By Celeste Kennel-Shank
Mennonite Weekly Review

	Brian McLaren speaks to a group at the Oak Park, Ill., stop of his “Everything Must Change Tour.” — Photo by Celeste Kennel-Shank/MWR
		‘Everything Must Change’ going to Goshen By Jodi H. Beyeler Goshen College GOSHEN, Ind. — Brian McLaren’s “Everything Must Change Tour” will conclude an 11-city trip May 9-10 at Goshen College. McLaren has been on tour since February leading conferences that focus on the message of his newest book. The book seeks to identify the world’s top crises and how Jesus’ message guides responses to them. “This tour represents a chance to bring this important message to key cities around the country,” McLaren said. “It will be a highly interactive, multimedia, participatory experience of teaching, visual art, prayer, music, conversation, reflection and more. A wide range of denominations are participating, both Catholic and Protestant, mainline and evangelical, along with plenty of ‘spiritual but not religious’ people, too.” While on campus, McLaren will speak in the chapel service at 9:40 a.m. May 9 in the Church-Chapel. Registration for the conference begins at 4 p.m. May 9, and the first session begins at 7 p.m.

He is “trying to be faithful to Jesus,” he said in an interview while on tour for his current book, Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope.

On the other hand, McLaren thinks it is important in the current global context to distinguish “between being affiliated with the Christian religion and being a committed follower of Jesus.”

That term, “follower of Jesus,” is more inclusive, he said.

“There are increasing numbers of Muslim followers of Jesus and Hindu followers of Jesus, and they do not want to be identified with the Christian religion,” McLaren said.

The distinction is clear when he considers early Anabaptists.

“By refusing to be baptized as infants, they were, in a way, opting out of being affiliated with the Christian religion even if it meant they would be misunderstood and killed and persecuted,” McLaren said. “It was a sign of radical identification as followers of Jesus.”

McLaren hopes the spiritual descendants of those early Anabaptists won’t lose their sense of distinction. He fears that is happening as some of them assimilate into mainstream evangelical Protestantism.

“For Anabaptists, the treasure is focusing on Jesus and the kingdom of God,” he said. “That, to me, is a treasure that Mennonites should be careful not to lose.”

McLaren caught the attention of many Anabaptists with his 2004 book, a Generous Orthodoxy, in which Anabaptists are named among more than 20 Christian groups with which McLaren identifies. He spends half of a chapter detailing the parts of the Anabaptist tradition he wishes to emulate: personal commitment to faith, discipleship, making Christ central, practicing peace, nonconformity, working at the margins and living in community.

In his 2007 book, Everything Must Change, McLaren describes a vision for Christians changing every area of their lives to respond to urgent global problems.

McLaren names those problems as rooted in environmental destruction, the widening wealth gap, the lack of global security and the failure of the world’s religions to fully motivate people to respond to these crises.

Mennonites could be key players in responding to global crises, but they must first become more engaged, McLaren said.

“One of the big challenges for Mennonites is, along with a radical understanding of the gospel, this value of living quiet in the land became so deeply imbedded,” he said. “Pacifism is not passivism.”

McLaren lauded Mennonites who are already working for peace, giving the example of Mennonites building relationships in Iran. He met an Iranian official recently who told him Mennonites involved with Iran are seen by many people there as “real Christians.”

“That to me is active peacemaking,” McLaren said. “It’s messy sometimes, and it’s dirty, and sometimes it’s downright dangerous, but to me it shows a great faithfulness to Christ. I think that’s something a younger generation of Anabaptists could be proud of, and I think it’s something that disillusioned young Christians from other denominations could be very attracted to.”

McLaren’s vision of tackling global problems also involves Christians forming partnerships internationally to share knowledge and gifts, he said.

“For example, a lot of Mennonites are great farmers and they know about caring for the land,” he said. “We need people to go around the world teaching other Christians to be truly Christlike farmers by caring for their land.”

McLaren believes the tradition of farming can reconnect people to God’s creation.

“It’s about seeing the land not as something you inherit from your ancestors but as something you hold in trust for your descendants,” he said. “The sense of the land being connected to generations is very important, and the spirituality of working with God in the tilling of creation.”

The lack of connection to land is part of a modern worldview focused on industry and all its trappings that McLaren believes must be questioned through a postmodern worldview.

What the church should look like in a postmodern context is the subject of a conversation among Christians collectively called the Emergent movement, with which McLaren is involved. Some congregations, but mainly individuals, identify with the movement.

Currently Emergent groups are largely urban, McLaren said.

“As more and more Mennonites move to the city, I think there will be increasing affinities and cross-pollination with Emergent folks,” he said.

A group of Anabaptists and Emergent leaders have formed a network called Submergent to share ideas. Congregations in several U.S. cities, as well as Perth, Australia, are calling themselves Submerged Communities.

“In many ways Emergent represents a rediscovery of the Anabaptist spirit,” he said. “It’s very hard in other Protestant denominations to find people who take Jesus as teacher deeply seriously, and take Jesus’ teachings and the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus’ example of nonviolence seriously.”

As Emergent and Submergent Christians seek new ways to be church, they often exist outside of denominational structures.

McLaren thinks denominations are important, as they can be institutions that preserve the values of their members.

“Each denomination has to figure out what its wine is and what its wineskins are,” he said.

Denominations should look back over their histories and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses.

“Mennonites would have to say, ‘We have been very good at opposing violence,’ ” he said. “ ‘We have not been very good at evangelism and making new disciples. We have been very good at being faithful to Christ in a rural setting. We’ve not been very good at being faithful to Christ in an urban setting.’ ”

Such honest assessment could help Mennonites to identify who they’ve been and who they want to be, McLaren said.

“Then we can look toward the future and let our traditions be living traditions,” he said.