Anabaptist post-counter-Christendom Witness

The challenge to the next Anabaptist generation, missiologically, is redefining relevant witness of the Anabaptist vision. Broadly speaking, the Anabaptist tradition originated from a movement that was fundamentally and radically alternate to the Christendom concept of Christianity. In some sense, Anabaptism and its numerous offshoots, represents a theology and confession that is counter-Christendom in nature and today a perspective and tradition that could be increasingly perceived as a relevant expression of church and faith in a postmodern, post-Christian and post-Christendom context.

For many who are seeking answers to faith, connection with Christ and a sense of community, Anabaptism has provided a relevant theology to connect with. Let me emphasis the point that it is the theology, ecclesiology, high Christology all rooted in a distinct sense of Christian community and counter cultural outlook that is appealing and attractive to those newly exposed to the Anabaptist tradition. Whereas historically, theology and the "radical" confession differed greatly from the surrounding culture, and theology ultimately provided the greatest barrier to mission and engagement. Today, those very aspects, the counter-Christendom church and witness, is what is in its essence attractive. What used to be a barrier is not experienced in the same degree today.

Additionally attractive, Anabaptism is a tradition that is free of much of the baggage of the Christian historical enterprise. However it is a tradition that is bogged down in the legacy of non-missional engagement and a sense of identity based on maintaining stolid distinctiveness in the face of dominant Christianity. Persistence of this mode of non-engagement in our pluralistic, multi-cultural, globalized world raises the question of relevant witness when those outside forces of Christendom do not exist anymore.

The challenge then is not our theology, being Christ centered in our witness or confessing our identity as Christian. No, the challenge is the baggage of having a community that traditionally operates in isolation and tends to be missionally un-engaging. The baggage is our own sense of community and identity, buttressed by ethnicity and tradition that were created in the maintenance mode of the hundreds of years by being the counter-Christendom church amidst the dominant Christian world. This culture of maintenance provides the contemporary Anabaptist community a significant barrier to missional engagement and our perceived relevance to the Christian presence in the world. Why? Because to be separate in a world connected is theologically expressed as non-participation in God's Kingdom. Not actively living out our faith or engaging would be a fundamental missed opportunity for relevant contribution of the Anabaptist vision at our crossroads in history. In a world, where it is nigh impossible to remain aloof or impossible to not tangle with the infringement of modern culture, "separate, but not of the world," needs to be redefined. It can only be tackled if we start moving from maintenance to missional engagement. That means redefining our identity to one rooted in theology not our cultural tradition. So 1) Theology is the vibrant part of our history and tradition that provides us with the means to engage. 2) In a world increasingly becoming more interconnected, non-engagement or not "rubbing shoulders" with world around , imparts a a disconnect between faith with relevancy, especially for Mennonites. Living out the Anabaptist vision in a post-Christendom context beckons Anabaptists to engage in order to keep the Anabaptist vision relevant.