I apologize in advance to readers of this post who were not present at the WNMC Class and panel discussion, because I will not be able to provide a lot of the context and content of what took place this morning. My purpose is to publish this post promptly, in order to permit participants in the class who did not have an opportunity to speak this morning to provide on-line comment in a timely manner, if they would like. Unfortunately, that means I cannot provide much more than an outline of the discussion, but here goes.
We had three panelists speak about baptism generally, their experience of baptism, and provide some thoughts about whether there is an essential connection between baptism and membership in the congregation of Waterloo North Mennonite Church. The panelists' contribution was preceded by the following framework and assumptions.
BAPTISM IS IMPORTANT TO MENNONITES
- Mennonites were born out of an Anabaptist desire to recover and renew the meaning and practice of baptism; and
- If Mennonites have a future, it will be because they remain serious about baptism, but renew it for their times.
MEMBERSHIP HAS BEEN CONNECTED TO BAPTISM
- Mennonites generally place great importance on membership and participation in a particular congregation
- Mennonites have generally considered there to be a very tight connection between baptism of adults and membership in a particular congregation. I.e. the classic Mennonite understanding of church treats baptism as an adult to be a prerequisite to membership in a congregation, and membership in a particular congregation an essential mark of participation in Christian faith.
THE GATHERING AT WNMC IS MUCH MORE DIVERSE THAN THE CLASSIC MODEL OF A MENNONITE CONGREGATION
This observation was illustrated by the image of a porous church building already seen in previous sessions:
The gathering at WNMC includes
- Some baptized as adults
- Some baptized as infants
- Some un-baptized, affiliated with Christian
faith
- Some un-baptized who are not Christian
THE ATTRIBUTES OF MEMBERSHIP AT WNMC ARE HIGHLIGHTED BY THE FOLLOWING DOCUMENT
The following word cloud generated from the document by the Wordle website highlights key terms used in the document (the 50 top terms are depicted, with size of font reflecting frequency of use).
THE NEW TESTAMENT TREATMENT OF BAPTISM MAKES NO EXPLICIT REFERENCE TO MEMBERSHIP IN A CONGREGATION
In fact, New Testament
passages focus much more on baptism as a spiritual and transformative event
that:
- unites all Christians
with Jesus Christ,
- sees baptism as a
participation in the death of Christ;
- connects baptism with
miraculous events, such as healing and speaking in tongues
- is connected with an
acceptance of spiritual and physical suffering
- was practiced by the
disciples of John and Jesus well before the first Christian congregations were
formed
- is motivated by
repentance and submission to the Spirit
- has a water component
that prefigures or is complemented by a baptism of spirit and fire
For the purpose of discussion, and to launch the panel discussion, the following proposal was put forth:
"PROPOSAL: WNMC should recover the power and promise of baptism by putting greater distance between the sacrament of baptism and the notion of membership in the congregation."
It was suggested that putting distance between baptism and membership makes sense because that would:
- Make space to work out the meaning of members vs. adherents
- Enable inclusion of those baptized as infants
- Shift emphasis from baptism as a decision of the
individual to work of God’s Spirit
- Create opportunity to explore aspects of baptism that resonate
with traditions of Christian mysticism
The panel discussion followed. I will not try to summarize the main points (at least at this time). However, any of the panelists should feel free to provide comments summarizing what they had to say earlier today. More importantly, there were many we were not able to hear from this morning. I would strongly encourage each of you to share your thoughts, including anyone who was not present but would would like to respond to this post.
First, Russ, kudos for a great adult SS series. This is an important subject and you are handling it with depth and substance. Having said that, I respectfully challenge your suggestion this week (June 2) that we put some distance between baptism and membership. While I will briefly explain why I think this a concerning issue in our faith confession, I am wondering more what is driving the question. Why does it seem necessary, as we explore the perimeters of our faith, to raise this issue? In my view, these two components are integral, or more strongly, inseparable. Just as strongly as our Anabaptist forbearers felt about adult baptism they felt that the believer should be a participating member of the faith community. In fact, that was so fundamental to their break with the Catholic Church that it threatened the whole structure of the state church and was the driving force that led to the Anabaptists’ persecution. The very thought that the authority of the church was in the gathered community rather than placed with the hierarchy of the church was heresy of the highest order and had to be stamped out.
ReplyDeleteFurther I posit that going back to Jesus, one of the first acts of his ministry was to pull together 12 disciples to be a supporting faith community as he carried out his radical messages of hope and salvation and a ministry of healing and championing the cause of the poor and lowly. So, why we are now questioning a commitment to the faith community as a take-it-or-leave it proposition is concerning to me. It is only when I came to Canada that I heard of the concept of “adherents” rather than members. And it was puzzling to us (Marlene and me) that when we decided to make Waterloo North our chosen community of faith, no one even raised the question of membership. The assumption was that we were to take our time. We have always held that you really ought to be a member of the congregation in which you worship. It is more about us than about WNMC—or any of the congregations to which we belong, for that matter. How else can we be accountable, receive pastoral care, engage in financial support and in general grow in our faith if we are not a functioning member of the body of Christ? Please forgive, but the question of distancing baptism and membership escapes me. --Dick Benner
Very interesting class Russ, thanks for facilitating it
ReplyDelete-Martha CM
Ron Flaming wrote this:
ReplyDeleteI want to add some comments to “the conversation hopper” on two aspects of today’s Sunday school discussion.
On putting distance between baptism and church membership at WNMC:
I believe it could be helpful for our discussion and maturation as a congregation to separate these for analytical purposes. This could allow us the space get a clearer, deeping understanding of baptism as well as of church membership. In the end, in practice, I believe they come together again. To borrow the vocabulary I heard in Sunday School today: baptism could be seen as being about the mystical union with Christ and with all believers in the body of Christ; being part of the church could be seen as the incarnation of that mystical union. (Afterall, incarnation of the mystery is part of Christianity!) The next question is what does it mean to be part of an incarnate church? This is the level of the conversation about “formal membership”. In what ways does the incarnate church take on the vestment of human groups or institutions? (I’d think that there are likely some gospel-affirming ways of doing that and some gospel-non-affirming ways of doing that).
On Martha’s short comment that maybe baptism isn’t the growing edge issue now as it was in the 16th century:
I bounce off it this way. The fundamental question for the 16th century anabaptists was “how to be faithful Christians?”. In that time it turned out that baptism became the flashpoint, the growing edge. (interestingly, some interpret that the rejection of infant baptism was so problematic because it was seen as a rejection of loyalty to (ie. membership in) the church-state society of the day in Europe) What are the growing edge/s or flashpoints for what it means to be faithful to Christ in our time and place? To referr to a single word from Markus’ comments, the question of baptism might be more of a growing edge between Christian denomations, but not so much the growing edge/flashpoint between the Christian faithfulness of WNMC and the society around us.
Thankyou Russ, Ron, Martha and Markus for your thoughtful and heartfelt comments.
I deny that there is a classic model of being Mennonite in the sense described. I also deny the claim that the issue is driven by amount of diversity at WNMC. There has always been diversity of belief in the church. I wonder what is driving this - to want baptism without church membership is to make the mistake of thinking one can divorce one's faith from how one lives (as Constantine tried to do). The church can accommodate this (what doesn't the church tolerate these days) but it isn't at all clear to me why it should. The challenge is not to tolerate and accommodate everything and anything but rather to work out together what it means to be a faithful community and how to challenge each other to greater faithfulness.
ReplyDelete