어 가는 방법에 관한 자원들을 미국 기독교 문화에서 배워 적용하려고 한다. 이 책에 언급된 사례 중 하나는 동남아시아의 어느 나라에 있는 신학 대학교에서 지금 미국에서도 사용하지 않는 오래된 교재를 사용한다는 것이다.


우리는 백인들을 비판할 때가 많다. 하지만 한편으로는 문제를 개선하기 위해서 변화되어야 하는 것은 우리라는 생각이 든다. 백인우월주의는 백인들이 역사를 통해 쌓아온 부끄러운 유산이지만 동시에 지금을 살아가는 우리들이 그 유산을 고스란히 이어가도록 돕는 역할을 하고 있다고 해도 과언이 아니다.


백인들의 문화가 우리의 것보다 나을 것이라는 우리들의 생각이 우리 사회에 만연하고 있는 건 아닐까. 우리가 세상을 바라보는 눈을 바꾸지 않으면 세상은 바뀌지 않을 것 이라 본다. 백인우월주의에 대해서 역사를 비난하고 역사 속에만 갇혀 있을 것이 아니라, 지금 일어나고 있는 현상을 새로운 눈으로 바라보는 것이 우리에게 필요한 일이라고 생각한다. 이 책을 읽어 가면 나를 계속해서 자극해 온 내 안의 목소리가 있었다.


'백인들의 문화가 다 좋은 것은 아니다. 제 3세계의 나라에서 자리 잡은 기독교에서도 배울 것이 있다. 한국 전통을 반영한 한국 기독교 문화를 만들어갈 필요가 있다.'


20년 뒤, 미국 교회의 모습?


3월에 워싱턴 D.C.에서 있었던 이민법 개혁을 위한 행진에 갔었다. 거리 곳곳 이민법 개혁을 소원하는 메시지가 담긴 배너와 피켓을 든 사람들이 무리를 이루며 걸어갔다. 20만 명이 넘는 사람들이 그곳에 모였다고 한다. 그것도 미국 전역에서. 나는 한국 이민자들의 무리에 속해 있었다. 고작 100명 정도 되는 사람들이었지만 장구와 꽹과리 그리고 징으로 어우러진 풍물패 놀이에 주변에 있던 많은 사람들이 함께 흥겨워했다.





그 자리에 모인 대부분의 사람들이 히스패닉 계열의 사람들이었다. 어디에서나 스페인어를 쓰는 사람들의 목소리가 들려 왔다. 하지만 그곳에선 어떤 언어를 쓰는지가 중요하지 않았다. 그들은 모두 이민자들이란 공통의 분모를 가지고 마음을 함께 했다. 그리고 스페인어로 ‘(우리는 할 수 있다 Si, se puede일 듯)그것은 가능하다’란 문장을 계속 해서 외쳤다. 내 옆에 있던 70이 넘은 한국인 이민자 1세대이신 한 선생님도 작은 목소리로 따라 외쳤다.


지금 미국에서 일어나고 있는 많은 일들은 미국을 더 이상 백인들의 나라로만 머물 수 없게 한다. 몇 년 후면 미국 인구의 25%가 히스패닉 인구로 채워진다고 한다. 게다가 문화적으로 히스패닉 계열의 사람들은 아이들을 많이 갖는 편이기 때문에 20년 뒤 미국 인구에서 인종적 비율이 어떻게 변할지 정말 모르는 일이다.


또 미국 대도시에는 수많은 이민자들이 살고 있다. 그들이 낯선 땅으로 이주해 와서 마음을 비빌 곳은 교회인 경우가 많다. 그리고 그들은 기독교인이 된다. 전 세계에서 온 이민자들이 만들어가는 삶은 20년 뒤 미국의 모습에 어떤 변화를 줄까? 20년 뒤, 미국 기독교인들의 이야기가 궁금해진다.


박정주 / 한국아나벱티스트센터 인턴


박정주 씨는 한국아나벱티스트센터와 메노나이트 중앙위원회 (Mennonite Central Committee, MCC)가 주관하는 국제문화체험 및 섬김 프로그램 한국 참가자로 미국을 방문해 필라델피아 지역에서 8개월째 지내고 있다.


저작권자 © NEWS M 무단전재 및 재배포 금지

02 Anabaptist Perspectives for Mission Ross Langmead 2

02 Anabaptist Perspectives for Mission Ross Langmead

[From Prophecy and passion: Essays in honour of Athol Gill, ed. David

Neville. Adelaide: Australian Theological Forum, 2002. 328–345.]

Anabaptist Perspectives for Mission  Ross Langmead

I write as a Christian with Anabaptist leanings and hope to outline some of the major missiological contributions of Anabaptist perspectives. I owe my awareness of the Anabaptist tradition to studying under Athol Gill. It was not that he kept referring to the

Anabaptists but that his passion was for the Gospel accounts of Jesus and what they mean for discipleship, community and mission today; this passion led him to own the Anabaptist strands in Baptist history and to re-appropriate them in the cause of discipleship. In considering Anabaptist distinctives in mission it becomes clear how much they have influenced the radical evangelical movement of the last quarter of the twentieth century, in which Athol Gill played such a significant role.

It is difficult to characterise Anabaptism because of its great variety. But for the purposes of a brief overview there are certain missiological emphases which are clear.

These emphases follow from the central characteristics of the Anabaptist movement in the sixteenth century, which rejected both Catholicism and Protestantism and insisted that church membership belongs only to adults who choose baptism as believers. As well as being ‘believers’ churches’ Anabaptist groups challenged state control and monopoly of religion and became known (generally, though not without exception) for the ‘centrality of the Bible, an apolitical stance, nonresistance to evil and refusal to take part in military operations, a stress on ethics defined in terms of discipleship or following the example of Jesus, and a visible church preserved through systematic discipline’.[1]

Such features were not universal. The excesses of the violent Anabaptist minority in the sixteenth century, such as the apocalyptically inspired massacre in Münster in 1535, are well known.[2]

Recent historical studies have shown that a wide variety of Anabaptist groups existed in the two decades before about 1540, from pacifist to militant, from politically engaged to withdrawn, and positioned on nearly all points of the theological spectrum on many major doctrines.[3]

Nevertheless there was an underlying unity that became clearer in time. Walter Klaassen argues that we can identify some themes held in common after the movement had crystallised by about 1540, namely salvation involving both divine and human cooperation, the baptism and ‘priesthood’ of all believers, and a view of Christianity as gathered congregational community rather than a clericalised and territorially-based church.[4]

Over time Anabaptism has become a tradition in which the church seeks to be different from the world, separate and living out its new life in discipleship under the authority of Jesus as seen in the New Testament. It has particularly valued a communal approach and has held high the vocation of peacemaking, most often through pacifism.5

In 1944 the Anabaptism tradition was sharpened further by Mennonite historian Harold Bender in his paper, The Anabaptist vision, which saw the essence of Christianity in terms of discipleship, the church as a voluntary committed community, and the ethic of love and non-resistance.[5] The Anabaptist vision has inspired a generation of Mennonites to try to live a ‘life patterned after the teaching and example of Christ’, to use Bender’s words.[6]

As this brief summary of Anabaptism shows, it is remarkable for taking seriously the expectation that Christians should live in a quite different way from those around them. Mission flows from aspiring to live as Christ lived.

Early Anabaptism and recent Mennonite missiology provide the richest material for analysis. In their enthusiasm for evangelism the early Anabaptists foreshadowed the modern Protestant missionary movement by over two hundred years. For a variety of reasons, however, such as persecution and the growth of separatist and exclusivist theology, the Anabaptists soon lost their missionary zeal and settled down to try and remain faithful and pure, becoming known as the ‘quiet in the land’.8 Modern Mennonite missiology has recovered the missionary vision somewhat, and is vigorously interpreting the best of early Anabaptist approaches to mission for Christians today. Several major missiological emphases stand out in examining Anabaptist thought. They can be gathered under the six headings of ‘kingdom theology’, mission as discipleship, a cruciform mission, peacemaking, mission from the margins, and mission in community.
1. The multi-dimensional commonwealth of God

The most fundamental Anabaptist emphasis with missiological implications is that Christian mission is about co-operating with God in the ushering in of a new order.9 The centre of Jesus’ preaching was how close the kingly reign of God is. This mysterious reality starts from the small and grows in surprising ways and is an upside-down kingdom. It is ‘God’s new order of justice, peace, and covenant community’.10 The church does not build the kingdom but is witness to the kingdom-bringing work of

God amongst us.11

The ‘kingdom of God’ is not a realm but the dynamic presence of God, or God-come-in-strength.12 In its New Testament use it seems to refer both to God’s saving presence and our enjoyment of a new set of relationships in God’s creation. In other words, first


it’s a new reign and, as a result, it’s a new order.13 It is both ‘God present’ and the fruit of God present. For this reason, and because monarchical relationships are for many of us anachronistic these days, we could translate the term as ‘the Commonwealth of God’. Because we are transformed in obedience to God we enjoy life in God’s commonwealth.

What this vision means is that only a holistic view of mission will do. The evangelical preoccupation throughout most of the last century with evangelism in an individualistic setting will not do. The ecumenical tendency at times in recent decades to see the gospel mainly in social and political terms will not do. Even the attempt to treat ‘word’ and ‘deed’ as two distinguishable aspects of mission and then try to keep them in balance will not do.14 All types of Christian mission — evangelism, caring for our neighbours, community development, justice seeking, peacemaking, social action, living in a welcoming community, environmental action, praying in hope for God’s kingdom to come, and so on — are facets of the one jewel. They are each only a part of our response to the transforming grace of God. A new order is a whole new order and God’s mission should always stretch us as we try to keep the whole vision in view.

Another implication of the kingdom-view (while only implicit in most Anabaptist writing) is that our mission begins with God’s action and a cosmic view of God’s mission. If the Commonwealth of God is a new set of relationships, they extend not only to our relationship to God and our relationships with each other but to our relationships to other creatures and to the environment itself. An ecological framework insists that nothing is fully transformed until everything is fully transformed. That surely is part of the meaning of the cryptic passage in Romans 8 about the creation groaning to be set free from bondage (Rom 8:18-25). Christopher Marshall sums it up: ‘The gospel embraces personal renewal, social renewal and ecological renewal’.15

According to Jürgen Moltmann, ‘embodiment is the end of all God’s works’.16 That is, incarnation is part of the divine dynamic, found in God’s presence in creation, in history, pre-eminently in


the person of Jesus Christ and also in the life of the church. All this puts mission in a large and mysterious context. In a sense our task is only to respond to God’s Spirit within us and point to God at work.

Contemporary Anabaptist writers are impressive in the way they keep this multi-dimensional kingdom perspective on mission. Two examples are The transfiguration of mission, edited by Wilbert Shenk (1993),17 and Christopher Marshall’s study of the kingdom of God in the teaching of Jesus, called Kingdom come.18
2. Mission as discipleship

For Anabaptists the Christian life involves a full-bodied discipleship. Anabaptists all insist that the church is the gathered community of those who freely choose to respond to the call of Jesus to follow him and then are baptised. Mission and discipleship are one.19 That is, mission is a natural dimension of the lives of ordinary believers in the course of following Jesus. Every Christian is a missionary in the sense that we are all called to live out the gospel and to bear witness to its power in our lives.

Among the early Anabaptists there was no organised missionary program, only the spontaneous and effective expression of the Christian message by educated and uneducated alike, in spoken word and in daily life.20 Harold Bender, endeavouring to encapsulate the Anabaptist vision, said that the key phrase of the Anabaptists was not ‘faith in Christ’ but ‘following Christ’.21 Denny Weaver writes:

Discipleship is an assumption that one who accepts Jesus Christ will use Jesus’ life and teachings as the norm within which to shape the Christian life. While those assumptions seem obvious, they are not the


assumptions of the majority Christian theological tradition.22

This is an incarnational approach to mission, with a strong emphasis on embodying Christ in daily life. The main strategy for mission is to live differently, that is, to point to the new order in all dimensions of life.

We may well blanch at this. Even though we may be committed to growing more Christlike day by day, and although we may believe that the life of the church must present a clear alternative to the world, on the surface this form of incarnational mission seems impossible. Our objection might be summed up in the question: ‘What does it mean to be incarnational when we are not the Messiah?’23

Indeed, Anabaptist writers sometimes seem too simplistic. For example, Lawrence Burkholder, writing in the 1950s, argued that ‘Christianity is the concrete and realistic “imitation” of Christ’s life and work in the context of the kingdom of God’.24 What does he mean by “imitating Christ”? Is Christ merely our example? If so, we may as well give up, because our human sinfulness, our alienation from God, means we simply can’t do it.

Generally, however, we find that grace is important to Anabaptists too, in dialectical counter-balance.25 It is life-changing grace, or the transforming work of the Holy Spirit, which enables and empowers Christians to live changed lives.26 Complementing

‘following Christ’, concepts such as ‘participating in Christ’27 and ‘solidarity in Christ’ figure in both sixteenth-century and contemporary Anabaptist writers.28



22 J Denny Weaver, ‘Which way for Mennonite theology?’, Gospel Herald, 23 Jan 1996, 3.

23 Jude Tiersma, ‘What does it mean to be incarnational when we are not the

Messiah?’, in God so loves the city: Seeking a theology for urban mission, eds.

Charles Van Engen and Jude Tiersma (Monrovia, CA: MARC, 1994), 7-25. 24 J Lawrence Burkholder, ‘The Anabaptist vision of discipleship’, in The recovery of the Anabaptist vision, ed. Guy F Hershberger (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1957), 137.

25 Alvin J Beachy, The concept of grace in the Radical Reformation (Nieuwkoop, Holland: B. de Graaf, 1977).

26 Roelf S Kuitse, ‘Holy Spirit: Source of messianic mission’, in The transfiguration of mission: Biblical, theological and historical foundations, ed.

Wilbert R Shenk (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1993), 106-129.

27 John Howard Yoder, The politics of Jesus: Vicit agnus noster, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 113.

28 J Denny Weaver, ‘Discipleship redefined: Four sixteenth century Anabaptists’,The Mennonite Quarterly Review 54 (1980): 256.

As well as trying to follow Jesus, there is an emphasis on letting go and letting the risen Christ shape our lives. The work of the Spirit is central in Anabaptist discipleship and mission. Incarnational mission involves both following Jesus and being shaped by the risen Christ.29

What does discipleship mean in practice, then? ‘Following Jesus’ isn’t straightforward. Obviously not all Christians are supposed to become carpenters or wear sandals or become itinerant preachers. And our context in the twenty-first century involves many new issues such as nuclear weapons, biotechnology, vast environmental destruction, postmodern ways of thinking and the hectic pace of life in the post-industrial world, none of which are found in the times in which Jesus lived. How do disciples become living signs to the Commonwealth of God?

Anabaptists are prepared to name some radical principles. As John Howard Yoder pointed out in The politics of Jesus, we are called to forgive others, love our enemies, suffer for the cause if necessary and generally live in a revolutionary new set of relationships in which the first are last and outsiders become insiders.30 It is truly an upside–down kingdom31 and an alternative society. Anabaptists generally argue that Jesus’ teaching calls us to a non-violent stance, a non-hierarchical perspective on status and power, the practice of Christian discipleship as a voluntary and serious commitment, and Christian community as a clear alternative to the ways of the world.

Burkholder, writing in 1993, observes that modern ideas of discipleship are becoming diluted:

Mennonites continue to talk about discipleship and Anabaptism almost ad nauseum, but much of it is loose talk. For Mennonite discipleship language is no longer backed up in the communal consciousness by the gold standard of Jesus’ sayings as rigorous, sacrificial, ‘upside down’, extraordinary, impractical Sermon on the Mount presuppositions. Discipleship


language these days generally refers to something between the extraordinariness of Jesus’ ethic and the everyday reasonableness of civil righteousness.32

He invokes Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s view of discipleship as involving

‘costly grace’, combining a sense of overwhelming gratitude to God with a daily and concrete commitment to at least respond to the ‘perfectionistic ethic’ of Jesus, who refused to qualify either his demands or his radical grace.33

This raises many questions. While the old social order lasts, will Christians with this approach be confined to being a ginger group on the edge of society? Will they be a small group, more critical than affirming of culture, vulnerable, servant-like and uncomfortable with conventional power? Perhaps Anabaptist mission will tend to attract passionate and uncompromising idealists. Given the impossible demands Jesus seems to place on those who listen to him, most Christians just water them down, whereas Anabaptists are likely to at least have a go. Do we need to be careful, remembering that the higher the standards we set, the greater the fall when we fail? How do we find the path between, on the one hand, overwhelming idealism, which crushes and tends to legalism and, on the other hand, a too-easy rationalisation of Jesus’ demands, which lets us off the hook at every turn? There are no easy answers.

One Anabaptist approach to mission, that of providing a withdrawn alternative community, is inadequate to my mind. This was the dominant Anabaptist vision in the sixteenth century. The Schleitheim Confession of 1527 declared that Anabaptists will have nothing to do with the wicked world. It saw reality as consisting of two opposite realms of light and darkness, Christ and the devil, discipleship and unbelief; the two opposites are to have no part of each other.34

Most Anabaptists today back away from attempts at complete withdrawal. They recognise that the Schleitheim Confession reflected a strongly dualistic view of reality which unconvincingly placed all ‘light’ within the Anabaptist communities and all

‘darkness’ in ‘the world’. Both the church and the world are much more ambiguous than this. In particular, the world is not as dark as this vision suggests. It is still the cosmos and the humanity that God created, entered and cares about.

Nevertheless, exploring the alternative community is still the distinctive Anabaptist contribution to the debate about how the church should engage in mission in the world. On the spectrum between attempts at complete withdrawal and a form of Christendom where church and state live in symbiosis, the Anabaptists today are still closer to withdrawal, even though they spell out ways in which ‘the alternative community’ directly and indirectly transforms the wider community.

Denny Weaver, for example, argues for a ‘socially active alternative community’.35 He asks, ‘Is Christian social responsibility expressed primarily through the institutions of society or through the church?’ and ‘Does the church permeate society or function as a visible alternative to it?’. In both cases he opts for aiming to provide a clear alternative.36 But this alternative is one whose efforts may intersect with the attempts of governments and secular organisations to create a just and compassionate society. Indeed some Christians may work through social institutions. But the church’s mission is primarily to be the church and act in ways that point to a new order, not compromising with the old order.37

This important debate on the nature of discipleship and the social dimension of mission continues amongst Anabaptists and other scholars.38 I place myself on the ‘more socially engaged’ wing of the spectrum, along with others who accept the label of ‘radical evangelicals’. My assessment is that Athol Gill would have agreed, given that he urged Christians to incarnate the liberating power of Jesus Christ in the economic, political and cultural processes of




society, including education, employment, the media, trade, urban planning and human rights.39

Whatever views Anabaptists hold on discipleship as living out a social alternative, there is consensus that mission is discipleship of a full-bodied nature. One of the most important contributions of the discipleship tradition, of which Anabaptism is a major strand, is its radical linkage of faith and action. The call to follow Jesus continually points beyond us, challenging us and our world. Discipleship does not need to be called ‘radical discipleship’ because there is no other type. 3. Mission shaped by the cross

Precisely because it takes seriously the call to follow Jesus the Anabaptist tradition is a theology of the cross. Because it sees the path of discipleship as cruciform, Anabaptist missiology calls Christians to face issues of suffering, cost and possible death on the path to new life and the experience of resurrection. The Anabaptist experience of persecution and martyrdom in the sixteenth century certainly stamped the movement with a clear understanding of the cost of discipleship, and Mennonite peacemaking today sometimes involves similar dangers and costs.

Mission in this mould finds the resurrection-centred approach which is common amongst Western Christians today lacking in depth and substance. A cross-shaped missiology is not comfortable with a style of mission that emphasises victory, strength, conquest and strategies that centre on power.

Some churches engage in mission primarily through inviting others to join them in praise and ecstatic worship. Those who see mission as praise are right, of course, to want to share the joy and power of the risen Christ and to celebrate experiences of spiritual victory. A missiology of the cross, however, insists that Christian joy be well anchored in the reality of the unfinished task of mission and a yearning for the fullness of the Commonwealth of God. It wants to say that as long as anyone remains lost, hungry and in despair, we should look forward in mission rather than dwell on the partial victories we experience here and now. On this view, it is not that the resurrection is limited but that its promise for the future is even greater than we have experienced so far.

Furthermore, the resurrection is God’s ‘Yes’ to the sacrificial, world-challenging life and consequent death of Jesus. The risen Christ affirms, in a way we do not fully understand, that the secret to transformed life lies in Jesus’ self-giving and obedience to God’s purposes. The cross was the symbol of all that Jesus stood for and all the resistance the world was able to offer to his radical challenge.

John Howard Yoder expressed this insight well. He reminds

Christians that discipleship is a call to take up our cross and follow Jesus (Mk 8:34). He argues that only at one point is Jesus our example, and that is in his cross.40 But what does that actually mean today? Yoder embraces the socio-political dimensions of a ‘kingdom theology’ and argues that the cross must be, for us as it was for Jesus, the price of social nonconformity. It is the social reality of representing in an unwilling world the order to come. It is not unpredictable suffering. It is not primarily our inward wrestling with sin, as Luther thought. It is the end of a freely chosen path after counting the cost.41 Suffering is not to be embraced but it is to be faced.

This emphasis on incarnational mission as profoundly shaped by the cross is shared by Anabaptists with others such as Bonhoeffer, Moltmann and the Latin American liberation theologians, all of whom remind us of the costly nature of this path. The more our theology leads us to engage with the suffering of those around us the more it has to face the significance of the cross.

A missiology of the cross does not deny the importance of the resurrection. The resurrection is central in all Christian faith as our hope and our power. But as Thorwald Lorenzen often says, the resurrection is the resurrection of the crucified Christ.42 The path to the resurrection is through the cross. The Anabaptists remind us that our experience as disciples, even though suffused with resurrection presence and joy, will generally be a costly and demanding commitment, as God’s gracious rule is not yet fully present. While the poor remain poor and the lost remain lost, disciples can expect suffering and rejection, and mission always takes the shape of Jesus: that of the cross.



Apart from a few exceptions in the earliest days, Anabaptists have always seen the call to renounce violence as a direct consequence of following the way of the cross. 43 Jesus’ arrest and death flowed from his decision at every major point in his life to live and teach the way of suffering servanthood rather than to take up the sword.44 To follow Jesus, then, means to embrace the way of nonviolence and love for enemies.

Taking shape variously as non-resistance, pacifism or nonviolent resistance, the call to peacemaking is one of the more distinctive features of the Anabaptist approach to mission, a featured shared with the other historic peace churches (the

Brethren and Quakers).45

In the sixteenth century non-resistance grew out of a simple response to Jesus’ teaching to turn the other cheek and love our enemies (Mt 5:38-45). It developed in a context where violence was used against the Anabaptists and so was closely linked to costly discipleship and the theology of the cross. Non-retaliation was also seen as a powerful witness to the transforming love of Jesus.46

From then until the middle of the twentieth century traditional non-resistance was influenced by Anabaptism’s strong dualism between the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of the devil.47 It focused more on the purity of the church than on reforming the world. Sadly, it was a feature of withdrawal rather than a dimension of active mission.

Amongsr Mennonites in the last fifty years, however, peacemaking has turned outwards and largely changed from passive non-resistance to active non-violent resistance. The whole direction of Jesus’ life and teaching is now seen as politically radical and nonviolent in nature.48 The biblical concept of shalom is now seen to be central to the mission of God.49



43 Ronald J Sider, Christ and violence (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1979), 16.

44 Sider, Christ and violence, 23.

45 John R Burkholder, ‘Peace’, in The Mennonite encyclopedia, Vol. 5, eds.
Cornelius J Dyck and Dennis D Martin (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1990), 681. 46 Roland H Bainton, Christian attitudes to war and peace: A historical survey and critical re-evaluation (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1960), 153. 47 John Howard Yoder, Christian attitudes to war, peace, and revolution: A companion to Bainton (Elkhart, IN: Goshen Biblical Seminary, 1983), 193.

48 Yoder, The politics of Jesus.

49 Perry Yoder, Shalom: The Bible's word for salvation, justice and peace (London:

Spire, 1989); Perry B Yoder and Willard M Swartley, eds., The meaning of peace:

Biblical studies (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1992).

It is now clearly understood that peace involves justice and a positive sense of well-being. The pre-eminence of Christ over all cosmic powers is asserted in such a way that our mission for peace calls all of society to renounce violence and hatred. While acknowledging the separation of church and state, the Anabaptist mission for peace engages in reconciling activities and a prophetic peace witness to secular institutions.50

As a result, there has been a flowering of Mennonite peacemaking activities such as conflict mediation, victim-offender reconciliation, peace education, peace rallies, symbolic action in international conflicts, non-violence training, civil disobedience and non-violent direct action.

The clear emphasis on peacemaking is one of the most valuable distinctives of Anabaptist mission. It is clearly integrated with other emphases, particularly being a sign of God’s new order, following Jesus and walking the way of the cross. Non-violence is just one facet of love. ‘Peacemaking’ is another term for the Christian ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:18-20), which in turn is our co-operation in God’s reconciling mission. 5. Mission from the margins

There is a consensus amongst contemporary Anabaptists that solidarity with the poor follows from the incarnation. Apart from liberation theology I doubt that any Christian tradition is clearer on this issue. In Jesus God expresses solidarity with humankind, but particularly with the voiceless and the powerless.

Jesus’ own social location and his economic and social teachings are part of our understanding of who he is and what our mission is. John Driver reminds us that Galilee was on the margins of Judaism and that Jesus gravitated toward the disenfranchised, such as the Samaritans, the poor, prostitutes, publicans, lepers, foreigners, women and children. Driver says, as do many writers, that our mission ought to be shaped by Jesus’ mission.51 Ronald

Sider takes his own Mennonite brothers and sisters to task for


being materialistic. He says, ‘Liberation theology rightly wants to know if the wealthy Mennonite church in North America and Western Europe has any intention of living what the Bible teaches about the poor’.52

The early Anabaptists didn’t theologise too much about heading to the margins because that’s where they found themselves anyway. Mostly poor (though some were educated), they read the Bible through the eyes of the poor and saw a Jesus who challenged the powers and included the outcast. More importantly, the way they expressed their alternative community, following the teachings of Jesus, led to the inclusion of the poor: They practised the priesthood of all believers; they rejected social hierarchies and titles; they shared goods; and they expected to see Christ in the hungry and homeless. Unfortunately, the early Anabaptists drew a sharp line between their own fellowships and the world outside, and soon (perhaps due to persecution) their care for the poor settled back into extending only as far as their own people.

What does it mean to engage in mission from the margins? To narrow the question, let me particularly address middle class readers in the affluent West. (The responses of those who find themselves already on the margins would differ.) I find Linford Stutzman’s suggestions (in With Jesus in the World) helpful here.53 He argues that in affluent societies we find the establishment at one end of the spectrum and the marginalised at the other. The middle class in between can either aspire to gain more power and status or can turn its face toward those with less. Social action often arises from the marginalised end of the middle class, from those who have resources but use them for the poor.54 To be effective such activists must be in proximity to the poor, however that happens. Stutzman says that’s exactly where Jesus located himself for his mission, critiquing the establishment with some power and yet mixing easily with the poorest of the poor.55 He issues a challenge to all Christian communities when he writes:

The fact is that churches which consistently proclaim and live out the gospel message, visibly demonstrating the



52 Ronald J Sider, ‘Mennonites and the poor: Toward an Anabaptist theology ofliberation’, in Freedom and discipleship: Liberation theology in Anabaptist perspective, ed. Daniel S Schipani (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1989), 85.

53 Linford Stutzman, With Jesus in the world: Mission in modern, affluent societies (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1992).

54 Stutzman, With Jesus in the world, 45-57.

55 Stutzman, With Jesus in the world, 57.

radical hope of the coming kingdom after the manner of Jesus and the early church, are the exception. Churches with a message counter to the tired values of the establishment in modern affluent societies are rare. Churches which are in society in the way Jesus was in his are a tiny minority indeed.56

There are many tensions involved in mission from the margins. They centre around the extent to which we are prepared to engage in mission with few resources, from ‘weakness’ rather than ‘strength’. And they uncover our own desire for comfort and standing.

It may be impossible for middle class Christians to genuinely ‘identify with’ the poor, because we (I include myself) are not really poor no matter what we do. Perhaps we can do what Stutzman calls us to do, that is, to live at the lower end of the middle class spectrum. But does he expect all Christians to heed his call, including executives, parliamentarians and others trying to move in so-called ‘high places’? We have generally avoided a literal interpretation of Jesus’ call to the rich young man to give away all his possessions; must we take Stutzman literally and completely turn our back on middle class and upper middle class existence, with all of its trappings, such as travel, education, communication devices, high technology, holidays, physical comfort, sports and entertainment? For example, is it ever right to fly around the world to achieve things, or should we stay at home? How can we ever move beyond charity to social action if we don’t learn the systems of the powerful?

Anabaptists today, like other Christians, differ on these questions. A constructive way forward may be for Christians at various social locations to stay in active dialogue with each other. Those who live in low-income urban areas, staff soup kitchens or sit with the psychiatrically ill are vitally important to those who speak to parliamentary breakfasts or devise social policy in the World Bank. The converse is also true.

Another way forward is to see discipleship as consisting of a downward journey as well as an inward journey and an outward journey. The downward journey means a step at a time towards simplicity or generosity, the giving away of time, power,

possessions and resources. It is a step at a time towards the poor, a step outside our comfort zone, whatever that may be.
6. Mission in community

Anabaptists see the church as a covenant community living as a sign in the midst of the world. Mission is essentially communal. It is not that I partially embody the risen Christ in my life, but that we partially embody the risen Christ in our life together. We aspire to living in an alternative society here in the midst of wider society as a sign of God’s presence in strength, or the Commonwealth of God.

The Anabaptists again set the bar rather high for discipleship. We noted their call to follow Jesus in all aspects of daily life, their view of mission as cross-shaped, a commitment to overcoming violence, and a call to engage in mission from the margins. And now it’s creating and sustaining a counterculture. Larry Miller writes provocatively when he says:

Is it unreasonable to believe that only churches with this particular identity — alternative, voluntary, missionary, pacifist microsocieties — can be instruments of Messiah’s transfigured mission? … Only churches which are alternative societies, transformed in relation to existing society because they are already conformed to Messiah’s vision of the future, can demonstrate the nature of life in the coming kingdom.57

We can only hope that lesser Christian communities manage to point to the new order as well.

Community means many things, of course. The Anabaptist tradition is known for its communal shape, sometimes forming self-sufficient rural communities with communally-owned possessions and a common purse. Today Christians form all sorts of committed and semi-committed groups and call them communities. Geographical community is not the only sort that thrives in our society, as people meet at work, or from across a city, or even online. But if we take our physical body and the natural rhythms of daily life seriously, then local community will still remain the primary type for the church. We could define



57 Larry Miller, ‘The church as messianic society: Creation and instrument of transfigured mission’, in The transfiguration of mission: Biblical, theological and historical foundations, ed. Wilbert R Shenk (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1993), 149150.

community as that gift of unity of spirit that God gives to all sorts of groups of people who commit themselves to some sort of common life. It’s not easy in an individualistic and busy Western lifestyle. Every step from ‘me’ to ‘us’ is hard-won in such a culture.

What does this call to community mean for mission? First, on a personal note, a supportive and lively community is great because I enjoy it, at least most of the time. It is part of the vision for the Commonwealth of God that we experience a new life together, encapsulated in the symbol of an open banquet, sharing the good life with others. We can only share in mission what we experience as good news. It’s good news that others care how we’re feeling, that others share the burdens of the day, that we can do together what we couldn’t achieve on our own, and that we celebrate, laugh and cry together. To have all these things is rare in our society and to be treasured. Community fuels our mission because it is a sign of what God calls all people to. It sustains us for the long haul and teaches us our strengths and weaknesses.

Secondly, the practice of community that is open at the edges is probably the most effective form of evangelism. People who won’t go to a church service will come to a barbecue. Sharing possessions, minding children, helping to paint the house, praying for each other — all these things are signs of a new set of relationships and are signs of the Commonwealth of God.

Thirdly, only in community can we express the various facets of mission. As Paul said in a slightly different way (1 Cor 12), some are bass players and some cook great pasta. Some can sit with people all night and others can organise a camp. Some are great with the disadvantaged and others great theologians. We all do a bit of each but we need each other. Only together can we pursue incarnational mission, because some are the eyes and others are the hands.

Fourthly, community is the cauldron where we learn what the new order means in day to day life. Community can be ugly, as we fight, freeze people out, play our power games or fail to carry our part of the burden. The forgiveness we experience overflows and is offered in mission to others. In community we learn to include people we would naturally exclude. This is where we learn to be more vulnerable, and learn to get past conflict to reconciliation.

7. Conclusion

The Anabaptist perspectives on mission I’ve discussed point in one direction, that of living out a clear alternative to the ways of the world, engaging in the world but marching to a different drum.

On the one hand it seems radical and difficult as we ‘try’ to follow Jesus. On the other hand it often amounts to ‘not trying’ but rather experiencing the risen Christ in life together; mission is just the overflow of our enjoyment of God’s gracious reign, even though it is only partial. Athol Gill used to say that the grace of the gospel call is always greater than its demand.

Anabaptist mission leads to all sorts of expressions. There are Anabaptists doing development work in poor countries and others in church planting and evangelism. There are many who express their alternative values inz conventional occupations, in conflict resolution work or in new approaches to victim-offender relations. Anabaptist churches are known for their peacemaking and their distinctive contributions to international relations.

The central shape of Anabaptist mission, however, seems to be discipleship in community. It is a vision of the daily expression of a different life together, one which is missional in character.

There are many forms of mission which are not emphasised in this approach, such as mass media evangelism, large evangelistic rallies and influencing society from positions of power. While there is merit in these types of mission, the distinctly Anabaptist contribution is to remind us that it is Jesus whom we follow. We are called to engage in mission in Christ’s way.

Jesus embodied a person-to-person style of communication. He showed a lack of interest in writing books and organising a religion. He lived with a strong sense that there is a reality other than the world around us which pervades this world and claims our total allegiance. This sense of God’s reign is both mystical and very practical, both personally transforming and socially revolutionary. Jesus calls us to an almost impossible and yet wonderful alternative existence which doesn’t graft too well onto the vine of our existing society but, at the same time, begins here and now where we are. This is the overall vision of Anabaptist approaches to Christian mission.

02 Anabaptist Perspectives for Mission Ross Langmead

[From Prophecy and passion: Essays in honour of Athol Gill, 
ed. David Neville. 
Adelaide: Australian Theological Forum, 2002. 328–345.]

Anabaptist Perspectives for Mission  
Ross Langmead 


I write as a Christian with Anabaptist leanings and hope to outline some of the major missiological contributions of Anabaptist perspectives. I owe my awareness of the Anabaptist tradition to studying under Athol Gill. It was not that he kept referring to the

Anabaptists but that his passion was for the Gospel accounts of Jesus and what they mean for discipleship, community and mission today; this passion led him to own the Anabaptist strands in Baptist history and to re-appropriate them in the cause of discipleship. In considering Anabaptist distinctives in mission it becomes clear how much they have influenced the radical evangelical movement of the last quarter of the twentieth century, in which Athol Gill played such a significant role.

It is difficult to characterise Anabaptism because of its great variety. But for the purposes of a brief overview there are certain missiological emphases which are clear.

These emphases follow from the central characteristics of the Anabaptist movement in the sixteenth century, which rejected both Catholicism and Protestantism and insisted that church membership belongs only to adults who choose baptism as believers. As well as being ‘believers’ churches’ Anabaptist groups challenged state control and monopoly of religion and became known (generally, though not without exception) for

1.  the ‘centrality of the Bible, 
2. an apolitical stance, 
3. nonresistance to evil and refusal to take part in military operations,
4. a stress on ethics defined in terms of discipleship or following the example of Jesus, and 
5. a visible church preserved through systematic discipline’.[1]

Such features were not universal. The excesses of the violent Anabaptist minority in the sixteenth century, such as the apocalyptically inspired massacre in Münster in 1535, are well known.[2]

Recent historical studies have shown that a wide variety of Anabaptist groups existed in the two decades before about 1540, from pacifist to militant, from politically engaged to withdrawn, and positioned on nearly all points of the theological spectrum on many major doctrines.[3]

Nevertheless there was an underlying unity that became clearer in time. Walter Klaassen argues that we can identify some themes held in common after the movement had crystallised by about 1540, namely 

1. salvation involving both divine and human cooperation, 
2. the baptism and ‘priesthood’ of all believers, and 
3. a view of Christianity as gathered congregational community rather than a clericalised and territorially-based church.[4]

Over time Anabaptism has become a tradition in which the church seeks to be different from the world, separate and living out its new life in discipleship under the authority of Jesus as seen in the New Testament. It has particularly valued a communal approach and has held high the vocation of peacemaking, most often through pacifism.5

In 1944 the Anabaptism tradition was sharpened further by Mennonite historian Harold Bender in his paper, The Anabaptist vision, which saw the essence of Christianity in terms of 

1. discipleship, 
2. the church as a voluntary committed community, and 
3. the ethic of love and 
4. non-resistance.[5] 

The Anabaptist vision has inspired a generation of Mennonites to try to live a ‘life patterned after the teaching and example of Christ’, to use Bender’s words.[6]

As this brief summary of Anabaptism shows, it is remarkable for taking seriously the expectation that Christians should live in a quite different way from those around them. Mission flows from aspiring to live as Christ lived.

Early Anabaptism and recent Mennonite missiology provide the richest material for analysis. In their enthusiasm for evangelism the early Anabaptists foreshadowed the modern Protestant missionary movement by over two hundred years. For a variety of reasons, however, such as persecution and the growth of separatist and exclusivist theology, the Anabaptists soon lost their missionary zeal and settled down to try and remain faithful and pure, becoming known as the ‘quiet in the land’.8 Modern Mennonite missiology has recovered the missionary vision somewhat, and is vigorously interpreting the best of early Anabaptist approaches to mission for Christians today. Several major missiological emphases stand out in examining Anabaptist thought. They can be gathered under the six headings of ‘kingdom theology’, mission as discipleship, a cruciform mission, peacemaking, mission from the margins, and mission in community. 

1. The multi-dimensional commonwealth of God

The most fundamental Anabaptist emphasis with missiological implications is that Christian mission is about co-operating with God in the ushering in of a new order.9 The centre of Jesus’ preaching was how close the kingly reign of God is. This mysterious reality starts from the small and grows in surprising ways and is an upside-down kingdom. It is ‘God’s new order of justice, peace, and covenant community’.10 The church does not build the kingdom but is witness to the kingdom-bringing work of God amongst us.11

The ‘kingdom of God’ is not a realm but the dynamic presence of God, or God-come-in-strength.12 In its New Testament use it seems to refer both to God’s saving presence and our enjoyment of a new set of relationships in God’s creation. In other words, first it’s a new reign and, as a result, it’s a new order.13 It is both ‘God present’ and the fruit of God present. For this reason, and because monarchical relationships are for many of us anachronistic these days, we could translate the term as ‘the Commonwealth of God’. Because we are transformed in obedience to God we enjoy life in God’s commonwealth.



8 S F Pannebecker, ‘Missions, Foreign Mennonite’, in The Mennonite encyclopedia, Vol. 3, eds. Harold S Bender and C Henry Smith (Scottdale, PA:

Mennonite Publishing House, 1957), 712.

9 For a brief outline of sixteenth-century Anabaptist kingdom theology see RobertFriedmann, ‘The doctrine of the two worlds’, in The recovery of the Anabaptist vision, ed. Guy F Hershberger (Scottdale, PA: Mennonite Publishing House, 1957), 105-118.

10 John Driver, ‘The kingdom of God: Goal of messianic mission’, in The transfiguration of mission: Biblical, theological and historical foundations, ed.

Wilbert R Shenk (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1993), 83-105.

11 Driver, ‘The kingdom of God’, 100.

12 Bruce Chilton, ‘God in strength’, in The kingdom of God in the teachings of

Jesus, ed. Bruce Chilton (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 121-132.

What this vision means is that only a holistic view of mission will do. The evangelical preoccupation throughout most of the last century with evangelism in an individualistic setting will not do. The ecumenical tendency at times in recent decades to see the gospel mainly in social and political terms will not do. Even the attempt to treat ‘word’ and ‘deed’ as two distinguishable aspects of mission and then try to keep them in balance will not do.14 All types of Christian mission — evangelism, caring for our neighbours, community development, justice seeking, peacemaking, social action, living in a welcoming community, environmental action, praying in hope for God’s kingdom to come, and so on — are facets of the one jewel. They are each only a part of our response to the transforming grace of God. A new order is a whole new order and God’s mission should always stretch us as we try to keep the whole vision in view.

Another implication of the kingdom-view (while only implicit in most Anabaptist writing) is that our mission begins with God’s action and a cosmic view of God’s mission. If the Commonwealth of God is a new set of relationships, they extend not only to our relationship to God and our relationships with each other but to our relationships to other creatures and to the environment itself. An ecological framework insists that nothing is fully transformed until everything is fully transformed. That surely is part of the meaning of the cryptic passage in Romans 8 about the creation groaning to be set free from bondage (Rom 8:18-25). Christopher Marshall sums it up: ‘The gospel embraces personal renewal, social renewal and ecological renewal’.15

According to Jürgen Moltmann, ‘embodiment is the end of all God’s works’.16 That is, incarnation is part of the divine dynamic, found in God’s presence in creation, in history, pre-eminently in the person of Jesus Christ and also in the life of the church. All this puts mission in a large and mysterious context. In a sense our task is only to respond to God’s Spirit within us and point to God at work.


13 Christopher Marshall, Kingdom come: The kingdom of God in the teaching of Jesus, 2nd ed. (Auckland: Impetus, 1993), 43-44.

14 Wilbert R Shenk, Changing frontiers in mission (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1999), 2829.

15 Marshall, Kingdom come, 102.

16 Jürgen Moltmann, God in creation: An ecological doctrine of creation (London:

SCM, 1985), 244-245.


Contemporary Anabaptist writers are impressive in the way they keep this multi-dimensional kingdom perspective on mission. Two examples are The transfiguration of mission, edited by Wilbert Shenk (1993),17 and Christopher Marshall’s study of the kingdom of God in the teaching of Jesus, called Kingdom come.18 

2. Mission as discipleship

For Anabaptists the Christian life involves a full-bodied discipleship. Anabaptists all insist that the church is the gathered community of those who freely choose to respond to the call of Jesus to follow him and then are baptised. Mission and discipleship are one.19 That is, mission is a natural dimension of the lives of ordinary believers in the course of following Jesus. Every Christian is a missionary in the sense that we are all called to live out the gospel and to bear witness to its power in our lives.

Among the early Anabaptists there was no organised missionary program, only the spontaneous and effective expression of the Christian message by educated and uneducated alike, in spoken word and in daily life.20 Harold Bender, endeavouring to encapsulate the Anabaptist vision, said that the key phrase of the Anabaptists was not ‘faith in Christ’ but ‘following Christ’.21 Denny Weaver writes:



17 Wilbert R Shenk, ed. The transfiguration of mission: Biblical, theological and historical foundations (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1993).

18 Christopher Marshall, Kingdom come: The kingdom of God in the teaching of Jesus, 2nd ed. (Auckland: Impetus, 1993).

19 Harry Huebner, ‘Discipleship’, in The Mennonite encyclopedia, Vol. 5, eds.

Cornelius J Dyck and Dennis D Martin (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1990), 238; Neal Blough, ‘Messianic mission and ethics: Discipleship and the good news’, in The transfiguration of mission: Biblical, theological and historical foundations, ed.

Wilbert R Shenk (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1993), 179.

20 J D Graber, ‘Anabaptism expressed in missions and social service’, in The recovery of the Anabaptist vision, ed. Guy F Hershberger (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1957), 152, 154, 161-163.

21 Bender, The Anabaptist vision, 21.
Discipleship is an assumption that one who accepts Jesus Christ will use Jesus’ life and teachings as the norm within which to shape the Christian life. While those assumptions seem obvious, they are not the assumptions of the majority Christian theological tradition.22 

This is an incarnational approach to mission, with a strong emphasis on embodying Christ in daily life. The main strategy for mission is to live differently, that is, to point to the new order in all dimensions of life.

We may well blanch at this. Even though we may be committed to growing more Christlike day by day, and although we may believe that the life of the church must present a clear alternative to the world, on the surface this form of incarnational mission seems impossible. Our objection might be summed up in the question: ‘What does it mean to be incarnational when we are not the Messiah?’23

Indeed, Anabaptist writers sometimes seem too simplistic. For example, Lawrence Burkholder, writing in the 1950s, argued that ‘Christianity is the concrete and realistic “imitation” of Christ’s life and work in the context of the kingdom of God’.24 What does he mean by “imitating Christ”? Is Christ merely our example? If so, we may as well give up, because our human sinfulness, our alienation from God, means we simply can’t do it.

Generally, however, we find that grace is important to Anabaptists too, in dialectical counter-balance.25 It is life-changing grace, or the transforming work of the Holy Spirit, which enables and empowers Christians to live changed lives.26 Complementing ‘following Christ’, concepts such as ‘participating in Christ’27 and ‘solidarity in Christ’ figure in both sixteenth-century and contemporary Anabaptist writers.28



22 J Denny Weaver, ‘Which way for Mennonite theology?’, Gospel Herald, 23 Jan 1996, 3.

23 Jude Tiersma, ‘What does it mean to be incarnational when we are not the

Messiah?’, in God so loves the city: Seeking a theology for urban mission, eds.

Charles Van Engen and Jude Tiersma (Monrovia, CA: MARC, 1994), 7-25. 24 J Lawrence Burkholder, ‘The Anabaptist vision of discipleship’, in The recovery of the Anabaptist vision, ed. Guy F Hershberger (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1957), 137.

25 Alvin J Beachy, The concept of grace in the Radical Reformation (Nieuwkoop, Holland: B. de Graaf, 1977).

26 Roelf S Kuitse, ‘Holy Spirit: Source of messianic mission’, in The transfiguration of mission: Biblical, theological and historical foundations, ed.

Wilbert R Shenk (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1993), 106-129.

27 John Howard Yoder, The politics of Jesus: Vicit agnus noster, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 113.

28 J Denny Weaver, ‘Discipleship redefined: Four sixteenth century Anabaptists’,The Mennonite Quarterly Review 54 (1980): 256.

As well as trying to follow Jesus, there is an emphasis on letting go and letting the risen Christ shape our lives. The work of the Spirit is central in Anabaptist discipleship and mission. Incarnational mission involves both following Jesus and being shaped by the risen Christ.29

What does discipleship mean in practice, then? ‘Following Jesus’ isn’t straightforward. Obviously not all Christians are supposed to become carpenters or wear sandals or become itinerant preachers. And our context in the twenty-first century involves many new issues such as nuclear weapons, biotechnology, vast environmental destruction, postmodern ways of thinking and the hectic pace of life in the post-industrial world, none of which are found in the times in which Jesus lived. How do disciples become living signs to the Commonwealth of God?

Anabaptists are prepared to name some radical principles. As John Howard Yoder pointed out in The politics of Jesus, we are called to 

1. forgive others, 
2. love our enemies, 
3. suffer for the cause if necessary and generally live in a revolutionary new set of relationships in which the first are last and outsiders become insiders.30 

It is truly an upside–down kingdom31 and an alternative society. 
Anabaptists generally argue that Jesus’ teaching calls us to a non-violent stance, a non-hierarchical perspective on status and power, the practice of Christian discipleship as a voluntary and serious commitment, and Christian community as a clear alternative to the ways of the world.

Burkholder, writing in 1993, observes that modern ideas of discipleship are becoming diluted:

Mennonites continue to talk about discipleship and Anabaptism almost ad nauseum, but much of it is loose talk. For Mennonite discipleship language is no longer backed up in the communal consciousness by the gold standard of Jesus’ sayings as rigorous, sacrificial, ‘upside down’, extraordinary, impractical Sermon on the Mount presuppositions. Discipleship language these days generally refers to something between the extraordinariness of Jesus’ ethic and the everyday reasonableness of civil righteousness.32 


29 Ross Langmead, ‘The Word made flesh: Towards an incarnational missiology’,Thesis (DTheol), Melbourne College of Divinity, 1997, 57-65, 76-94.

30 Yoder, The politics of Jesus, 115-126.

31 Donald B Kraybill, The upside-down kingdom, 2nd ed. (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1990).


He invokes Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s view of discipleship as involving ‘costly grace’, combining a sense of overwhelming gratitude to God with a daily and concrete commitment to at least respond to the ‘perfectionistic ethic’ of Jesus, who refused to qualify either his demands or his radical grace.33

This raises many questions. While the old social order lasts, will Christians with this approach be confined to being a ginger group on the edge of society? Will they be a small group, more critical than affirming of culture, vulnerable, servant-like and uncomfortable with conventional power? Perhaps Anabaptist mission will tend to attract passionate and uncompromising idealists. Given the impossible demands Jesus seems to place on those who listen to him, most Christians just water them down, whereas Anabaptists are likely to at least have a go. Do we need to be careful, remembering that the higher the standards we set, the greater the fall when we fail? How do we find the path between, on the one hand, overwhelming idealism, which crushes and tends to legalism and, on the other hand, a too-easy rationalisation of Jesus’ demands, which lets us off the hook at every turn? There are no easy answers.

One Anabaptist approach to mission, that of providing a withdrawn alternative community, is inadequate to my mind. This was the dominant Anabaptist vision in the sixteenth century. The Schleitheim Confession of 1527 declared that Anabaptists will have nothing to do with the wicked world. It saw reality as consisting of two opposite realms of light and darkness, Christ and the devil, discipleship and unbelief; the two opposites are to have no part of each other.34

Most Anabaptists today back away from attempts at complete withdrawal. They recognise that the Schleitheim Confession reflected a strongly dualistic view of reality which unconvincingly placed all ‘light’ within the Anabaptist communities and all ‘darkness’ in ‘the world’. Both the church and the world are much more ambiguous than this. In particular, the world is not as dark as this vision suggests. It is still the cosmos and the humanity that God created, entered and cares about.



32 J Lawrence Burkholder, ‘The limits of perfection: Autobiographical reflections’,in The limits of perfection: A conversation with J Lawrence Burkholder, eds. Rodney J Sawatsky and Scott Holland (Waterloo, Ontario: Institute of Anabaptist and Mennonite Studies, 1993), 42.

33 Burkholder, ‘The limits of perfection’, 39-40.

34 John Howard Yoder, ed. The Schleitheim Confession (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1973), 11-12.



Nevertheless, exploring the alternative community is still the distinctive Anabaptist contribution to the debate about how the church should engage in mission in the world. On the spectrum between attempts at complete withdrawal and a form of Christendom where church and state live in symbiosis, the Anabaptists today are still closer to withdrawal, even though they spell out ways in which ‘the alternative community’ directly and indirectly transforms the wider community.

Denny Weaver, for example, argues for a ‘socially active alternative community’.35 He asks, ‘Is Christian social responsibility expressed primarily through the institutions of society or through the church?’ and ‘Does the church permeate society or function as a visible alternative to it?’. In both cases he opts for aiming to provide a clear alternative.36 But this alternative is one whose efforts may intersect with the attempts of governments and secular organisations to create a just and compassionate society. Indeed some Christians may work through social institutions. But the church’s mission is primarily to be the church and act in ways that point to a new order, not compromising with the old order.37

This important debate on the nature of discipleship and the social dimension of mission continues amongst Anabaptists and other scholars.38 I place myself on the ‘more socially engaged’ wing of the spectrum, along with others who accept the label of ‘radical evangelicals’. My assessment is that Athol Gill would have agreed, given that he urged Christians to incarnate the liberating power of Jesus Christ in the economic, political and cultural processes of society, including education, employment, the media, trade, urban planning and human rights.39 



35 J Denny Weaver, ‘The socially active community: An alternative ecclesiology’,in The limits of perfection: A conversation with J Lawrence Burkholder, eds. Rodney Sawatsky and Scott Holland (Waterloo, Ontario: Institute of Anabaptist and Mennonite Studies, 1993), 71-94.

36 Weaver, ‘The socially active community’, 76-77.

37 Weaver, ‘The socially active community’, 80.

38 See the excellent set of essays in Rodney Sawatsky and Scott Holland, eds., The limits of perfection: A conversation with J Lawrence Burkholder (Waterloo, Ontario: Institute of Anabaptist and Mennonite Studies, 1993). Also Stanley A

Hauerwas and William H Willimon, Resident aliens: Life in the Christian colony (Nashville: Abingdon, 1989); and José Míguez Bonino, ‘On discipleship, justice and power’, in Freedom and discipleship: Liberation theology in Anabaptist perspective, ed. Daniel S Schipani (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1989), 131-138.

Whatever views Anabaptists hold on discipleship as living out a social alternative, there is consensus that mission is discipleship of a full-bodied nature. One of the most important contributions of the discipleship tradition, of which Anabaptism is a major strand, is its radical linkage of faith and action. The call to follow Jesus continually points beyond us, challenging us and our world. Discipleship does not need to be called ‘radical discipleship’ because there is no other type. 

3. Mission shaped by the cross

Precisely because it takes seriously the call to follow Jesus the Anabaptist tradition is a theology of the cross. Because it sees the path of discipleship as cruciform, Anabaptist missiology calls Christians to face issues of suffering, cost and possible death on the path to new life and the experience of resurrection. The Anabaptist experience of persecution and martyrdom in the sixteenth century certainly stamped the movement with a clear understanding of the cost of discipleship, and Mennonite peacemaking today sometimes involves similar dangers and costs.

Mission in this mould finds the resurrection-centred approach which is common amongst Western Christians today lacking in depth and substance. A cross-shaped missiology is not comfortable with a style of mission that emphasises victory, strength, conquest and strategies that centre on power.

Some churches engage in mission primarily through inviting others to join them in praise and ecstatic worship. Those who see mission as praise are right, of course, to want to share the joy and power of the risen Christ and to celebrate experiences of spiritual victory. A missiology of the cross, however, insists that Christian joy be well anchored in the reality of the unfinished task of mission and a yearning for the fullness of the Commonwealth of God. It wants to say that as long as anyone remains lost, hungry and in despair, we should look forward in mission rather than dwell on the partial victories we experience here and now. On this view, it is not that the resurrection is limited but that its promise for the future is even greater than we have experienced so far.

39 Athol Gill, The fringes of freedom: Following Jesus, living together, working for justice (Homebush West, NSW: Lancer, 1990), 169-171.

Furthermore, the resurrection is God’s ‘Yes’ to the sacrificial, world-challenging life and consequent death of Jesus. The risen Christ affirms, in a way we do not fully understand, that the secret to transformed life lies in Jesus’ self-giving and obedience to God’s purposes. The cross was the symbol of all that Jesus stood for and all the resistance the world was able to offer to his radical challenge.

John Howard Yoder expressed this insight well. He reminds Christians that discipleship is a call to take up our cross and follow Jesus (Mk 8:34). He argues that only at one point is Jesus our example, and that is in his cross.40 But what does that actually mean today? Yoder embraces the socio-political dimensions of a ‘kingdom theology’ and argues that the cross must be, for us as it was for Jesus, the price of social nonconformity. It is the social reality of representing in an unwilling world the order to come. It is not unpredictable suffering. It is not primarily our inward wrestling with sin, as Luther thought. It is the end of a freely chosen path after counting the cost.41 Suffering is not to be embraced but it is to be faced.

This emphasis on incarnational mission as profoundly shaped by the cross is shared by Anabaptists with others such as Bonhoeffer, Moltmann and the Latin American liberation theologians, all of whom remind us of the costly nature of this path. The more our theology leads us to engage with the suffering of those around us the more it has to face the significance of the cross.

A missiology of the cross does not deny the importance of the resurrection. The resurrection is central in all Christian faith as our hope and our power. But as Thorwald Lorenzen often says, the resurrection is the resurrection of the crucified Christ.42 The path to the resurrection is through the cross. The Anabaptists remind us that our experience as disciples, even though suffused with resurrection presence and joy, will generally be a costly and demanding commitment, as God’s gracious rule is not yet fully present. While the poor remain poor and the lost remain lost, disciples can expect suffering and rejection, and mission always takes the shape of Jesus: that of the cross.


40 Yoder, The politics of Jesus, 95.
41 Yoder, The politics of Jesus, 96.
42 Thorwald Lorenzen, Resurrection and discipleship: Interpretive models, biblical reflections, theological consequences (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1996), 239-320.

4. Peacemaking

Apart from a few exceptions in the earliest days, Anabaptists have always seen the call to renounce violence as a direct consequence of following the way of the cross. 43 Jesus’ arrest and death flowed from his decision at every major point in his life to live and teach the way of suffering servanthood rather than to take up the sword.44 To follow Jesus, then, means to embrace the way of nonviolence and love for enemies.

Taking shape variously as non-resistance, pacifism or nonviolent resistance, the call to peacemaking is one of the more distinctive features of the Anabaptist approach to mission, a featured shared with the other historic peace churches (the Brethren and Quakers).45

In the sixteenth century non-resistance grew out of a simple response to Jesus’ teaching to turn the other cheek and love our enemies (Mt 5:38-45). It developed in a context where violence was used against the Anabaptists and so was closely linked to costly discipleship and the theology of the cross. Non-retaliation was also seen as a powerful witness to the transforming love of Jesus.46

From then until the middle of the twentieth century traditional non-resistance was influenced by Anabaptism’s strong dualism between the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of the devil.47 It focused more on the purity of the church than on reforming the world. Sadly, it was a feature of withdrawal rather than a dimension of active mission.
Amongsr Mennonites in the last fifty years, however, peacemaking has turned outwards and largely changed from passive non-resistance to active non-violent resistance. The whole direction of Jesus’ life and teaching is now seen as politically radical and nonviolent in nature.48 The biblical concept of shalom is now seen to be central to the mission of God.49

43 Ronald J Sider, Christ and violence (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1979), 16.
44 Sider, Christ and violence, 23.
45 John R Burkholder, ‘Peace’, in The Mennonite encyclopedia, Vol. 5, eds.
Cornelius J Dyck and Dennis D Martin (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1990), 681. 46 Roland H Bainton, Christian attitudes to war and peace: A historical survey and critical re-evaluation (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1960), 153. 47 John Howard Yoder, Christian attitudes to war, peace, and revolution: A companion to Bainton (Elkhart, IN: Goshen Biblical Seminary, 1983), 193.
48 Yoder, The politics of Jesus.
49 Perry Yoder, Shalom: The Bible's word for salvation, justice and peace (London: Spire, 1989); Perry B Yoder and Willard M Swartley, eds., The meaning of peace: Biblical studies (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1992).

It is now clearly understood that peace involves justice and a positive sense of well-being. The pre-eminence of Christ over all cosmic powers is asserted in such a way that our mission for peace calls all of society to renounce violence and hatred. While acknowledging the separation of church and state, the Anabaptist mission for peace engages in reconciling activities and a prophetic peace witness to secular institutions.50

As a result, there has been a flowering of Mennonite peacemaking activities such as conflict mediation, victim-offender reconciliation, peace education, peace rallies, symbolic action in international conflicts, non-violence training, civil disobedience and non-violent direct action.

The clear emphasis on peacemaking is one of the most valuable distinctives of Anabaptist mission. It is clearly integrated with other emphases, particularly being a sign of God’s new order, following Jesus and walking the way of the cross. Non-violence is just one facet of love. ‘Peacemaking’ is another term for the Christian ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:18-20), which in turn is our co-operation in God’s reconciling mission. 

5. Mission from the margins

There is a consensus amongst contemporary Anabaptists that solidarity with the poor follows from the incarnation. Apart from liberation theology I doubt that any Christian tradition is clearer on this issue. In Jesus God expresses solidarity with humankind, but particularly with the voiceless and the powerless.

Jesus’ own social location and his economic and social teachings are part of our understanding of who he is and what our mission is. John Driver reminds us that Galilee was on the margins of Judaism and that Jesus gravitated toward the disenfranchised, such as the Samaritans, the poor, prostitutes, publicans, lepers, foreigners, women and children. Driver says, as do many writers, that our mission ought to be shaped by Jesus’ mission.51 Ronald Sider takes his own Mennonite brothers and sisters to task for being materialistic. He says, ‘Liberation theology rightly wants to know if the wealthy Mennonite church in North America and Western Europe has any intention of living what the Bible teaches about the poor’.52



50 Burkholder, ‘Peace’, 682.
51 John Driver, ‘Messianic evangelization’, in The transfiguration of mission:
Biblical, theological and historical foundations, ed. Wilbert Shenk (Scottdale, PA:
Herald, 1993), 216.



The early Anabaptists didn’t theologise too much about heading to the margins because that’s where they found themselves anyway. Mostly poor (though some were educated), they read the Bible through the eyes of the poor and saw a Jesus who challenged the powers and included the outcast. More importantly, the way they expressed their alternative community, following the teachings of Jesus, led to the inclusion of the poor: They practised the priesthood of all believers; they rejected social hierarchies and titles; they shared goods; and they expected to see Christ in the hungry and homeless. Unfortunately, the early Anabaptists drew a sharp line between their own fellowships and the world outside, and soon (perhaps due to persecution) their care for the poor settled back into extending only as far as their own people.

What does it mean to engage in mission from the margins? To narrow the question, let me particularly address middle class readers in the affluent West. (The responses of those who find themselves already on the margins would differ.) I find Linford Stutzman’s suggestions (in With Jesus in the World) helpful here.53 He argues that in affluent societies we find the establishment at one end of the spectrum and the marginalised at the other. The middle class in between can either aspire to gain more power and status or can turn its face toward those with less. Social action often arises from the marginalised end of the middle class, from those who have resources but use them for the poor.54 To be effective such activists must be in proximity to the poor, however that happens. Stutzman says that’s exactly where Jesus located himself for his mission, critiquing the establishment with some power and yet mixing easily with the poorest of the poor.55 He issues a challenge to all Christian communities when he writes:

The fact is that churches which consistently proclaim and live out the gospel message, visibly demonstrating the radical hope of the coming kingdom after the manner of Jesus and the early church, are the exception. Churches with a message counter to the tired values of the establishment in modern affluent societies are rare. Churches which are in society in the way Jesus was in his are a tiny minority indeed.56

52 Ronald J Sider, ‘Mennonites and the poor: Toward an Anabaptist theology ofliberation’, in Freedom and discipleship: Liberation theology in Anabaptist perspective, ed. Daniel S Schipani (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1989), 85.
53 Linford Stutzman, With Jesus in the world: Mission in modern, affluent societies (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1992).
54 Stutzman, With Jesus in the world, 45-57.
55 Stutzman, With Jesus in the world, 57.

There are many tensions involved in mission from the margins. They centre around the extent to which we are prepared to engage in mission with few resources, from ‘weakness’ rather than ‘strength’. And they uncover our own desire for comfort and standing.

It may be impossible for middle class Christians to genuinely ‘identify with’ the poor, because we (I include myself) are not really poor no matter what we do. Perhaps we can do what Stutzman calls us to do, that is, to live at the lower end of the middle class spectrum. But does he expect all Christians to heed his call, including executives, parliamentarians and others trying to move in so-called ‘high places’? We have generally avoided a literal interpretation of Jesus’ call to the rich young man to give away all his possessions; must we take Stutzman literally and completely turn our back on middle class and upper middle class existence, with all of its trappings, such as travel, education, communication devices, high technology, holidays, physical comfort, sports and entertainment? For example, is it ever right to fly around the world to achieve things, or should we stay at home? How can we ever move beyond charity to social action if we don’t learn the systems of the powerful?

Anabaptists today, like other Christians, differ on these questions. A constructive way forward may be for Christians at various social locations to stay in active dialogue with each other. Those who live in low-income urban areas, staff soup kitchens or sit with the psychiatrically ill are vitally important to those who speak to parliamentary breakfasts or devise social policy in the World Bank. The converse is also true.

Another way forward is to see discipleship as consisting of a downward journey as well as an inward journey and an outward journey. The downward journey means a step at a time towards simplicity or generosity, the giving away of time, power, possessions and resources. It is a step at a time towards the poor, a step outside our comfort zone, whatever that may be.

56 Stutzman, With Jesus in the world, 95.

6. Mission in community

Anabaptists see the church as a covenant community living as a sign in the midst of the world. Mission is essentially communal. It is not that I partially embody the risen Christ in my life, but that we partially embody the risen Christ in our life together. We aspire to living in an alternative society here in the midst of wider society as a sign of God’s presence in strength, or the Commonwealth of God.

The Anabaptists again set the bar rather high for discipleship. We noted their call to follow Jesus in all aspects of daily life, their view of mission as cross-shaped, a commitment to overcoming violence, and a call to engage in mission from the margins. And now it’s creating and sustaining a counterculture. Larry Miller writes provocatively when he says:

Is it unreasonable to believe that only churches with this particular identity — alternative, voluntary, missionary, pacifist microsocieties — can be instruments of Messiah’s transfigured mission? … Only churches which are alternative societies, transformed in relation to existing society because they are already conformed to Messiah’s vision of the future, can demonstrate the nature of life in the coming kingdom.57

We can only hope that lesser Christian communities manage to point to the new order as well.

Community means many things, of course. The Anabaptist tradition is known for its communal shape, sometimes forming self-sufficient rural communities with communally-owned possessions and a common purse. Today Christians form all sorts of committed and semi-committed groups and call them communities. Geographical community is not the only sort that thrives in our society, as people meet at work, or from across a city, or even online. But if we take our physical body and the natural rhythms of daily life seriously, then local community will still remain the primary type for the church. We could define community as that gift of unity of spirit that God gives to all sorts of groups of people who commit themselves to some sort of common life. It’s not easy in an individualistic and busy Western lifestyle. Every step from ‘me’ to ‘us’ is hard-won in such a culture.

57 Larry Miller, ‘The church as messianic society: Creation and instrument of transfigured mission’, in The transfiguration of mission: Biblical, theological and historical foundations, ed. Wilbert R Shenk (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1993), 149150.

What does this call to community mean for mission? First, on a personal note, a supportive and lively community is great because I enjoy it, at least most of the time. It is part of the vision for the Commonwealth of God that we experience a new life together, encapsulated in the symbol of an open banquet, sharing the good life with others. We can only share in mission what we experience as good news. It’s good news that others care how we’re feeling, that others share the burdens of the day, that we can do together what we couldn’t achieve on our own, and that we celebrate, laugh and cry together. To have all these things is rare in our society and to be treasured. Community fuels our mission because it is a sign of what God calls all people to. It sustains us for the long haul and teaches us our strengths and weaknesses.

Secondly, the practice of community that is open at the edges is probably the most effective form of evangelism. People who won’t go to a church service will come to a barbecue. Sharing possessions, minding children, helping to paint the house, praying for each other — all these things are signs of a new set of relationships and are signs of the Commonwealth of God.

Thirdly, only in community can we express the various facets of mission. As Paul said in a slightly different way (1 Cor 12), some are bass players and some cook great pasta. Some can sit with people all night and others can organise a camp. Some are great with the disadvantaged and others great theologians. We all do a bit of each but we need each other. Only together can we pursue incarnational mission, because some are the eyes and others are the hands.

Fourthly, community is the cauldron where we learn what the new order means in day to day life. Community can be ugly, as we fight, freeze people out, play our power games or fail to carry our part of the burden. The forgiveness we experience overflows and is offered in mission to others. In community we learn to include people we would naturally exclude. This is where we learn to be more vulnerable, and learn to get past conflict to reconciliation. 

7. Conclusion

The Anabaptist perspectives on mission I’ve discussed point in one direction, that of living out a clear alternative to the ways of the world, engaging in the world but marching to a different drum.

On the one hand it seems radical and difficult as we ‘try’ to follow Jesus. On the other hand it often amounts to ‘not trying’ but rather experiencing the risen Christ in life together; mission is just the overflow of our enjoyment of God’s gracious reign, even though it is only partial. Athol Gill used to say that the grace of the gospel call is always greater than its demand.

Anabaptist mission leads to all sorts of expressions. There are Anabaptists doing development work in poor countries and others in church planting and evangelism. There are many who express their alternative values inz conventional occupations, in conflict resolution work or in new approaches to victim-offender relations. Anabaptist churches are known for their peacemaking and their distinctive contributions to international relations.

The central shape of Anabaptist mission, however, seems to be discipleship in community. It is a vision of the daily expression of a different life together, one which is missional in character.

There are many forms of mission which are not emphasised in this approach, such as mass media evangelism, large evangelistic rallies and influencing society from positions of power. While there is merit in these types of mission, the distinctly Anabaptist contribution is to remind us that it is Jesus whom we follow. We are called to engage in mission in Christ’s way.

Jesus embodied a person-to-person style of communication. He showed a lack of interest in writing books and organising a religion. He lived with a strong sense that there is a reality other than the world around us which pervades this world and claims our total allegiance. This sense of God’s reign is both mystical and very practical, both personally transforming and socially revolutionary. Jesus calls us to an almost impossible and yet wonderful alternative existence which doesn’t graft too well onto the vine of our existing society but, at the same time, begins here and now where we are. This is the overall vision of Anabaptist approaches to Christian mission.

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[1] J Denny Weaver, Becoming Anabaptist: The origin and significance of sixteenthcentury Anabaptism (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1987), 23.

[2] Guy F Hershberger, ‘Introduction’, in The recovery of the Anabaptist vision, ed. Guy F Hershberger (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1957), 1.

[3] See, for example, James Stayer, Werner Packull and Klaus Deppermann, ‘From monogenesis to polygenesis: The historical discussion of Anabaptist origins’, The Mennonite Quarterly Review 49 (1975): 83-121; Walter Klaassen, ‘Sixteenthcentury Anabaptism: A vision valid for the twentieth century?’, The Conrad Grebel Review 7 (1989): 242; and John Howard Yoder, ‘Orientation in midstream: A response to the responses’, in Freedom and discipleship: Liberation theology in Anabaptist perspective, ed. Daniel S Schipani (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1989), 162.

[4] Walter Klaassen, ‘Anabaptism’, in The Mennonite encyclopedia, Vol. 5, eds.

Cornelius J Dyck and Dennis D Martin (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1990), 24. 5 Calvin Redekop, ‘The community of scholars and the essence of Anabaptism’, The Mennonite Quarterly Review 67 (1993): 436-437.

[5] Harold S Bender, The Anabaptist vision (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1944), 13.

[6] Bender, The Anabaptist vision, 16.