Stuart Murray

Thank you for the invitation to address you this evening and to spend these days with you. Let me tell you a little about myself so that you understand something of my context and concerns. I have been involved in church planting for 24 years – as a practitioner, consultant, author, strategist, and trainer. My experience is primarily in Britain, but I have taught on church planting in North America, Australia, and Europe. I am particularly concerned at present with the development of new ways of being church that are relevant to contemporary culture. I teach church planting, evangelism, urban mission, and missiology at Spurgeon’s College, a Baptist seminary in South London.

I am also an Anabaptist. I am not a Mennonite or Brethren, but I have found a theological home in the Anabaptist tradition and a framework for my thinking about mission and church planting. I am currently chair of the UK Anabaptist Network and editor of our journal, Anabaptism Today. I bring you greetings from the growing Anabaptist movement in the United Kingdom.¹ My frequent experience in talking with Mennonites in both Europe and North America is that I am more excited about the Anabaptist heritage and its relevance for contemporary mission than most Mennonites are. So I come to you with gratitude for your tradition that has inspired my thinking and with the hope that what I share will encourage you to recover more of your Anabaptist heritage. I know that I am reflecting on church planting and Anabaptism in the British context, but I hope that this will be relevant also in your context, and that the perspective from outside might in some way be illuminating.

One of the practices which distinguished sixteenth-century Anabaptists from the Reformers – and which infuriated the Reformers – was church planting. While the Reformers concentrated on reforming existing churches, the Anabaptists became increasingly convinced that reform was inadequate and that it was crucial to establish new churches. These new churches would be believers churches rather than territorial churches, free from state control, and committed to mission. They would be churches characterised by multi-voiced worship, the exercise of church discipline, mutual aid, truth-telling, evangelism, and non-violence.

Anabaptists planted hundreds of new churches in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands. Although members of these new congregations shared fundamental values and convictions about the nature of the church, they were fairly diverse in style and ethos. Some were communitarian, sharing a common purse and supporting missionaries who travelled all over Europe planting new churches; some were charismatic, stirred by visions, and enjoying exuberant worship; some were more sober, devoted to Bible reading, and biblical study. Relationships between these churches varied from great warmth to sharp disagreement. Another feature these new churches shared was that they were unauthorised and, thus, subject to persecution and closure. Church planters were in particular danger of arrest, imprisonment, torture, and execution. They regarded church planting as vital, but it was costly.

Nearly five centuries later church planting is less costly, but it may again be vital for the mission of God in western culture. The practice of church planting still infuriates some church leaders, who regard it as an unhelpful dilution of resources, a hindrance to ecumenical relationships, or an opportunity for empire building and sectarianism. But these are minority voices in a context where most denominations have endorsed church planting as a significant aspect of mission in a post-Christian society. Church planting strategies are being implemented at national, regional, and local levels. Books and journals on church planting have introduced specialist terminology and commend a range of recommended policies and techniques. Church planting is on the agenda.

But as those who subscribe to the values expressed in the tradition that grew out of the sixteenth-century Anabaptist church planting movement, how do we assess these contemporary church-planting initiatives? Can we endorse their values and strategies? Are there contributions that we might make from the Anabaptist tradition that might enhance such initiatives? At the very least, if we ourselves are to continue planting churches in contemporary society, will we do this distinctively because of the values of our Anabaptist heritage?

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1. For an introduction to the network, see Alan Kreider and Stuart Murray, Coming Home: Stories of Anabaptists in Britain and Ireland (Waterloo, Ont.: Pandora Press; and Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 2000).

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