Dear Blooming Glen Friends,
"By the grace of God, we seek to live and proclaim the good news of reconciliation in Jesus Christ. As part of the one body of Christ at all times and places, we hold the following to be central to our belief and practice:
God is known to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Creator who seeks to restore fallen humanity by calling a people to be faithful in fellowship, worship, service, and witness...."
The most recent Anabaptist confession of faith, known as the "Statement of Shared Convictions of Global Anabaptists," was adopted in 2006. I helped to host the meetings of the Mennonite World Conference General Council in Pasadena, California that adopted a seven-point confessional statement that Anabaptists leaders from national church bodies around the world agreed was a sufficient summary of our common beliefs. This statement doesn't replace our "Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective (1995)," but it does provide us with a starting point to define our faith identity as Mennonites in relationship with sisters and brothers around the world.
The statement begins by acknowledging that the purpose of God's grace is to participate with God in repairing a broken creation. Paramount to that purpose is seeking to understand the essence of God. God comes to us, not a set of philosophical propositions, but as a relational unity - Father, Son, and Spirit. We understand this relational God to be the maker of all things. Having wrecked God's good creation, God could be righteous in anger toward us, but instead, God enlists us to be His partners in restoring and repairing our fallenness by inviting us to come together with Him as a new people united in Him across all the lines of division we can create. We are made that new one people by living in faithfulness to God and each other - in friendship with one another in the church, in friendship with God, in friendship with our neighbors, and in friendship with our enemies.
As a statement of a shared conviction, this first article is hardly complete or comprehensive as a theological assertion. It does, however, unite a global church in the historic understanding of a triune God, and declares that this triune God is seeking relationship with all of us who broke fellowship with Him, and that such a restoration is accomplished as we receive God's grace and become the church.
This fall, I'm going to use this blog to explore the dimensions of this worldwide statement of shared convictions. We will also have a course available this fall that explores the MCUSA Confession of Faith. These efforts are part of our continuing shared commitments to each other that we have agreed to participate in as the next part of the Pathways Process. As we discern our future relationships within the Mennonite family, we need to do so from an informed perspective. So, we're going to dig into to these two contemporary statements as see if our identity as Christians is grounded in these Bible-based convictions and perspectives.
It should be a fun time!
Love you, Church!
Pastor Jeff
jeff@bgmc.net
PS - Our weekly listening sessions remain scheduled for Mondays at 7:30 am at the A&N Diner, and Friday afternoon at 3:30 pm, returning to the Broad Street Grind. You should have lots of questions ... I'll be listening.