Whose way is practical?
Note: This article was first published in the MB Herald October/November 2025 issue. It is reprinted with permission from the author.
I never wanted to be an Anabaptist. Growing up in Winnipeg, I grew up a Baptist pastor’s kid who went to seminary and became a Baptist pastor. I never experienced a crisis of faith, probably because my parents were excellent role models. Their integrity convinced me that what I was being raised to learn was right, and I have retained much of what they taught me.
I knew that Anabaptists were related to Mennonites. And what I knew about Mennonites I knew largely because my mother was Mennonite, from a small town in southern Manitoba. But my own interaction with Mennonites was sporadic, and at a distance. The exception was my interactions at family gatherings, which were often not pleasant.
I was told that Mennonites were pacifists, which seemed ironic to me. My cousins did not seem to be very pacifist. And later, the Mennonite Brethren (MB) church teams in the interchurch hockey league in Winnipeg were known as the most violent ones, something that people from our Baptist church found terribly amusing at the time.
I don’t think I can recall the challenge of nonviolence or peacemaking in the biblical sense ever arising during my years in seminary. Christians were called to be people of peace, but certain situations dictated that a peaceful response was not practical. Yes, there would be peace eventually, but not now. The question of how things would change from the present, when peace is not completely practical, to then, when peace would reign, was not clear.
When I was applying to graduate studies after several years as a youth pastor, people asked me what I wanted the focus of my studies to be. And, to my chagrin, I didn’t have a favourite area of study or a theologian at whose feet I wanted to sit. But I did have a half-formed idea rolling around in my head. It had to do with how I might connect the doctrine I had learned, and which I believed, with the rest of my life so that I might connect it to the way I acted and talked around non-Christians.
One might say that I wanted to figure out how to make my theology practical—or, perhaps more practical. I now think more in terms of the need for theological integration, meaning that Christians don’t really believe what we say we do unless we put it to practical application in our lives. That has become a recurring motif in my life and my thinking.
When I began my doctoral program in theology, I had a bit of a problem. I needed some focus for my vague research ideas. In what I think now was a moment of inspiration, I seized upon an idea. I had researched Baptists, so why not research the people from whom Baptists descended? I knew a bit about Anabaptists and thought they might provide me with interesting and fruitful material for a thesis.
When I began to read the writings of Anabaptist leaders like Conrad Grebel, Pilgram Marpeck, Balthasar Hubmaier, and Menno Simons, I was struck by their clear-headedness and awareness of the forces arrayed against them. They were not the naive idealists I imagined them to be. They were putting their lives on the line for what they believed. The distinguishing factor in their stories was that they were unwilling to kill those who differed with them. This, of course, is what made them noteworthy.
The other insight that began to dawn on me with increasing weight was that their rejection of violence did not stem from some abstract commitment to peace. Rather, it came from their observation that the words and deeds of Jesus, being the example that Christians are called to follow, did not permit a theology of sanctified violence by Christians. Christians who called for violence were taking liberties with what Jesus taught and deviating from faithfulness, not fulfilling it.
Suddenly, my prior objections to the practicality of nonviolence started to re-emerge. I recalled hearing voices from the past say that Jesus is God—with not only this unique identity but also a unique mission in the world—and we are not, so we cannot expect to do what he did.
The problem was that Scriptures that talk about what Christians are called to do, both from the mouth of Jesus and in other New Testament letters, said different. Christians are called to follow in the steps of Jesus (1 Peter 2:21), to death, if necessary (Philippians 2:5–11). Jesus laid down his life so that, among other things, we would know how to lay down our lives for others (1 John 3:16).
There was another experience that was formative for me. My Baptist father once preached at an Anabaptist church that then invited him to become their pastor. My father declined the invitation, stating that he could not, with integrity, support what he called their pacifism. I was not sure what I believed about nonviolence, but I respected his decision and took to heart its theological implications.
My father’s response to the pastoral call reminded me of something else, an important ecclesiological lesson. As an individual—even one with a lot of theological education—I do not have the right or privilege to reject or minimize a theological conviction operative in the community of faith I join. If I am not willing to subject my own theological authority to that of the family of which I am becoming a part, then I am guilty of a sort of idolatry. This sobering realization forced me to stop and seriously consider what I am representing as a member of a church community. It is something that I have noticed that many MB church leaders are unwilling to do, often under the guise of “agreeing to disagree.”
In 2006, I had the privilege of joining the pastoral staff of an MB church in Mission, B.C. By then, having studied the origins of Anabaptism and found them compelling, I was excited for this ministry opportunity. I wanted to be a good MB leader. I read and wrestled with the articles of the Confession of Faith. I wanted to believe them—all of them. As a member of the family, how could I do otherwise?
It was hard for me to accept that Christians are called to be people of peace who reject violence. I didn’t like it. Part of me still doesn’t. I wasn’t sure it was practical for Christians to repay violence with Christlike love. Then I realized something.
My appeal to practicality was an appeal to a standard of my own devising rather than a concept taught by Jesus. And what I meant when I said that nonviolence was impractical was only that it was difficult. My own faithlessness wanted to reserve a certain set of circumstances where the way of Jesus does not apply so that I could choose an alternative that I might find more satisfying. I concluded that this is foolishness.
That sort of human way is not faithful to the call of Christ, and to my knowledge, it has never worked in human history. But for those who are in Christ, by faith we know that there is a better way coming, and we have the privilege of showing a watching world its power. The choice is ours. We can rely on our limited wisdom and power or trust the eternal wisdom of Almighty God revealed in Christ. Whose way is practical?
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