THE MISSIONARY CHURCH:FROM RADICAL OUTCASTS TO THE WILD CHILD OF ANABAPTISM

It would seem that the Missionary Church, which began her existence rather tenuously as a radical outcast, has remained on the frontier of church planting as an evangelical /Anabaptist influence, focused on leading people to a radical relationship in Christ.

Making sense of the Missionary Church has never been an easy task for outsiders. Per-haps it is our diverse roots. We are a group who partnered with many to advance the gospel on the American frontier. We connected with many, you can name the group, and someone who knows us well will probably find a link. Our focus was to remain de-liberately Bible centered. WE worked with frontier groups whose names appeare a bit odd now: groups like, the River Brethren, and the “German branch” of the Christian Al-liance, Amish, and Mennonite. Perhaps it is the generational shifts in experiential em-phasis and doctrinal allegiance: from Anabaptism, to Pietism, to the Keswickian and Wesleyan-Holiness movements, to Evangelicalism, with minorities from each generationflirting with elements of Pentecostalism and Calvinism (both officially verboten).

Perhaps it was their drive to be pragmatic and innovative. They included the cutting edge practice of four part harmonies in worship, and demanded that the church use English instead of catering to the old school traditional Europeans. They included hun-dreds of women ministers to spread the gospel, (now largely forgotten and nearly for-bidden in the evangelical church); they spent resources, sending overseas missionar-ies; launching inner city ministries and aggressive church planting.Missionaries introduced changes to foreign cultures, but their cross-cultural experiences changed them just as profoundly, and ultimately transformed their sending churches aswell. The urgent missionary impulse has led in astonishing directions,

The drive to evangelize and start new churches meant there would always be a steady stream of new converts who lacked a heritage of Anabaptist (Baptist) roots. That was not a problem, because these new converts were the foundation that the movementwould be built upon.

Then there was the writings of Bishop Alma White’s Pillar of Fire, she was as an educa-tor and was one of two principal Keswickian holiness groups. The universal

trademark of the small, Anabaptist bands was discipleship. Many pursued the disciple-ship method of John Wesley which was called discipleship by Methodist, it did not mat-ter what the brand was, they were about making disciples. This movement ultimately coalesced into what is now the Missionary Church. This radical new birth prompted emotional expressions and activist lifestyles which their home congregations soon found too threatening to tolerate. Two very different understandings of what itmeant to become a Christian led to repeated confrontations of the sort.

These new believers, insisted everyone must personally experience the second birth, including older, well-established church members, were expelled from the immigrant churches of society’s marginal outcasts (to paraphrase H. Richard Niebuhr), and thus became outcast outcasts, doubly alienated from the world they knew. Within a genera-tion, sometimes sooner, sanctification and healing became additional experiential pil-lars, and these proved no less divisive for some groups, causing further splits as well as precipitating new alliances. Finally, these bodies were nearly all fascinated by prophecy and driven by the notion that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ was linked to the ur-gent task of the Great Commission (see Mt. 24:14 & Mk. 13:10): hence theMissionary Church identity.

At first believers within [forerunners to] the Missionary Church thought of themselves as more genuinely Anabaptist than the Mennonite which had thrown them out of their fel-lowship. They languished in prison during WWI, and they later helped lead the wayin appealing for government recognition for conscientious objectors.

To this day the basic thrust of the Missionary Church Constitution makes no sense apart from such traditional Anabaptist emphases as believer’s baptism, rigorous disci-pleship marked by holy lifestyles purified and empowered by the Holy Spirit, radical bib-licism, a strong sense of Christian community, sacrificial missionary outreach, anabhorrence of war, and the separation of church and state.

But bitter memories of expulsion from Mennonite bodies or the sense of betrayal fos-tered by growing up in church without truly hearing calls for conversion, the gospel,rapidly led to relations with very different church groups.

Nevertheless, there were always some within the Missionary Church who remembered

their original roots and who were so bold as to believe Ron Sider’s twin theses: first, that consistent Anabaptists should be Evangelicals and that consistent Evangelicals should be Anabaptists; and second, that failing agreement over the first thesis, it is still true thatAnabaptists need Evangelicals and Evangelicals need Anabaptists.

Critical steps toward developing historical awareness of Anabaptist roots were taken in 1979 with the founding of the Missionary Church Historical Society under the leadershipof Dr. Wayne Gerber, longtime academic dean at Bethel College, Mishawaka, IN.

In 1997 the Missionary Church in India, which had always carefully maintained its con-nections, ever since the merger of the Missionary Church Association and the United Missionary Church in 1969. Missionary Church members have served with the Mennon-ite Central Committee, and various mission agencies and have cooperated in a number of ways with our World Partners missionaries, sometimes working together very closely. Many leaders from other peace church traditions continue to make crucialcontributions to the Missionary Church and Bethel College.

It would seem that the Missionary Church, which began her existence rather tenuously as a radical outcast, has remained on the frontier of church planting as an evangelical / Anabaptist influence, focused on leading people to a radical relationship in Christ. They have stumbled onto the stage as a major influencer, after having grown up, at least from the Mennonite perspective, as the wild child of Anabaptism, in a wilderness of other church traditions, far from the nurturing, peaceful communities where she was born. She no longer speaks the language of her forebears, but utters savage cries forKingdom expansion.

EUSEBIUS HERSHEY: First Foreign Missionary

To Eusebius Hershey of the former Pennsylvania Conference of the Mennonite Brethren in Christ Church (MBC), as a segment of the Missionary Church(U.S.) and Evangelical Missionary Church (Canada) were known at that time, belongs the honor of being our pioneer missionary. He was born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, on Au-gust 14, 1823, the youngest and only boy among nine children. At age eighteen he be-came quite ill, and thinking himself near death, he turned his attention toward his spiri-tual conditionand was soundly converted.

There was widespread interest in missions during the early part of the nineteenth cen-tury, and Hershey was not untouched by concerns for foreign evangelization. He ex-pressed a sense of missionary call during his early twenties, but he had neither the means nor the opportunity to go abroad. So strong was his call that, when he married at age twenty-seven, he secured an agreement from his bride that he could follow God toAfrica when the opportunity arose.

Initially, he was a somewhat reluctant evangelist, believing his limited formal education did not prepare him for public speaking. However, his early evangelistic campaigns were quite fruitful, and he began receiving invitations to other parts of the United Statesand Canada.

Traveling EvangelistMost travel was on horseback across uncharted countryside. He crossed the Allegheny mountains and ranges of the Upper Appalachians many times as he journeyed from his home in southeastern Pennsylvania to Ohio and Ontario. At sixty-two years of age he reported to the annual conference that he had been in Ontario eleven times and trav-eled to the western U.S. once. He would yet make two more trips to Canada to conduct evangelistic meetings.

Travel in those days, especially for a lone rider, was fraught with difficulty. He occasion-ally walked when no horse was available, wading unbridged streams. He was robbed at least once and cursed at and spit upon frequently. He was the pioneer open- air preacher of the church, proclaiming the gospel anytime he had a hearing, on the

street or in the town square to upwards of 1,000 people at a time. He preached in churches of all denominations (a more common practice in that day), schoolhouses, public meeting halls, stores, homes, prisons, and homes for the indigent. He couldpreach fluently in both English and German.

Historical Perspective

Lizzie Hilty wrote from Wohu, Central China, in March of 1906:

"We left Seattle, Washington, December 8th and did not arrive in Shanghai until January 12th and at Wuhu four days later. We certainly had a long and stormy voyage, but His presence was with us, and we were kept by His power through dangers seen and unseen. We had two heavy storms while out on the deep, which indeed to the natural was not very pleasant. But our eyes were unto Him, Who neither slumbers nor sleeps and does not forget to keep His own (Psa.121:4, 5)."

The Missionary Worker, Vol. 11, No. 17, May 1, 1906, p. 268.

In 1882 Eusebius Hershey, then sixty years old, announced the new movement would soon have its first missionary. However, perhaps because much energy went intoorganizing the new movement, there was no official endorsement of his announcement.

Pioneer MissionaryThe General Conference of 1885 adopted a resolution "that each annual conference put forth earnest efforts to raise means for Mission Work," and ministers were asked to preach at least once each year on the topic. Hence only two years after its birth, the young movement officially committed itself to the Great Commission.

Much to the surprise of all, five years later, Hershey announced he would soon be leav-ing for Africa. On November 1, 1890, he set sail for Liberia, West Africa. He went on his own, uncommissioned by any conference, since he was considered too old for such a task. The voyage took thirty-eight days to reach Sierra Leone and another five days to Monrovia, Liberia. He remained in the capital city for a month and a half, then moved to the interior town of Vaunwah where the people followed the Islamic religion. He started

a school, using basic grammars which he had brought from America. He preachedmany times each Sunday in his own and surrounding villages.

His wife stayed behind in Pennsylvania when he sailed for Africa. During his first three months he received word of the death of seven other missionaries in his vicinity, and another month later found himself tiring easily and needing frequent rest. Two months later on May 24, 1891, after a short illness of seven days, he died of malaria. Thus ended the short but effective missionary career of Eusebius Hershey. He led to Christ the first convert from Islam in Liberia. He influenced others, among them William Shantz, the first "officially sponsored" missionary of the movement went to China in1895.

Hershey loved to write poetry and published a book of verse in 1878 entitled The Liv-ingPoem. A report written for the Gospel Banner in 1885 contains the following stanza:

In all my Lord's appointed ways, I'll follow Him in my short days, North or South or East or West,As God will lead, that is the best.

These following paragraphs are some reflections on the essay questions. They are not intended to be used as your answer. They are only provided togive you some reflections on the topic.

The Impact of the 19th century Holiness movement on the development ofthe Missionary Church.

The Missionary Church was fully engaged with the move of God that has been categorized by the holiness movement. The Holiness movement shaped the early practices and mission on the fledgling Missionary Church movement. The early activity of the missionary church included meetings that had heartfelt worship. These gatherings lasted into the night much like the old time Methodists. There was a focus on healing and prophecy.

The women once bore uniforms and entered the cities preaching at the in-ner city missions and storming saloons with the Bible in one hand and the message of the gospel on their lips. The impact of women in the development

of the Missionary Church can’t be overlooked. Some categorize this era as the temperance movement. God was awakening a sleeping giant that in-cluded women Christ followers in America (and England).

The emergence of a holiness theology in the Mennonite Brethren in Christ (Missionary Church) emerged from the early days of the second great awak-ening. These gatherings were shaped by the stirrings of God in the setting of the camp meeting (holiness camps), popularized by the holiness movement. This group allowed the influence of Wesleyan theology of holiness to gradu-ally impact them and shape their early praxis and doctrine.

During the late 1800’s, a trend emerged that was slanted toward a Wes-leyan view of sanctification. This theology was a strong influence without be-coming a dogma that would define the movement, as it redefined its self- moving into a series of new decades.

The 20th century Pentecostal movement and the impact on the Missionary Church

The post revival period was the background from which the Pentecostal movement emerged. The Missionary Church predecessors were pursuing the environment of the “deeper life” movement, camp meetings, and worship that was engaging and powerful (four part harmonies). The major areas of emphasis for the Missionary Church predecessors were: the return of Christ, evangelism and the deeper life. Many Adventist groups were springing up out of the soil of the revival period, as the turn of the century approached. There was a rich atmosphere of prayer and conversions, which produced conversa-tions about immersion. AB Simpson led out in the season of the Pentecostal movement and determined the position should be, “seek not, forbid not”. This was a position that distanced its self from the Pentecostal theology, which was of concern. The leaders were cautious not to resist the work of God in their midst. At the time of the 1908 Azusa Street revivals, much attention was being given to Pentecostalism. The Missionary Church predecessors chose not to embrace the “third work of grace” theology, which was emerging out of the American Pentecostal movement. The Missionary Church changed somewhat over the 75 years between the Pentecostal Movement and the Charismatic Renewal movement?

The 20th century Fundamentalist Movement and the impact on the Missionary Church

The influence of 20th

century fundamentalist movement must be understood in the context of contemporary Evangelicalism. This widespread emergence of Biblical Christianity emerged out of Fundamentalism in the mid-20th century. The spread of secularism in Europe influenced the move of believers toward a more evangelical point of view. Protestants in general, including the leaders of the Missionary Church, focused on salvation by faiththrough God's grace. This was a response to a liberal trend that was focusing on salvation by works.

The initial impact of the 20th century Pentecostal Movement (Azusa Street Re-vival) made an impact on the development of the Missionary Church. The pri-mary response of the Missionary Church was to distance itself from the Azusa Street revival and the subsequent Pentecostal movement. This represented a split in ranks. There were many who followed the leanings of the Holiness Move-ment. Many of those followers believed in the gift of tongues as a “third work of grace” and the primary evidence of the infilling of the Holy Spirit. They continued to move toward the teaching of the early Pentecostal churches. The Missionary Church believed in the power of the Holy Spirit, and placed a great emphasis on the leading of the Holy Spirit, they rejected the theological position of the Pente-costal movement.