“Church and School:  Compañeros in Growing

People of Faith in the Anabaptist-Mennonite

Brethren (MB) Tradition.”

Tuesday, June 14 CMU Winnipeg

Introduction  Looking back upon our short 150 year

MB history, it comes to me that some

strange paradigm shifts have been

taking place lately.

From Christian ecumenism to

apologetic anti-ecumenism.

From pioneering the Christian school and

Higher Education idea to skepticism

about the Christian mission of academics.

From conference-covenant community (‘Bundesgemeinde’) to the autonomy and priority of the local

church and congregation.

From team leadership with a rather anti-clerical mood to

senior pastor licensed professionalism.

From renewal of Anabaptist identity (new Spirit for the house of Menno)

toward skepticism about Anabaptist

radical perspectives among MB’s.

From the way of the cross-

‘victor quia victima’to a bitter debate

about redemption.

The topic given to me involves three key concepts or assumptions: 1.Church and school can be partners.2.The common goal of these two institutions is to ‘grow people of faith’.3.There is something we rightly might call an Anabaptist Mennonite Brethren tradition.

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‘Growing people of faith’ again involves at least three assumptions:1.The whole Christian experience can be theologically summarized in the word ‘growing’.2.The goal is to form a people. 3. Faith is obedience, confidence, seeing the invisible, handing over control, trusting, ‘pistis’.

I. Brainstorming at our Faculty

Leadership Team FAHCE/FALEVI about relationship of Church

and School

1. Jenny - Librarian: The church and the school ‘both have to function organically as a body and reflect the body of Christ’.

2. Chris – Coordinator English Department: Like with the Ingalls family and in the Old

Mennonite villages the same building and

atmosphere is school during the week and church on Sunday.

3. Carlos – Student Pastor: School and

church operate with the same Christian

principles. They aim to produce change in lifestyle, change in cultural paradigms

proposing a ‘Christian counter-culture’.

4. Mechi – Coordinator

Department of Education: School is a

support and an extension of church.

Together with the family those three

constitute the educational community.

5. Leidy – Secretary: The school should give continuity to the values

held by the family.6. Maia - Academic

Secretary: Church and school both point

towards formation of character.

7. Rodrigo, Faculty Rep.:Jesus was a teacher and

Rabbi, the different roles of church and school should not

be mixed up too much.8. Roland – Administrative

Director: School and church grew out of the Synagogue

tradition. School and church should operate according to

the same logic.

9. Yamili - Psychologist/Human

Resources: School and church have the same purpose to restore the

imago dei. 10. María Angélica –

Coordinator Department of Social Work: School and

church work towards transformation of social

realities.

 

II. Basic theological issues involving the

church/school partnership 

  

 1.The dual dynamics of conversion and discipleship.

2.The dual dynamics of creation care and creator worship.

3.The dual dynamics of church ethics and public ethics. 4.The dual dynamics of first creation and new creation. 5.The dual dynamics of Christ and culture.  6.The dual dynamics of the cross: victor quia victima.

.

III. A Mosaic of Memories 

I’m not very good at narrative theology.

But all of my theological work is

profoundly biographical and

contextual:

1. Manfred Siebald: „Yes, we can start celebrating and dancing already

today, because things are moving. God is renewing the earth and he starts with

us.”

2. Wolfgang Vorländer, Federico Pagura: ‘Vivir

Desde el Futuro de Dios’ – Living in the light of

God’s future’. Wolfgang Vorländers book

‘Gelebte Hoffnung’ and Federico Paguras

famous ‘Tango of Hope’.

3. Francis Schaeffer and Luis Lutzbetak:

Culture as ‘design for living’ and as ‘mental roadmap’. ‘How you think, so you act’.

4. Johannes Reimer and Miroslav Wolff:

‘Exclusion and Embrace’. ‘Embracing

the World’.

5. John H.Yoder: John H. has intrigued me again and again with

his wonderful and masterly achieved integration of the Barth/Bonhoeffer reformed theology

and Anabaptist community of

believer’s approach.

6. Werner Franz: His recent University of Wales doctoral thesis on Yoder’s

‘Body Politics’ church practices applied to

business also can be very fruitful for our search to do

school in an Anabaptist understanding of the priority of the church

paradigms as matrix for our presence in the world.

7. Dieter Giesbrecht: Finally an MB theologian takes up the very daring,

but modern topic of diaconal theology. Dieter,

in his recent European doctoral thesis links

Christian schools to the diaconal mandate of the

church.

8. August Hermann Francke Schule/

Berthold Maier: A new net of Christian schools with a strong

missionary and ethical impact is emerging in Germany, initiated and oriented by

churches and largely financed by the government.

9. Fernheims Schulfilosofie/ Concordia Asunción Schulfilosofie:

a. God as creator of all is also the author of art and science.b. School is an extension of the family mandate to educate.c. Goal: a theocentric world view - a life that pleases God.

10. MB Mission schools – Albert Schweitzer,

Gutenberg: Our MB conference

operates by now three ‘mission schools’. The

two driving forces here are church planting,

evangelism, and Christian social responsibility.

 11. Karl Barth versus G.

F. Lessing: -Offenbarung versus

Erziehung. - “Die Kirche ist kein Erziehungsprojekt”.

 12. The Fresno Pacific College Idea: Delbert

Wiens warns us that “the typical model of the

‘Christian college’ has been so deeply shaped by the Enlightenment version

… that only a very profound rebaptism can reestablish its Christian

relevance in a post-modern world.”

13. Juancito Sieber - Impressions from

Patagonia:“We have to go there so people will see how one lives the culture of the kingdom of heavens.”

Church and school united, to make visible to society the values, paradigms and codes of the kingdom of

God.

14. Sarmiento – How to learn democracy:: “If

people are the sovereign power of the

nation, then let us educate the sovereign”

(‘eduquemos al soberano’).

From a Christian perspective, who

educates for democracy?

15. Missions-theology for media: How to be present in media with a strong belief, that the

church is God’s medium to communicate to the world,

and even more, to make clear that the church not only delivers a message,

but that ‘the medium is the message’.

16. Johannes Harder - ‚Aufbruch ohne Ende‘:

This unadapted, unorthodox searcher

for Anabaptist authenticity in

culture, politics, and education keeps intriguing me.

17. Paul Mininger – MWC 1952 – What is Christian education? ‘Freie Menschen in

Christus’

18. Helmut Isaak – Menno Simons and the New Jerusalem:

‘A Mennonite nation’

19. Hans-Jürgen Goertz - heavenly flesh and the

possibility of holiness: ‘A Mennonite Constantin?’ 

H

 20. John Roth - Teaching

That Transforms: Why Anabaptist-Mennonite

Education Matters: Incarnation as the way of

Jesus.

IV. Theological fundamentals for the church/school

partnership

1. The church has a mission.

2. Humanity is called to ‘a life that pleases

God’

3. Family, social governance and

economic wellbeing also matter to God.

4. People act the way they think.

.

 5. Salvation history aims at

the New Jerusalem.

6. The way of the cross 

-The cross is a healing-place. 

-The cross is a reconciling-place. 

-The cross is a place of family-restoration. 

-The cross is a place of liberation. 

-The cross means triumph over evil.

Conclusion 

Christian schools, masters of the culture of the

kingdom of heaven:

-We need to enlarge our concept of conversion:

Sanctification and discipleship are part of the conversion process.

-We need to enlarge our concept of the kingdom of God: God is to be glorified

through all of creation.

-We need to enlarge our concept of evangelism: evangelization of the culture is part of our evangelistic mandate.

 -We need to enlarge our

concept of the church: There is church outside of our

congregational structures.

-We need to enlarge our concept of salvation: A

saved heart and a saved mind is evidenced by every-day-life and by

perspectives on every-day-matters.

 

Church and school are partners in betting on the foolishness of the cross.

.

The message is the same.The difference is the amount

of time.Cultural dialysis for the kingdom of God requires

time.