Mennonite Weekly Review

For the first 18 years of my life, I didn’t know much about Mennonites beyond southern Pennsylvania, where my ancestors and extended family have lived for generations.

Beyond visiting friends in Virginia, Ohio and Indiana, my family was my main contact with Anabaptists, as I was raised in an ecumenical community in Washington.

My knowledge increased at Goshen (Ind.) College as I learned about the multicultural body of now more than 1.6 million Anabaptists worldwide. That picture became less abstract when I traveled to Ethiopia and Colombia, sharing meals and stories with Mennonites there. Their testimonies of faithfulness in the face of persecution inspired me.

Yet it wasn’t until the past three years while working for Mennonite Weekly Review that I truly claimed this piece of the body of Christ as my own. Through encountering many varieties of Anabaptists at church-related events, through story interviews and in MWR’s Newton, Kan., office, I have gained a deeper appreciation for the amazing diversity among us.

We differ in how we dress, where we live, what kind of music we have in worship, how big our congregations are and which vehicles we drive — in addition to culture, ethnicity, age, ability and more.

Yet there is a core we share in living out our faith in discipleship, seeking to let our beliefs spread through our whole lives. From that core have come common initiatives such as Mennonite Disaster Service and Mennonite Central Committee, through which we show Christ’s love to people nearby and around the world.

We may not ever have unity in the sense of being one denomination. Even at our tradition’s beginnings in the 16th century we were not a uniform group.

Yet we can be one as a part of the body of Christ with particular gifts to share.

And people from other groups are attracted to what we have to offer. In my time at MWR, I’ve met church leaders and members raised in other traditions who learned about Anabaptist faith and felt our beliefs matched their own.

When visitors worship with our congregations, do they get a sense of our larger body? Do they see an expression of a tradition that has a place for anyone who wishes to take up a life of discipleship, lived out in a community of mutual accountability and guided by Scripture?