Who doesn’t enjoy a milestone birthday party? The year 2025 is one of those “big” birthdays for Mennonite Brethren. It is the 500th anniversary of our larger faith family, the Anabaptist movement, and I hope we can both celebrate like children and remember like seniors.
Moses prayed, “Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Ps. 90:12). The prayer is not only to look back, remembering our mortality, but to look forward with greater insight and faithfulness.
The MB Church, as one heir to the Anabaptist movement, would do well to review some of the relevant changes for USMB and our global MB Church, to realize who and where we are today, and to spur each other on as we face the challenges and opportunities before us.
Yesterday: 1860-1990
Why these dates? 1860 was the year the MB Church was born. 1990 was the year the International Community of Mennonite Brethren (ICOMB) was born as a global family of national MB conferences.
Mennonite Brethren emerged as a renewal movement in a context of German evangelical pietism sweeping through Europe in the mid-19th century. Their Document of Secession in relation to the historic Mennonite Church clarified their motives: 1) a yearning for holiness in the midst of moral decadence, 2) water baptism following faith-inspired conversion, 3) Holy Communion taken reverently with true believers, 4) foot washing as a blessing to practice, 5) church workers called according to the Scriptures and 6) church discipline practiced biblically as a restorative measure.
They cited Scriptures as the basis for their convictions. References to the 16th century Ana-baptist reformer Menno Simons reveal an alignment with the Anabaptist intention of restoring a New Testament experience of discipleship and church life.
The document was signed on Jan. 6, 1860, by 50 charter members. These original Mennonite Brethren lived in rural villages in South Russia (today’s Ukraine) and spoke Low German at home, High German at church and school, and Russian with outsiders. They were mostly of Dutch-German-Prussian ethnicities.
Yet even among this isolated and monocultural people, there were soon signs of a wider multicultural and missional engagement. As with the believers in Acts 4:20, the early Mennonite Brethren could not stop speaking about their newfound faith and assurance of salvation, both with nominal Mennonites and Russian Orthodox people.
They continued relationships with Mennonites back in Prussia (today’s Poland) and soon established MB churches there. Teachers, preachers and missionaries were trained in Germany. Within three decades this young conference had sent their first missionaries to India.
Fast forward to 1988. At the first MB World Mission Conference in Brazil, 805 mission-minded delegates gathered from all over to consult on internationalization of MB mission work. By this time MB workers were serving in 27 countries, MB churches were planted in 15 and organized MB conferences were present in at least 12. Worldwide membership approached 150,000. The tiny seed that had been planted in a rural village in south Russia had become a fruitful tree with many branches and many colors.
Today: 1990-2025
The gathering in 1988 to globalize mission work led to a conversation between the leaders of existing MB conferences about also globalizing church-to-church relations. Further conversations in 1990 at the Mennonite World Conference gathering in Winnipeg, Canada, led to the birth of ICOMB. Issues of common concern included the MB Confession of Faith, pastoral and leadership training, church polity, ethics, Christian education and missions.
Since 1992, delegates from national MB conferences have gathered almost every year for a summit, rotating continents and countries. Since the Thailand 2017 Consultation, a growing number of emerging networks and conferences participate. They too are looking for family.
The global MB family today is wonderfully diverse. Were you to come to an ICOMB summit, you would note a diversity of dress, from brilliant Angolan shirts to Brazilian soccer jerseys. You would be challenged by a Babel of languages. Translation is supplied in meetings for the major European languages, but during the breaks you may hear Telegu, Thai or Tagalog. However, diversity goes deeper than first impressions.
Some delegates come from contexts of isolation or persecution. They are overjoyed to be experiencing fellowship with a large family and sharing openly their struggles and opportunities. Many church leaders are bi-vocational, shepherding their church flocks while putting rice (or tortillas or cassava porridge) on the table and working as farmers (Malawi), artisans (Panama) or drivers (India).
At the same time, a deep spiritual unity is always present. We equip each other from core biblical convictions expressed in our ICOMB Confession of Faith, containing both a story and a list of core MB values. We share and pray for heartfelt conversions to Christ and spur each other to a follow-after-Jesus discipleship. We covenant with each other to communicate, teach and pray.
We express worship diversely yet to our same great God, and we always end with the Lord’s Supper and foot washing, complete with blessings, tears and hugs. The overall flavor is one of mission, expressed through stories of new life, new churches, new people groups and renewed vision for the lost.
The global MB Church has undergone major shifts. It is now mostly a Global South church. Sixteen of 24 member conferences are from the Southern Hemisphere, as is 82 percent of MB membership, now near half a million. The top 15 emerging conferences and networks are from the Global South.
MB mission work is going on in over 70 countries and many more people groups. It is no longer unidirectional (“from the West to the rest”) but multidirectional (“from everywhere to everyone”). The number of languages we speak approaches 100. We still call ourselves “Brethren,” but brotherhood language has been replaced by family.
With all our expansions, adoptions and integrations of multiple streams into our blended theological river, are we still Anabaptist and evangelical? At the global level, there is substantial overlap among these two multi-flavored movements. Both are centered around the core four: Christ, canon, conversion and commission.
As Anabaptists, Mennonite Brethren continue to promote and practice believers’ baptism, discipleship beyond conversion, churches collaborating as an interdependent community, plural and character-filled leadership, interpreting the Scriptures together, peacemaking and loyalty to God’s kingdom above all else. We are on a journey, yet these core convictions remain as our maps.
Tomorrow: 2025 forward
As both Anabaptists and evangelicals, we can expect many current global trends to continue. Christ’s church will continue to expand by sent missionaries and by spontaneous migrations because of wars and persecutions, as in Ukraine or Myanmar. The global MB mission force will increasingly be international; a third of Multiply workers are non-North American.
We will increasingly be led by brothers and sisters from the Global South. Our most recent ICOMB director is originally from Brazil; the Mennonite World Conference director is from Colombia. The makeup of the global MB Church will become more diverse in terms of location, language and ethnicity.
As with other Anabaptists, Mennonite Brethren will carefully welcome newcomers who bring new flavors such as warm culture relations or charismatic worship and ministry. Centers of educational influence will shift to majority world urban centers like Asunción, Kinshasa and Hyderabad.
While we continue to embrace our internal MB story, convictions and identity, our external names are increasingly diverse. In addition to Mennonite Brethren, we also call ourselves Free Churches (Austria, Germany and Lithuania), United Evangelical Church (Panama), Christian Peace Church (Mexico), Khmu Mission (Laos) and Lifehouse Community Church (Uganda).
Amid these inevitable shifts, there are also constants. Biblical convictions as rediscovered and applied by evangelical Anabaptists and Anabaptist evangelicals remain constant. The circle of interpreting and applying the Scriptures to today’s global challenges has grown wider, yet remains a circle of Christ-centered and Spirit-illuminated leaders and followers, as in Acts 15.
Aware of both changes and constants, we must also be aware of future challenges that present themselves even now. MB elders alert us to the challenge of church fragmentation in societies that are evermore individualistic and nationalistic, as opposed to a covenant community that is interdependent.
We are facing theological challenges, even within our core commitment to mission. Will we embrace a universalist posture toward other religions or an indifference toward the destiny of the unevangelized? Will our Anabaptist values of peace and justice retain peace with God and personal holiness at their center?
In our missional practice, will we waver in our historical commitment to bring the gospel of Christ to the still unreached people groups of 7,000-plus on all continents? Do we have a missional debt remaining in countries where we were planted, yet today little if any of our witness remains, as in Poland, Russia, China, and Spain?
A global church
The Bible opens and closes with a global perspective. We journey with faith, hope and love to the joyous heavenly scene: an uncountable multitude “from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb” (Rev. 7:9). As smaller movements within this glorious story, Anabaptists and Mennonite Brethren began as mustard seeds. By God’s amazing grace we are growing into fruitful and colorful trees.
Victor Wall, a Paraguayan and the first ICOMB director, reflected at our 150th MB anniversary: “Early Anabaptism, as well as the renewal movement in 1860 that gave birth to the MB Church, was a Jesus movement, a church movement, a movement of the Holy Spirit and a mission movement. It was local, but always had an international, transcultural and global orientation.”
As we Mennonite Brethren celebrate this big birthday of our larger Anabaptist family, we do well to remember, review and renew. We are a movement of renewal and mission that has gone global. However, we are not yet done and not yet home.
Victor Wiens volunteers as equipping coordinator for ICOMB. He recently retired from 40 years of service with Multiply, including 25 in Brazil with his wife, Marty. They were sent by Butler Church (Fresno) in 1982 and remained Butler members until moving to Canada in 2010. They now live in Abbotsford, B.C.
