Are you an Anabaptist? Would you like to be?

Opening of the German-English Academy, July 5, 1910

Mennonite Heritage Museum today, 2014.

It's called the Mennonite Heritage Museum, and my job this weekend is to host visitors, guide them through the contents and collect their two dollars admission. Yesterday, it was mostly soccer kids and parents putting in time between games. None asked me, “Why Mennonite?” or “What's a Mennonite, anyway?” By and large, they looked at the old stuff, reminisced about how they remembered an item from their own past and, if they were kids, “played” the 1911 pump organ, marveled at the foxtrot being played on the Edison gramophone or whacked every key on the ancient typewriters and adding machines.

      We're embarking on a refreshing of the MHM to include an interpretive centre, a place to learn about that collection of impulses that drives the Anabaptist view of the world we live in. To do this well some history will be necessary, some theology, some sociology, even some anthropology. We're still looking for people to tap into the project, to contribute what they know and can do for it. It's going to be challenging . . . and fun.

      But why bother? The world has turned down another pathway, you might justifiably say.

      But let's think about this: significant aspects of Anabaptist faith through the centuries have included advocacy for peace and justice alongside a commitment to service—discipleship, if you will. Peace and justice require a dedication to community and in a disintegrating environment, culturally, socially and internationally, can there ever have been a time more needy of the witness of Anabaptist convictions?

      I've experienced too many conversations with people who don't know who their grandmothers were, who don't know where their ancestors—even the most recent ones—came from or what they believed in. Without turning maudlin on the genealogical front, I submit that most of us would agree that a satisfying, rewarding life includes a grounding in the essentials of one's past, a community that is peaceful and cooperative, and the companionship of a faith and practicum that aspires to a better world.

      An Interpretive Centre well planned and executed can model these things and help people in the quest to round out their lives with essentials elusive in a disintegrating age.

      Experiences in the Mennonite Heritage Museum and elsewhere over the past few years have taught me that there's an appetite out there, a hunger for more of exactly what faithful and active Anabaptism has to offer. We ought not hide the light we've been given under a bushel.

      If you agree, click here (g.epp@accesscomm.ca) and say so . . . please. I'd love to hear from you.