By: LORRY BENTCH
The bus ride from Stuttgart airport to the retreat center was the culmination of many hours of travel. Unshowered and jetlagged, everyone settled in quietly for the ride. Just as the bus was ready to depart, three passengers climbed aboard. The sight of those familiar faces instantly changed the ride for me.
“Bishop Nelson! Emmanuel! John!” They were not random conference participants; They were my brothers from Tanzania! They were people with whom I’d traveled over bumpy roads in the back of a Land Rover and who regularly shared prayer requests via WhatsApp. What joy to see each other in person again! I spent the next few days in meetings of the Mission Commission of MWC. The discussions were interesting, but the formal meetings couldn’t compare to the time spent over meals telling stories, brainstorming, and sharing burdens. A highlight was the evening when participants were invited to meet in “family” groups. The LMC gathering was joined by delegates from many of the churches EMM workers helped to start in the last ninety years: Tanzania, Kenya, Belize, Honduras, Hong Kong, Philippines, and Peru. We spent a sweet evening sharing testimonies of God’s faithfulness and current challenges. We enjoyed communitas as we celebrated being on mission together, fueled by similar vision, and committed to the same values. I am thankful for technology that enables communitas to happen across cultural, language, and geographical barriers and for the opportunities we have to be stretched and shaped by those global relationships.
By Jennifer Weaver
Aare you safe? It was a cute pun at either end of the trail along the Aare River in the Marzili neighborhood of Bern, Switzerland. I felt physically safe as I walked along the path. However, I saw no mention of the reason for which I was there. My Anabaptist ancestors, by blood and faith, would not have felt safe there in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-centuries. That part of the Aare River’s banks was named as one of the places where Bern drowned Anabaptists who would not recant. Today, people come for recreation because that stretch of riverbank has a nice park with swimming clubs, ping pong tables, and access points to the river.
Perhaps sixteenth-century Anabaptists would appreciate the change, since Switzerland’s government no longer arrests and kills Anabaptists. However, I came to discover that nobody remembers the Anabaptists who died there either. I was aware before traveling that Swiss Anabaptists tried to stay in their beloved homeland by moving higher into the mountains and hiding in the hills. While riding on trains and buses—especially while hiking the slopes—I pondered the inaccessibility of the places where the Anabaptists fled and wondered at the dedication of their pursuers. Once the authorities considered them adequately eradicated in person (more by fleeing to places with better tolerance in present-day Germany and America than by killing through execution, torture, and prison conditions), there was no need to remember them in national history.
The Anabaptists were the reason I visited Switzerland. I am interested in church history, especially Anabaptist history, family history, and genealogy, so Mennonite World Conference’s 500-year celebration since the first Anabaptist baptisms in Zürich inspired the timing of a bucket-list trip. However, many Swiss, including some who attend Anabaptist churches, were surprised when I told them of my ancestral connections to particular towns and my known ancestors that trace back to Swiss Anabaptists.
My highlight for MWC’s celebration day was seeing people I knew from around the world and meeting additional brothers and sisters in Christ with similar interests. Unfortunately, the much-vaunted celebration service was a disappointment for me at the time because I was not one of the lucky ones who got into the Grossmünster. Nevertheless, a group of us castaways made the best of the situation by adding an English-language streaming overflow room, thanks to the hospitality of the Reformed church hosting the English livestream. I met up with people I knew to walk over there from the Grossmünster, recognized some others in the room, and connected in worship with those around me. Our stream crashed twice, but we had restored the audio at the end, and we formed our own conga line during the “Siya hamba” recessional.
The Swiss political and religious leaders of the day, who thought that Anabaptists were a heretical scourge on their land, probably thought they would die out. The several thousand of us from around the world trying to fit into Zürich’s Grossmünster for the celebration service on Ascension Day nonverbally proclaimed, “We’re still here.”
Lorri Bentch serves as the Mission Team Director at EMM, providing strategy and oversight for the sending, resourcing, and partnering of EMM workers around the world. Previously, Lorri served as a missionary in Hungary. She and her husband have three daughters. Jennifer Weaver is a member of Harbor Fellowship in LMC’s West End Network. She is an executive assistant at EMM and has taught classes on church history, singleness, and worship design for STEP. Additionally, Jennifer is preparing to serve overseas with EMM in Marseille, France.