Mennonite Weekly Review

LANCASTER, Pa. — With about 100 cultures in their churches today, Mennonites need to clarify their shared faith principles, said Alfred Neufeld, chair of the coordinating council for the Mennonite World Conference assembly in Paraguay in July 2009.

Alfred Neufeld and Wilma Kaethler Neufeld during a visit to Lancaster, Pa., Nov. 11. — Photo by Celeste Kennel-Shank

“What will hold us together in the future is precisely our relationship to Christ, our basic ideas of what it means to be the church, what it means to be a disciple of Jesus,” Neufeld said.

To that end, MWC commissioned Neufeld to write a commentary, What We Believe Together, on the document “Shared Convictions of Global Anabaptists,” adopted by the MWC General Council in March 2006.

Neufeld was in the United States to promote the book and translate for Ernst Bergen, a member of the church where he is minister, Concordia Mennonite Brethren Church in Asunción.

Neufeld, dean of the theology faculty of the Protestant University of Paraguay, said faith needs to be understood and lived according to one’s cultural logic.

“The biblical truth, the story of Jesus, must get incarnated in each culture,” he said. “Then, to become a global family of faith, something more is needed.”

What We Believe Together aims to strengthen the global Anabaptist community by emphasizing shared beliefs while respecting local theologies.

The book also can serve to educate members of churches new to MWC by explaining Anabaptism.

Neufeld and his wife, Wilma Kaethler Neufeld, wrote the book in English, German and Spanish, writing a passage first in one language and then redoing the passage in the other two languages. The English version was released in December 2007.

The book has been published in those three languages, and other Mennonites are working on versions in Vietnamese, Indonesian and French.

Neufeld and Kaethler Neufeld, who each were raised mostly in Mennonite colonies, have seen Paraguayan Mennonite churches become more multiethnic as well.

There are about 30,000 baptized MWC members: 15,000 who speak German, 9,000 who speak an indigenous language and 6,000 who speak Spanish. There are another 30,000 unbaptized people in Mennonite churches. The 60,000 Mennonites in Paraguay make up about 1 percent of the national population, one of the highest percentages of Mennonites in a nation.