April 29thFrom The Desk of Our Executive Minister
Better Together | Second in MCBC at 90—Better Together Series–Cultivating Anabaptist [and Neo-Anabaptist] Vision
Better Together 2 Second in MCBC at 90—Better Together Series–Cultivating Anabaptist [and Neo-Anabaptist] Vision
MCBC's collective ministry is organized around three key themes that strengthen our witness. The first one is:
- Cultivating Anabaptist Vision. What is Anabaptism (beyond Palmer Beckers Three)
Theologically we are in a space that confesses that God's grace is freely given and genuinely offered to all, not hidden in a divine decree that renders human response irrelevant, but displayed in the living Jesus, who calls every person to repentance, discipleship, and life together in the Spirit-formed community of the church.
Whereas neo-Reformed determinism (e.g., TULIP, double predestination) locates God's sovereignty primarily in an eternal electing decree, Anabaptism locates it in the crucified and risen Jesus. God is most sovereign when he absorbs violence rather than inflicts it. This is a very different picture of power.
We insist on genuine human agency Anabaptism confesses that God's grace is genuinely extended to all. It is not hidden in a divine decree that renders human response a foregone conclusion, but displayed in the living Jesus, who calls every person to repentance, discipleship, and life together in the Spirit-formed community of the church. That this call requires a real answer is written into the very practice of believer's baptism. This isn't Pelagianism; it's a rejection of the Augustinian-Calvinist architecture that makes the call to some effectively meaningless. This is also where we have a lot of overlap historically with certain kinds of Pietism, Wesleyanism, and Pentecostal movements. These movements focus on the grace that goes before (prevenient grace) and the empowering work of the Holy Spirit to walk right, talk right, and work for liberation.
We define election as missional, not merely soteriological Anabaptists understood "chosenness" in terms of Nachfolge Christi, following Jesus into the world. As Scott McKnight and others speak of, we have a King Jesus Gospel at the centre. You are elect for something (witness, peacemaking, community), not simply from something (damnation). This counters the neo-Reformed tendency to make election primarily about escaping wrath. God's sovereign grace is most fully revealed not in a predetermined decree that selects some and passes over others, but in the costly, open invitation of the cross, to which every person is genuinely called and genuinely able to respond.
The ethics of Jesus are essential, not optional Neo-Reformed and other systems, ground salvation entirely in imputed righteousness and a prior decree, struggle to give ethics constitutive weight. Anabaptism insists that how you live is inseparable from whether you are following Jesus: not as merit, but as the natural fruit of genuine regeneration and ongoing communal (local congregations) accountability.
Privileges the gathered, voluntary church over Christendom assumptions Anabaptism's free church ecclesiology (study of what the church is and does), the gathered, baptized, accountable community (the local church!), is itself a theological statement: grace cannot be coerced or pre-assigned by birth, geography, or decree. The church is those who choose to follow (God has no grandchildren!).
BC needs more Anabaptist Christianity, not less. We’ve got work to do to not lose the Jesus-Centred and Spirit-empowered plot in light of secondary, important, but secondary issues.
+Boese