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Call to Prayer: Praying and Fasting

Lydia Showalter

It wasn’t until I did a 72-hour fast that I began to truly understand what fasting meant. Along with prayer, it does the mysterious work of drawing us close to God so that our desires and perspectives align with his. All of my doing needs to flow from that place of abiding and praying, with words or without.

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An Unexpected Path to Mission

Andrea Hamsher (left) and Rebekka Stutzman serve a Friday breakfast at The Villa in Mannheim, Germany. Photos courtesy of Andrea Hamsher

Serving in missions work overseas isn’t something that I ever imagined myself doing, but through the process of moving to and serving in Germany, it’s become evident to me that even when I didn’t even know what I was doing, God did. I now recognize all the ways God was preparing me for this assignment.

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God is Still Saving This Generation

Joyel Allen

Serving in college ministry for the past few years has deepened my conviction that the Great Commission is as relevant and urgent as ever—and it’s especially meaningful for a generation that’s wrestling with deep confusion, fear, and spiritual brokenness.

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For a Generation to Come

SLAQ Newcomer Adventure participants

The mission of the SLAQ program is to raise up youth as serving leaders through practices of adventure, service, and wisdom. In our day, SLAQ wants to create a context where the next generation can step out of the comfort-driven streams of culture, and listen to what life expects of them.

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Engaging the Next Generation

Mentored ministry is now more relevant than ever as the next generation is joining the work of missions. The recent generation does not prefer to receive verbal instruction and then go and do. Rather, they are looking to go and do alongside mentors who help them succeed, even through experimentation and failure.

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Five Qualities of a VITAL Church

Aaron M. Kauffman

How do we engage the next generation in the life and witness of the church? That was the key question I wanted to answer six years ago in my doctoral dissertation. Five overarching themes emerged, which I sum up with the acronym, VITAL.

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The Anabaptist Mission Flame

Elwood Yoder

Recently I discovered that my ancestors had been invited to adopt Anabaptist faith by neighbors in the 1660s. The flame of Anabaptism spread rapidly from neighbor to neighbor. Today, the mission flame of the early Anabaptists is still very much alive.

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Authentic Disciples on Mission

Linford and Janet Stutzman on their sailboat Sailing Acts.

A bold, irrepressible witness characterized both the Early Church and the early Anabaptist movement, who fearlessly, prophetically, and persuasively shared the good news of the Kingdom in a dangerous environment, under threat of severe persecution and even death.

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Timeline of the Anabaptist Movement

Marker in Zurich, Switzerland, where the baptism of Grebel, Manz, and Blaurock took place in 1525. Photo by Evergreen68/Wikipedia.

A timeline of major events in Anabaptist history from the first rebaptisms of the movement in 1525 to the present day, noting persecutions and migrations of different Anabaptist groups around the world.

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Two-Fold Gospel Witness

Michael Sattler preaches in the woods. Painting by Mike Atnip (Public Domain).

Anabaptists saw the local church as the community of daily discipleship that incarnationally embodied that larger identity. Most shocking in light of the imminent threat of foreign armies was their call to love even enemies. They made the costly case to fellow Christians that the suffering of the cross is Jesus’ call to all believers.

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Three Defining Traits of Anabaptist Mission

Aaron M. Kauffman

From the beginning, Anabaptism was a missionary movement. Converts shared their faith boldly, often at great personal cost. In response to intense persecution, quietism came to characterize succeeding generations. But a resurgence of Anabaptist missional fervor led to a truly global Anabaptism today.

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