Stuart Murray

A question that the Anabaptist Network has often been asked is whether there are any plans to plant "Anabaptist churches" in the United Kingdom. We have given various responses: that the network is too loosely-knit and diverse to be an organisation capable of implementing such a policy; that our main concern has been to provide resources for Christians who are and remain members of existing local churches; that Anabaptism is not a contemporary denomination and so it is not easy to know what an "Anabaptist church" would look like. Rather than planting new churches and adding another denomination to the already crowded ecumenical scene, our hope has been that Anabaptist values might contribute to the reformation and renewal of Anglican, Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, and many other kinds of churches.

Christians from these traditions are already drawing on Anabaptist perspectives. Some local churches are developing new patterns of worship, new styles of leadership, new commitments to peace witness, new understandings of community, and new forms of mission as a result of their interaction with Anabaptist ideas and values. Why plant new churches rather than working for renewal?

This was, of course, the same question Anabaptists faced in the sixteenth century. We are not obliged to agree with their answer, nor need our response in a very different context be the same. They faced monolithic Catholic or Protestant state church systems, where reformation and renewal was slow and fraught with difficulties. We face a bewildering array of churches and denominations, many of which are believers churches and have already, wittingly or unwittingly, been influenced by the Anabaptist tradition. Encouraging further engagement with this tradition may be the most sensible course of action.

But is this a defensible position? Anabaptism was a church planting movement. Can we recover and advocate Anabaptist perspectives without planting new churches? The early Anabaptists were convinced that church planting was crucial if they were to be free to build the kinds of communities they believed were envisaged by Jesus. The state churches were simply not prepared to face certain issues. Are there questions that most local churches today will not address? What are the sticking points? How radical can the renewal of existing church structures be?

Perhaps this is not an either/or choice. It may be possible for the network to continue providing resources for existing churches but at the same time to plant new churches. In an environment where new churches are being planted by many denominations, it may be appropriate to establish new churches that embody Anabaptist values. These can both contribute to the contemporary concern for replacement and saturation church planting and provide opportunities to explore what a contemporary British "Anabaptist church" might look like. Creative interaction between these new churches and longer-established churches that are drawing on Anabaptist ideas could be mutually beneficial. The new churches may be free to experiment in ways that would be unrealistic in existing churches. The older churches will have traditions of their own that will enrich and guide the emerging churches.

But if we are to plant "Anabaptist churches," we must return finally to the question of definition. What are Anabaptist churches? It is easier to say what Anabaptist churches would not be. They would not be attempts to restore some mythical sixteenth-century congregational pattern. They would not necessarily be modeled on contemporary churches that have historic Anabaptist roots, though they would surely draw on the experience of these. And, if they are anything like the Anabaptist churches planted in the sixteenth century, they would certainly not be uniform. In a pluralistic culture, that’s very good news.

All we have done thus far is to attempt to summarise the "core values" at the heart of the Anabaptist movement in the United Kingdom. I share these with you (see a listing of Anabaptist Network core convictions) this evening in the spirit of historic Anabaptist confessions since Schleitheim – not as a final version but as a basis for further discussion and development. I would welcome any reactions you may have to these in our discussion times. Our hope is that these values, rather than any strategy or methodology, may be helpful to existing churches and church planters in Britain as they grapple with the challenges of contemporary culture. And perhaps this is the primary contribution of the Anabaptist tradition to church planting – to underscore the significance of values rather than techniques, quality rather than quantity, relationships rather than programmes.

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