Experiences in Contemporary Ecclesiologies

“The Mission of the Church”: Hartzler Bible Lectures, Bethel College, March 2024

Introduction

[In the previous article], we discussed ecclesiologies in Colombia. We mentioned how, in 2016, after decades of civil war in Colombia, many Protestant, evangelical, and charismatic churches voted against the peace agreements between the government and the largest revolutionary army. We emphasized that how churches speak about God has social implications for those churches and their contexts. We analyzed three ways of being a church today: churches that emphasize reason, churches that focus on justice, and churches that highlight mystical experiences.

[In a recent article in] Christianity Today,^[1] the author showed how one immediate challenge of projects that support displaced people in Colombia is getting churches to care and the reason why:

Despite being the birthplace of integral mission, the Latin American church has been slower to embrace it than other parts of the world, [Professor Christopher Hays says]. “The challenge is […] about helping them to see that [displacement] is a problem the church should care about, because they have a pretty strong evangelical dualistic tendency” […] What these churches need first is a total “paradigm shift” in theology, Hays said. But theology only goes so far. Integral mission is more than an intellectual framework. It is an incarnation of the gospel that, as modelled in Christ’s life, ministry, and death on the cross, comes at a cost.

That article says churches need a complete change in their way of being church. We, César and Sandra, as Anabaptist pastors in Colombia, experienced that paradigm shift many years ago.

Following Jesus

I (César) can say today that I was a victim of the first style of ecclesiology, which emphasizes reason. When I was 22 years old, I went to a seminary to be a pastor to plant a new church in my city, Bogotá, in Colombia.

During my time in the seminary, I learned that using sound logic and reason to lead others to know the truth (God) was always possible. I enjoyed studying carefully all the books of Josh McDowell and Ravi Zacharias and, of course, the videos and writings of Francis Shafer. In these kinds of readings, I learned how to demonstrate scientifically that the truth is just one and not many and that if one uses logical reason, one will reach the correct conclusions that others have reached about Jesus and the Bible. I was a Bible follower.

After our time in the seminary, we started planting a church north of Bogotá among scholars and professionals. There I was, ready to answer any question about Jesus and his divinity, the inerrancy of the Bible, and why I had the only truth. I remember one of my first biblical group studies. A young man didn’t believe in Jesus or the Bible. Then, I began to answer all his questions. My logical training was working very well. I was praying in my mind and, at the same time, responding to him with all my knowledge. Because he didn’t have answers to my questions nor arguments against my faith, I thought: “He will be Christian today.” However, nothing happened. I was a Bible follower.

After some years, I led a conference at our new church. The topic at that meeting was “Christianity and the New Age.” I attacked the idea of relativism. I emphasized the necessity of one truth and tried to demonstrate that. The room was full of non-Christians. I remember how many questions people asked and how I presented all my arguments correctly. Nobody could say that he or she still had arguments for not believing in Jesus and the necessity of one unique truth. But nobody came to be a follower of Jesus in that meeting. I was a Bible follower.

As you can imagine, I was frustrated with my evangelism methodology. Nine years after planting a church, I did not remember any people in it because of my arguments. What was wrong?

I took a rational approach that ignored the context of my church: Colombia, a country marked by decades of civil war, violence, and social injustice. Rational ecclesiologies become paralyzed in the face of suffering. Over the years, our emerging church, Torre Fuerte, grew due to members’ personal testimonies about their experience with Jesus – with the Truth. Our methodology, in practice, was relational and not based on logical argumentation.

The theologian Karl Barth went in the same direction in his theology when he attacked the idea of coming to God through reason. When we try to demonstrate how our belief in God is scientifically logical and supportable, we make science and reason the judge of our faith. Barth explained how reason is not enough to come to God. Because God has revealed God as a person and not as a concept or a book, we can only come to God through our experience and relationship with God.

As Christians, we do not follow the Bible. We follow a person: Jesus. An excellent example of this approach is the Meserete Kristos Church (MKC), an Anabaptist church in Ethiopia. Their name, Meserete Kristos, means “Christ our Foundation” in English. The base of our faith is a person, not a book. However, we could ask how we get to Jesus. And which Jesus? What kind of Jesus is our foundation? There may be many images of Jesus. People can adore an image of Jesus that does not coincide with the Jesus we find in the New Testament. The Jesus of the Bible is the one who lived as a member of the oppressed people of Israel. He experienced extreme poverty and social injustice; he knew what persecution, migration, racial discrimination, and gender hostility looked like. He responded in concrete ways to the empire that persecuted him and formed a new community as God’s kingdom alternative to that empire.

The MKC follows that Jesus. They do not follow the Jesus of the empires, of the great nations, of the invincible powers of domination, or the one of the prosperity gospel. They follow the Jesus of the Bible. MKC’s current leader, Desalegn Abebe, shared with us:

“It is very difficult to go to the northern part of Ethiopia after the war broke out. Despite the security concerns, when I heard that members of our church in western Tigray were in difficult conditions, I organized a team. We would go there to show our love for MKC members in the area.

“The situation is dire. Prewar infrastructure, housing and commercial activity are no longer there. It’s empty.

“We were able to visit the towns where MKC local churches still exist. At a place called Abduraf, there was a new convert who […] was ready for water baptism. Unfortunately, before he was baptized, the war broke out. Church leaders were scattered; the new believer could not get water baptism.

“When we visited the area, this new believer came and asked me to baptize him. When I inquired about his testimony, the local believers told me that he had learned the truth but had not yet been baptized.

“We often baptize people in a river or in a big bathtub. Neither was available in the area. I told him that baptism was not possible there.

“The new believer thought a little and told me that I could baptize him in a barrel.

“But there was scarcity of water in the area. Undeterred, he and other believers purchased jerkins of water and filled the barrel with water […] I baptized him in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

“To my surprise, he was filled with the Holy Spirit as soon as he got out of the barrel. I was amazed! I had never seen a person filled with the Holy Spirit in such a difficult situation.

“Everyone thanked God. We forgot that we were in an insecure zone. We all felt God’s presence.

“What was happening seemed to be like watching a drama, not a reality. It was a unique incident to witness.

“After he was baptized, the believers received him by singing. They gave him hugs one by one and said, ‘Congratulations.’

“Our brother rejoiced that he was baptized.

“‘In an impossible situation, God opened the way for me to be baptized. This day is historic for me. God sent the president of our church to baptize me.’

“God is everywhere regardless of the situations and is doing God’s business when we are willing to go into the world and share the good news to people.”

Meserete Kristos Church is one of the largest Mennonite World Conference (MWC) member churches. It had a membership of a little more than 5,000 when it went underground during the time of persecution by the Marxist military government in the 1980s. In 2024, baptized members numbered more than 500,000. The national church has regional Bible schools, a seminary, and organized ministry in evangelism, prison outreach, development, and more.

Churches that make Jesus the center of their faith understand how God is, how humanity is called to be, and our role in responding to that call. They approach the Bible not rationally but as a living book. Let me explain this in more detail.

Many years ago, using reason, I learned to start speaking about God by establishing the Bible’s importance and inerrancy. Accepting the Bible as the perfect word of God was the first step in starting any evangelism. However, when I began to learn about the Anabaptism movement, I found that our tradition, in its beginning, was more interested in how to apply the Scriptures than in whether there were any errors in it.

When we start with Jesus, the Bible becomes essential because it registers testimonies about how God has revealed Godself through history and, more completely, through the person of Jesus, the Word of God. The Bible is not like the books of other faith traditions. It is the experiences of people registered to lead others in their experiences with God.

This way of seeing the Bible frees us from defending it against scientific methods that could lead toward liberal conclusions or fundamentalist discussions. This way of relationship with Jesus also prevents us from building boundaries with others. It is very common to find people who separate themselves from others with different interpretations of the Bible. This occurs because when we put the revelation of God in a book, it becomes an object of data, susceptible to different interpretations. If we see Jesus as the normative revelation of God, the relationship with Jesus becomes the most crucial issue, freeing us from building boundaries.

Recently, I found this renewed way of understanding the Bible in an art installation at a local Mennonite congregation in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. A Bible was opened and moving on the pulpit at the front of the sanctuary. Pages were leaving or entering the Bible, blowing about the room.

This installation depicts Scripture as a living text that inserts our histories within it through the work of the Holy Spirit. In this way, the story of the first disciples in Acts is carried forward. Our Anabaptist emphasis on imitating Christ invites us to see Scripture as a script for our own lives, a play that requires us to live it out to put it into practice daily.

Building peace

I (Sandra) was also a victim, but not of a church that emphasized reason. My personal struggles had to do with justice. I grew up in a context where conflict is understood as something terrible or dangerous, and therefore, something that people must avoid or something that must be solved quickly, no matter by what means, and parenting was not the exception.

In Colombia, with regard to parenting, the most common styles are punitive and permissive. Both practices are concerned with enforcing rules: in the punitive style, misbehavior violates the law; the permissive style seeks to avoid the law – laws are thought of as very flexible or nonexistent.

In my family, punishment or retribute justice was the only method my parents knew. A punitive system focuses on what rule was violated, who violated the rule, and what should be done to punish the wrongdoers. Later, my church’s teachings and perspectives on justice reinforced that approach. Justice was understood mainly as retribution: action-consequence, like in the books of James Dobson. Discipline was understood as respect and adherence to the rules. Today, I regret that I used the same approach with our two daughters during the first years of their childhood.

The first challenge I heard to that approach was a conversation we had with a couple of Mennonite leaders. For them, justice was not based on retribution. Justice had to do with giving to the offenders not what they deserve but what they need. Biblical justice goes beyond simple retribution. It looks for the restoration of both victims and offenders and possible reconciliation between them. Some years later, while doing my master’s in peacemaking and conflict studies, I found what was a lifesaver for me and my family. I read the book Discipline that Restores by Ron and Roxane Claassen.

The vision of discipline that restores (DTR) is that, in the midst of conflict, all parties do not feel afraid. Instead, DTR seeks that everyone commits to being constructive. Therefore, everyone can feel safe, and the process becomes fair and peaceful for each party. From a restorative perspective, punishment is not the end and retribution is not the goal – instead, “possibilities for forgiveness and reconciliation are the light at the end of the tunnel. Punishment is limited, while love is unlimited. Redeeming love, not punishment, is the primary human responsibility” (Zehr, 2005, p. 219)

Discipline that restores seeks to restore respect, order, civility, face, accountability, integrity, dignity, and hope. It also promotes a culture of care, fostering a sense of belonging and inviting responsibility while providing accountability, reparation, reconciliation, and reintegration where harm has occurred (Zehr, 2002, p. 25). My understanding of discipline was transformed. As a family, we started to use mutual respect, acceptance, love, forgiveness, and reconciliation as the foundation of our relationships.

What I have described in my parenting experience also translates into society. After decades of civil war in Colombia, retribution is the primary understanding of justice, which makes reconciliation impossible. Churches that seek justice based only on the restoration of victims tend to exclude the other side of the conflict, removing the possibility of reparation and the healing of relations. However, during the last few years, Colombian governments have tried incorporating a restorative justice approach into peace and reconciliation processes. Mennonites have been able to serve at different levels of Colombian reality, looking for a shift in society’s understanding of justice.

Over decades of violence between state, paramilitary, and guerillas, the Mennonite church in Colombia has been working in the affected regions, accompanying victims, denouncing violence and calling for peace. Now a Mennonite has been appointed to represent the World Council of Churches (WCC) in government peace talks.

The peace process signed in 2016 continues to advance. New president Gustavo Petro drafted a “Total Peace” policy to end armed conflict, improve public security in the countryside, and increase rural development. His reforms include several roundtables of dialogue between the government and Ejército de Liberación Nacional (National Liberation Army).

The World Council of Churches has been invited into that process (as an observer). WCC appointed Mennonite theologian Fernando Enns from Brazil and Germany as one of their representatives.

“Although Mennonites from Germany and the Netherlands are among the smallest member churches in terms of numbers, the international fellowship of churches honors our strong ‘peace with justice’ witness through the decades,” says Enns. “Mennonites represent an unbiased commitment to a Christian discipleship of nonviolent peacebuilding and reconciliation. We bear a great responsibility here.”

“The appointment of Mennonite peace scholar Fernando Enns as the WCC representative is an acknowledgment of the theological and practical gifts of peacemaking that Anabaptist-Mennonites bring to the worldwide church and a recognition of the enormous impact that Fernando’s ministry has had in the WCC for several years,” said the MWC general secretary.

Enns shared with us: “My prayer is that the nominated international observers of the WCC (and the UN) will be able to strengthen and support the commitment to ‘peace for all’ in Colombia. May we be able to critically monitor the path of justice towards a sustainable peace so that the process does not degenerate into a cheap reconciliation. May we stay focused on the most vulnerable: the poor, the marginalized, the disadvantaged.”

Living out unity

We have seen so far how, in our experience, the recovery of a church style that emphasizes a real and strong relationship with Jesus as our center and the search for peace that includes restorative justice and reconciliation has been crucial and transformative for us. However, there is always the risk of limiting our knowledge of Jesus to theory and the search for peace to activism. To prevent that risk, we need a style of church that is deeply rooted in spiritual disciplines like worship and prayer, and uses art, poetry and symbols to facilitate a vibrant relationship with God.

In that regard, cultural diversity provides immense richness to what churches can do in their experience with God. It also helps us experience the kingdom of God, where there is no domination among races, genders, or social classes. Bishop Simon Okoth of Mennonite Church Uganda, says, “MWC brings people from different cultural backgrounds together into one basket.”

A chance airport encounter allowed Okoth to bring that cultural mixing to Mennonite congregations in his country.

Departing Semarang, Indonesia, after the 2022 MWC Assembly, Rashard Allen recognized Okoth by his event lanyard, and Okoth recognized Allan, director of music and worship at Neffsville (Pa.) Mennonite Church, as part of the international ensemble for the Assembly.

“I was touched by the way he was singing and the way the international choir presented their songs,” says Okoth.

Their boarding-lounge conversation ended with an invitation to Allen to come to Uganda.

Over WhatsApp, the Ugandan church leader and the American worship director made plans. In January 2023, Allen, who has a doctorate in worship studies from the Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies, would conduct two 3-day seminars for Mennonite congregations in rural Uganda.

“Worship is a holy conversation,” says Allen. His goal was to help participants “to worship plan so we can worship with greater understanding and so congregations can worship with greater intention.”

“The people were proud as Mennonites to see a Mennonite from a distant land coming to join them in worship, in fellowship and to guide them in understanding worship,” says Okoth.

“I was struck by people’s faith … and by their talent in terms of ministry and musicality,” says Allen. With a few parameters, participants separated into groups to compose a song from a psalm. “The songs they came back with were remarkable: they were songs they could starting using immediately in their churches. It was a wonderful blessing for me to see.”

He also gave concerts of African-American sacred music. “Being able to share that part of the African diaspora was a major blessing.”

Singing can take more than an hour at the beginning of a worship service in Uganda, with another period at the end. “It is the moment when we get to meet,” says Okoth. “What tunes our minds, what subjects us to the feeling of God is the singing.”

In one congregation, people match their singing to background instrumentals from a cell phone plugged into a speaker. In another, a talented preteen supplies a drum kit, melody, and bass line from a keyboard, “like he’s been there for 20 years,” says Allen. Another congregation sings a cappella with accompaniment from three large drums.

“The sense of joy they bring when they sing and dance is rather striking to me,” says Allen. “They sing in three or four different languages, they know the songs, they know the meaning, and they sing with gusto.”

“MWC is doing a good job when you bring us together,” says Okoth. “We are able to study the culture, to interface, to bond freely.”

“We are uniquely imprinted with image of God. So for us to experience the fullness of the kingdom of God, we need to know one another as much as we are able,” says Allen. “I love that MWC regards everyone as equals. There is no hierarchy, no sense of paternalism or patronizing.”

MWC connects people, helping create opportunities for “cross-cultural exchanges, singing one another’s songs, not just exporting [one] culture’s songs;,mutual sharing with each other.”

Singing from the international songbook in 15 different languages at Assembly is “a piece of what heaven must be like. We get a deeper understanding of one another’s cultures … what is important to them in their faith … what they experience through their songs,” says Allen.

Meeting Mennonites from around the world through MWC events “brings into our mind the oneness in creation, despite the fact that we live in different geographical locations, we speak different dialects or tongues, God is still one,” says Okoth. “MWC bringing us together is one way of confirming that we are good creation of God.”

The church, as a community that follows Jesus, becomes a foretaste of God’s kingdom. It helps society experience peace through restorative justice and reconciliation. It lives out a real and vibrant relationship with God through spiritual experiences enriched by cultural diversity. It experiences interdependency among cultures, genders, and social classes instead of domination and power struggles. Many local congregations in our anabaptist, global family of faith are living in that way. May God guide us in the adventure of becoming the global church we are called to be.

Note

[1] Sophia Lee, “Colombian Christians Preached Social Justice. Practicing It is Harder.” Christianity Today, Sept. 11, 2023, https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2023/october/colombia-social-justice-integral-mission-padilla-migration.html