Authentic Disciples on Mission
A bold, irrepressible witness characterized both the Early Church and the early Anabaptist movement.
By Linford Stutzman
In 1527, Leonhard Dorfbrunner, an Anabaptist evangelist, spent several days in Munich, Germany. During that time he baptized four Catholics in the Isar River that runs through the middle of the city. Dorfbrunner left Munich, but was apprehended in Passau shortly thereafter, and was martyred the following spring. He had baptized about 3,000 persons during the year between his own baptism and death. Thirty-two Anabaptists, including two women who were considered “more stubborn than the men,” were martyred in Munich in the next few years.
In 1980, Josef, a teenager from a small Catholic village outside of Munich, met Leon Miller who was serving with Youth Evangelism Service (YES) with Eastern Mennonite Missions in our little congregation in Munich. At the time, Josef was a rebel against pretty much everything—the church, the government, education, and social expectations. Leon met Josef on the streets of Munich where he was busking. Leon, who had done some of his own busking, struck up a conversation and a relationship and eventually introduced Josef to the Jesus he had never known.
Josef was fascinated and attracted and, still the rebel, began to follow Jesus. His life changed. He decided to be baptized. Knowing that his family and probably the whole village were opposed to such a radical decision (“You already are baptized!”), I suggested a discrete location such as in a church baptistry. In preparation, I told him stories about the early Anabaptists, and how, about 450 years earlier, Leonard Dorfbrunner came to Munich and baptized four people who were killed shortly thereafter, some perhaps drowned in the Isar River.
“That’s where I want to be baptized,” Josef insisted.
Now there is a park along the Isar River today, a popular place, when it’s warm, for sunbathing on the grassy banks of the river—a very public place. Baptism in the same river that an early Anabaptist had been drowned in! Baptism in a public park! Baptism to which he would invite his family who were in solid opposition! He had been baptized in his little village in Bavaria as an infant, in the local Catholic church, to which almost everyone in the village belonged and everyone would know the scandal.
That is where I baptized Josef—in the deathly cold waters of the Isar, in front of our little congregation, Josef’s family scowling from the sidelines, and curious, bemused strangers looking on. Witnessing, as had others 450 years earlier, anabaptism.
Shortly thereafter, Josef declared himself a conscientious objector and refused to serve as required in the German military. He applied for the option of doing alternative service and was approved. Josef’s life changed radically. He was a true Anabaptist.
It occurred to me on the day of Josef’s baptism, that I was not an Anabaptist in the same way Josef was. I was a Mennonite baptizing an Anabaptist.
Back in Bavaria, his family and village, watching Josef’s life change, changed themselves from disappointment to admiration.
Josef later would join the Mennonite Church, graduate from Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Va., marry a Mennonite, and serve in Germany as an evangelist with YES. He would then return to the U.S. and join the Lancaster Mennonite Conference, where he was ordained to start a new congregation in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. West End Fellowship was planted in a part of the city that was home to marginalized of all kinds, including homeless and/or persons with addictions. Several years ago, after Josef’s congregation started other new churches, he was ordained as a bishop to give leadership to this small network of churches engaged in mission on the margins of churched society.
I have learned so much from Josef about being Anabaptist, especially in mission and evangelism. In reading Acts, observing early Anabaptists, and reading their own amazing explanations of their bold, irrepressible witness, I have been struck by the similarities of the early stages of these two revolutionary and effective movements.
Like Jesus, both the early church and the early Anabaptists fearlessly, prophetically, and persuasively shared the good news of the Kingdom. They did so in a dangerous environment, under threat of severe persecution, and even death.
They defied religious and political authority and even the pressure of their disappointed peers with whom they shared many of the same grievances about the oppression at the hand of those authorities, but who chose to fight for change rather than suffer for it. Their suffering, persecution, expulsion, and martyrdom all were seen as representing Jesus and as such made a powerful impact on individuals and eventually all of society.
They were authentic. Their message and their lives proclaimed the same publicly verifiable gospel. Men, women, and children participated fully for they saw themselves as having the authority to speak the truth to power, which they did with enthusiasm. They exercised the power of the good news of Jesus and the transforming power of the Spirit and rejected the power of self-defense and coercion.
They were nomads of the Kingdom, often leaving the security of fields, family, and homes. Their mission activities were often an experimental enterprise of learning through doing, rather than strategic planning.
In both the early church and the early Anabaptist movement, apostles emerged and God’s kingdom spread explosively and often chaotically. But disagreements and fracturing were inevitable. While unity was always something for which they worked, they did not cease to invite people to join who might potentially challenge the unity of the community.
This year, we Mennonites are celebrating the 500-year anniversary of the Anabaptist Movement that began in Zurich. Those of us who will go to Zurich to the celebration will hear about Felix Manz, and his own “final baptism” in the Limmat River that runs through Zurich. We will sing, pray, and remember. That will be wonderful! But as Mennonites in North America celebrate with Mennonites from around the world, we recognize that many of them are more Anabaptist than we are!
No matter where we’re from, we can choose, like the early followers of Jesus in the Roman Empire, or the early Anabaptists in the Holy Roman Empire, to reignite these traits and become authentic
Anabaptists again.
Linford Stutzman is professor emeritus of culture and missions at Eastern Mennonite University and a former mission worker in Germany and Australia.