Mennonite Weekly Review

A revival movement that started with 18 families in Russia 150 years ago has become a worldwide stream of Christian faith blending Anabaptist and evangelical influences.

Don Morris, director of Mission USA, the church planting and renewal arm of the U.S. Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches, prays for church planters during the denomination’s national convention in Hillsboro, Kan., in 2008. — Photo by Paul Schrag/MWR

The Mennonite Brethren church — with about 280,000 members worldwide, including 62,800 in North America — is marking its 150th birthday Jan. 6.

North American Mennonite Brethren will celebrate their history and look to their future July 12-18 in Vancouver, B.C., at a binational conference with the theme “Celebrating Jesus, Lord of All.”

Ed Boschman, executive director of the U.S. Conference of MB Churches, said mission will be front and center. Several keynote speakers will be second- and third-generation believers who came to faith through MB global mission efforts.

“We are hoping that it will cause us to celebrate with joy and a lot of gratefulness that we’ve had that blessing of God on our missional activity,” he said.

Another piece they hope will attract attention is an international consultation on Renewing Identity and Mission.

“That will take us into discussion about our theological roots,” Boschman said, comparing those roots “with where we are today in our evangelical Anabaptist expression of faith. It will be a chance to do some dialogue.”

The denomination also aims to renew commitment from congregations, he said.

“It will be an opportunity for us to try to connect to grassroots and local church realities as to the importance of and their partnership in our national family ministries,” Boschman said. “We are a larger family with some capacity as a family that we wouldn’t have if we would just focus locally and individually.”

Since the U.S. and Canadian MB conferences were united up until a decade ago, it is a chance to gather those two churches, where there are a lot of relationships, and hear from the ministries in which they continue to collaborate, Boschman said.