Identity - Apr 30, 2010

A few weeks ago I had a heated discussion with my brother-in-law. It was in response to my defense of being "a mennonite" as opposed to just being part of a local church. He pushed me to re-evaluate my beliefs, and I'm still wrestling with it.

Being part of the MB church has given me not just a spiritual, but also a cultural identity. My parents were both menno's and their parents on both sides were also mennos, etc. etc. This goes back about 200-300 years at least. MB's today have very few beliefs that seperate them from the rest of the evangelical church. MB's are basically anabaptist and evangelical. They believe in supporting social issues (justice, poor, widows, orphans, education, disaster relief, etc), but also believe in the primacy of the bible, the personal relationship with God, being born again. They believe in adult baptism. They believe that we as a church belong first of all to God, and not to any particular country or culture.

I didn't mind the conversation with my bro (his church pulled away from a denomination, and are just a local church body), but when I got home, the real wrestling has come in terms of my current context.

I live 1mile from a Cree Nation. I work on the nation. In a lot of ways, we are becoming a part of the community and we love it. There is a local very charismatic church here (the pastor here comes out of the Faith Alive tradition of faith), and I have the sense that God wants me to continue to be involved in this local church.

So what about my super strong convictions about being MB? What about the pride of being a part of something that is 500years old, and still brings a good strong witness to the world? Maybe I should start an MB church here on the reserve? If I'm really so convinced that being MB is such a good thing, why wouldn't it be applicable right here? There's a need for a strong social gospel, combined with an evangelical need for right living. A good strong anabaptist and evangelical approach might be just what is needed here...

Somehow, the idea of trying to bring First Nations people to the mennonite flavour of Christianity seems to be like trying to convinve someone to join a Hutterite colony. It just aint gonna happen!

So, for now I serve where I can in the local church (ah, that sounds so nice and biblical) - I have serious reservations about its long term structure (what is its statement of faith? Where does it stand on various issues theologically? how do they handle leadership? what about finances? what about church discipline? etc. etc.- my guess is that most denominations, including MBs, are miles ahead in their development of these important things. This means that ultimately there are some difficult times of conflict coming, and probably very soon.)

An evangelical denomination brings identity to its members. I am so happy to have some of the connections that I would only have through my denominational connections. Their are like minded people throughout canada and the world because of the MB denomination. I love this family - but here, it just seems so far away. So, irrelevant.

I'm back and forth on this one - help me wrestle this through.