BEING A MISSIONAL CHURCH

Implications for Mennonite
Conferences and Congregations

James M. Lapp

As we enter the twenty-first century, the Mennonite Church is joining many other denominations in clarifying its vision and and has chosen to make missions its central thrust and focus. Such a commitment is in keeping with the scriptural mandate Jesus entrusted to the church and to Christians in every generation. But if we are serious about the great commission being the rallying cry for our corporate life and the congregations and institutions we serve, there will be serious implications and a price we must pay. Like the metaphor in the Gospels that Jesus used for the kingdom of God, do we see this call to mission as important enough that we will sell anything and risk everything to realize its fulfillment?

Ours is not the first generation of Mennonites to give high credence to the great commission of Jesus. Mennonite missiologist Wilbert Shenk and other writers describe the Anabaptists as a missionary movement for which the charter was the great commission. Shenk documents the turn from a mission orientation to maintenance and self-preservation among Mennonites and boldly asserts that “to recapture the Anabaptist vision we must above all else embrace a missionary consciousnesss” (By Faith They Went Out, 2000).

Appropriately the leaders of what is being called “transformation” (whereby two denominational streams are moving toward merger as the Mennonite Church USA) seek to make missionary consciousness an ingredient in the new church in the process of being born.

To embrace mission at the center of our church will raise questions and challenges heretofore avoided. These may be worth noting not only for the sake of Mennonites wrestling with missional transformation but also as a record potentially usefuly to any Christians sharing this quest to get “out of the Christian ghetto,” as a conference sponsored by Mars Hill Graduate School recently put it.

Hopefully the great commandment of Jesus to love will go hand-in-hand with a fresh missional perspective. But there will be no sidestepping some difficult matters we might wish could remain off to the side. Yet what could be a more fertile environment for addressing certain weighty aspects of our faith than in the context of mission?

In particular, I see Mennonite commitment to the great commission as “costing” us the following ingredients:

Our Sense of Family

In many of our churches we have a pervasive sense of being family that grows out of strong biological family connections, a historically homogenous cultural heritage, and an ecclesiology that emphasizes relationships of mutuality and care. This has served us well for generations, although it likely has limited our mission/outreach at times.

To take the great commission seriously will require a basic redefinition of who we are and readiness to address the various factors that make it hard for people from different backgrounds to be assimilated into the life of our denomination and our congregations. Many of our congregations have not yet faced this reality. We want to preserve a warm sense of “family” while also being evangelistic.

I suspect we can’t have it both ways, at least as things are currently defined. To say “our family can be your family” (as Mennonite Board of Missions has at times advertised) has a good ring but suggests people need to join someone else’s family. Can we learn to be family with new people rather than ask others to fit our current family systems? Are we prepared to pay the price of family as we have known and experienced it to make the great commission central to our life as a church?

Our Polity of Control

Particularly the polity of many of our older conferences or districts (clusters or congregations) assumes a high degree of sameness or conformity and corporate control over how faith is expressed in the lives of members. This perspective will need to be reviewed and changed if the great commission is to be fully operative among us.

We have already moved far toward a congregationalism that allows some diversity among congregations. But we are uneasy about this change. Thus when anxiety arises, such as we are currently experiencing around the issue of homosexuality, our reflex is to shift into the old mode of “super” conference and to want to control or hold a deviant congregation in line.

In recent years, at least three cherished matters of faith and practice have come into question in our Mennonite Church with regard to standards of congregational membership:

• exclusion of Christian gays and lesbians who are living in a covenanted relationship;

• the expectation of a commitment to pacifism or nonresistance for all members;

• the necessity of adult, or believer’s, baptism for those baptized as infants and for whom another baptism is sometimes objectionable.

A fourth issue which often proves contentious, and one that will be exacerbated by focus on mission, is growing diversity in worship styles, particularly in choice of music.

Tensions in these four areas exemplify challenges we confront, and will increasingly face, as the great commission guides us. Will we hold all congregations to a common standard on these and other matters of faith and practice?

At least two issues are at stake. First, we need to examine what it is that unites us as a denomination or as conferences of congregations. If it is not sameness or a common historical heritage, what holds us together? Is it our faith and common theology rather than our ethnicity and heritage?

If so, this raises a second issue. In our theology, is everything of equal importance? Or might we distinguish between “confessional” issues, which reflect some historical consensus in the Christian church and among Mennonites, and other issues on which we grant some latitude in the faith and practice of our congregations? Framing the issue this way does not eliminate the problem but would allow us to discern the type of issue we face and not elevate every concern to a confessional level.

Are we prepared to hold some issues as confessional and allow others to be defined by Holy Spirit guidance in the local setting? Can we live with the reality that the Holy Spirit may seem to guide different congregations to different understandings on some matters? Might we identify some basic Anabaptist-Mennonite themes that are mandatory for adherence by leaders and congregations in our church and on other matters remain flexible?

Having proposed this way of sorting out issues, the fundamental concern is this: Will we remain in a control modality? Or will conferences move (as we already have in some matters) toward a relationship of trust and empowerment with congregations in which we allow them to discern and interpret the broad range of questions facing the church today?

Giving center stage to the great commission means we can only expect greater diversity in the style and patterns of congregational life and that increasingly complex issues will need attention. On which matters will we seek corporate agreement, and on which focus on relationships of “coaching” and nurture while respecting local outcomes?

My observation is that congregations welcome the new freedom they have to discern the faith for their members, but they become anxious when a sister congregation discerns the faith and practice differently than they do. At that point there is an appeal for the conference to “provide leadership,” which seems to mean “take control” and discipline the other congregation.

There is comfort in discerning the issues in one’s own congregation, but limited trust in the capacity of other congregations to do the same hard work of spiritual discernment. And of course, we all want to select the issues in which “control” is needed. For the sake of mission, are we ready to relinquish control?

Our “Like Precious Faith” (Heritage)

Underlying who we are as a denomination, and in many of our congregations, is a deep respect and appreciation for the Anabaptist-Mennonite heritage of faith we have received from our forebears. Given the martyr tradition from which we have come, as well as the deeply cherished sense of being a “peculiar people,” this heritage of a “like precious faith” (common phraseology in eastern Pennsylvania conferences for the faith as we have received it) holds a place of deep importance to many of us.

Can we make the great commission central and still hold our heritage with the reverence we now give it? If Anabaptists were characterized as missionary people, might it be possible to be authentically Anabaptist without always embracing the Mennonite version of Anabaptism, with all its historical and cultural accretions?

How important will it be to remain “Mennonite” in our consciousness in the twenty-first century? Might some of our members wish to become Anabaptist and not adopt the stereotypical ways of being Mennonite? More challenging, might some of our people wish to be Mennonite and not Anabaptist or even Christian?

How will our pastors and congregations promote connections to a larger body (conference and denomination) among people who have no sense of a Mennonite tradition? If we allow the context to shape our faith and practice (as we seem to do in our worship patterns), and if greater inclusion of people into the body of Christ becomes the norm, what will happen to our predictable expressions of being Mennonite? Can we teach the basic tenets in the Confession of Faith from a Mennonite Perspective without assuming people need to feel a deep attachment to a Mennonite cultural way of life?

I expect this sense of being Mennonite, and our respect for heritage as some of us have known it, will be a price we will need to pay if the great commission is to be our core emphasis.

Mennonites espouse values and practices that are not particularly religious or scriptural, but which we nevertheless prize as a preferred way of life. Four-part harmony in singing, handiness in manual crafts (including quilting), and “more with less cooking” might be examples of values we appreciate but may reflect a wholesome lifestyle rather than basic tenets of our faith.

Many people emulate and envy our practice of these. Can we be Mennonite and not retain these practices? Can we retain them and also be missional? Might these practices become part of our gift to the world? Or do they create a cultural insularity that hinders us in our mission?

If the great commission again becomes our charter, then I suspect these Mennonite “treasures” will also need to become secondary to the kingdom we are to seek first.

Our Image as Mennonites

Wonderful things have been written and said about Mennonites. I am almost inclined to say deservedly so. I love the Mennonite Church and the heritage of faith I have received. I have roots in Franconia, the oldest of the Mennonite conferences established in North America. Some scholars (such as Beulah Hostetler) have suggested that Franconia Conference embodies the essence of the Schleitheim articles, that classic early Anabaptist summary of the faith, more authentically than any other conference.

But Mennonites as a whole have a reputation for wholesome family life, peace and service, concern for justice, communitarian values and practices, a healthy critique of popular culture, and on the list could go. People seek out our church as an alternative expression of faith. Sometimes they are disappointed in the reality they discover among us. But many stay and find among Mennonites a fresh breath of spiritual and sociological life they wish to adopt for themselves.

We have much at stake in terms of our self-image and the image we hold among some scholars and observers of human society. Many of us carry this sense of Mennonite identity deep within us.

If we make the great commission central and address the issues identified above, one price we may pay is that our image will be tarnished. Will we remain the alternative people about which books and movies are made and who are idealized, both in our own folklore and that of others? Can we be a welcoming people no longer defined by our biological family systems and ethnic foods and still be “true” Mennonites?

Will others outside the tradition appreciate Mennonites if over time our singing comes to sound similar to that of a neighboring evangelical church, or the liturgy flows like that of a mainline congregation? Will we be held in high esteem if our Mennonite way of life changes? Is there indeed a “third way” that is also missional?

A common fear among us is that we might sell out to evangelicalism, to popular Christianity; that we might exchange our birthright for the proverbial mess of porridge and no longer be true Mennonites. Are we ready to pay this price?

Surely there are other implications for our churches if we truly make the great commission our central emphasis. One issue not developed here relates to authority and approaches to leadership, and how thesemight change as professionalism molds our lives and we no longer exhibit the humble, self-effacing qualities that in former years characterized our leaders. Might our leadership style for church planting and mission shift to a more assertive style and still be true to our Anabaptist faith?

I am confident a focus on the great commission will bring many positive results in terms of the kingdom and in the transformation of lives. We may discover ways of being Mennonite that are fresh and exciting, and our faith may become more attractive and fruitful in our world.

But there are risks we must face honestly. As Jesus said, we need to count the cost lest we begin building and later decide we can’t go ahead and the house remains half-finished. Then we may be better off if we had not begun. Personally I am committed to moving ahead with this great commission emphasis; I am also aware that mission is no innocuous venture.

In the twentieth century, mission was the source of much renewal in many of our congregations and conferences. Some would say our efforts overseas were a mixed blessing, imparting both the gospel of Jesus Christ and elements of Mennonite culture (not to speak of the gospel of Western culture with its accompanying glitter).

As North American Mennonites, we managed to survive twentieth-century missionary outreach and maintain continuity with the historic faith of Mennonites. My sense is that in the twenty-first century it will be more difficult to hold these together. Are we truly ready to be Mennonite and missional?

Maybe, just maybe, our sisters and brothers in the Southern Hemisphere who found faith through our twentieth-century missionary efforts will now be able to help us sort out our questions and to embrace a fresh missionary consciousness for the twenty-first century. In that I find hope.

—James M. Lapp, Harleysville, Pennsylvania, is Conference Pastor, Franconia Mennonite Conference, a cluster of churches belonging to Mennonite Church USA.