Heilsgeschichte

Last week I had the privilege of spending 6 days in Columbus, Ohio, at the Mennonite National Convention. My journey toward the Anabaptist movement began during college, when our country hastily invaded Iraq with scores of committed Christians cheering on the sidelines. I spent many sleepless nights trying to understand how Christians could justify redemptive violence based on Just War Theory. Thereafter, my Anabaptist leanings took theological shape while serving destitute Haitian refugees in the Dominican Republic for two years. These communities of squalor began to open my eyes up to the international scope of God's kingdom; in other words, I started to realize that Christian nationalism contradicts everything that Jesus was about.

I represent the growing movement of young christians in search of a church that is committed to Jesus' kingdom and the radical ethics of love and peacemaking that kingdom implies. For the past three years, I have been attending an urban Mennonite Church, exploring what it looks like to live out Jesus' ethics in the context of urban community. This experience has turned my ecclesiology upside down and forced me to ask the question: should I become grafted into the Mennonite Church? Leaders such as Scot Mcknight, Shane Claiborne and Greg Boyd are all bent toward Anabaptism yet remain under the umbrella of evangelicalism. My question for them is: why not enter into a group of people who have been practicing the politics of Jesus for almost 500 years? Note, Claiborne and Boyd were both speakers at the convention. For Boyd's reflections on the convention, click here.

Nevertheless, the convention provided me with an opportunity to further explore my potential role in the Mennonite Church. There were over 8,000 Mennonites present and over half were youth. The youth event, from my perspective, seemed to be a tremendous success-with engaging speakers, service projects and heavy rock bands. As someone who served on Young Life staff for 4 years in college, I was surprised that a denominational church could pull off such a dynamic youth event.

I was quite curious about the personality and missional theology of rural Mennonites. My first day I sat down with a farmer from Kansas for lunch and I was surprised by his commitment to serve in Bangladesh each year. I met another farmer who is deeply committed to the demilitarization of youth in our country. I served as a delegate for my church, which consisted of eight meetings with the executive board of the Mennonite Church. I have always wondered how the body of Christ can work together in unity, even when the hand lives 500 miles away from the toes. I thought the delegate sessions were a creative way to bring the church together, make decisions, and do so with opportunity to get to know others. Overall, the convention was a great experience and I am eager to continue learning from this great movement. Although I cannot guarantee that I will attend a Mennonite Church for the rest of my life, my own sitz im leben has allowed me the wonderful opportunity to call it "home" for now.

This entry was posted on Tue, 07/14/2009 - 14:46

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