Global MB educators gather for historic consultation

“We’ll be a mature church when we’re interdependent,” Cesar Garcia, leader of the Colombian MB conference, said at the global consultation on higher education. Pictured in top photo are Ernst Janzen (Brazil), and Nzuzi Mukawa (DR Congo), listening during a round-table discussion; middle photo, new friends Eric Wingender (Canada) and Arthur Duck (Brazil); bottom photo, Hartwig Eitzen (Paraguay) and Bekele Bedada Tulu (Ethiopia).

Mennonite Brethren institutions of higher education around the globe are significantly closer because of an historic gathering of their leaders, held June 4 to 9 in Fresno, Cal.

“I’m very glad I came,” said Ernst Janzen, professor at Faculdade Fidelis in Curitiba, Brazil. “The world has gotten smaller.”

Entitled “Shaping Mennonite Higher Education for the 21st Century,” the first-ever consultation brought together representatives from some 23 schools in MB conferences worldwide (except Angola where visa problems prevented attendance), as well as several schools connected though not directly affiliated with the denomination.

These educational institutions ranged from the old, such as Tabor College in Hillsboro, Kan., founded in 1908, or MB Centenary Bible College in Shamshabad, India, founded in 1920, to the very young, such as Faculdade Biblica Paulistana in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Some are liberal arts universities; some focus on teaching trades or training pastors. They vary widely in size, national context, and economic circumstances.

In spite of differences, however, a strong sense of connectedness emerged, which delighted – and even surprised – many participants.

“I’ve seen a level of humility and belonging I had somehow not expected,” said Johann Matthies, who represented both Lithuania Christian College and St. Petersburg Christian University. “It makes me hopeful – that we can grow and support one another.”

Carefully planned

International Committee of Mennonite Brethren (ICOMB) sponsored the consultation. MB Biblical Seminary and Fresno Pacific University, together with a Fresno group called the Council of Senior Professionals, hosted it on their adjoining campuses.

The event was intended to respond to “felt needs” in the MB global community, planners said; needs such as questions of identity many MB schools are facing, as well as the changing face of global education.

Each day contained worship, plenary sessions on foundational issues related to Christian higher education, discussion groups in various configurations, and workshops related to practical concerns such as finances and curriculum. Additional networking happened over meals and breaks for drinks and fresh California fruit.

In the opening address, ICOMB executive director Victor Wall issued a seven-point call to MB academic leadership to:

• centre education in kingdom politics (allegiance to God’s reign);
• engage in mission-motivated and mission-motivating education (as a consequence of being centred in God’s kingdom);
• build up leaders in Jesus’ terms (rather than contemporary leadership gurus);
• seek, learn, and teach truthful knowledge (embodied in life);
• become faithful stewards of our resources (“making space for knowledge” in relating to each other and the world);
• practice international solidarity (putting the global church high on our agenda);
• become high-tech Anabaptists (not fearing but using the tools God has provided for our generation).

Setting the stage

Eloise Hiebert Meneses

The plenary topics began broadly, with worldview. Eloise Hiebert Meneses, professor of anthropology at Eastern University, St. Davids, Pa., drew on the work of philosopher Michael Polanyi and missiologist Lesslie Newbigin, to consider how “we know what we know.”

Believing is at its foundation, she said; knowing necessitates choice between competing visions of reality. The ultimate commitment of a Christian is to “Jesus as Lord, as master and authority over one’s own understanding of the truth,” she stated. From that stance then, Christians witness and, in a variety of disciplines, engage with “penultimate truths.”

In the second plenary, I.P. Asheervadam, currently researching for his Ph.D in church history and a professor at MB Centenary Bible College, India, traced a specifically Anabaptist view of education.

Anabaptism, he said, is both a spiritual and social movement. He drew parallels between Anabaptism’s rise within the peasant classes of 16th century Europe and how the missionary movement’s emphasis on education empowered India’s Dalits (a term for communities marginalized and de-humanized by the caste system). Outlining 11 core beliefs of Anabaptism, he called for MB schools to embrace this identity, to offer it to the wider kingdom of God.

School and church

Alfred Neufeld

A third paper, by Alfred Neufeld, dean of the Faculties of Theology and of Education and Social Work at the Evangelical University of Paraguay, considered higher education’s role for the church.

Christian higher education that is shaped by the church, towards ministry and service, requires “something like a theology of denominationalism and also a theology of conference loyalty,” he said. Furthermore, we cannot evade the “ambitious and urgent task” of doing “responsible theological work,” especially the work of contextualized or “little theologies” for specific situations (when culture changes due to migration or technological innovation, for example).

The real challenge for future Christian higher education, Neufeld concluded, “will be the ability to have faith in the church.”

“If the church is the body of Christ, then all we do in the name of Jesus, we do in the name of the church.”

Ideally, the relationship of church and school should be one of interdependence. “But,” Neufeld said, “in times of crisis, church leadership must prevail.”

This statement was probably the consultation’s most provocative, at least in terms of the conversations it unleashed.

Discussion revealed that the rub between church and school is often very real. What if church or conference leaders have little understanding for higher education? How can the school’s submission and prophetic voice be held in tension?

Suggestions for ways through possible impasse were also shared: don’t make the local too determinate for one’s idea of church but think of it on a national or global level; give more loyalty to the church, feel a part of it; theologize together to find coherence; seek to serve.

Looking outward

In the final paper, Merrill Ewert, president of Fresno Pacific University (FPU), drew attention outward, to how Christian higher education can be shaped towards service in the community and world. He called schools high in reflection “cloister,” those high in action “activist.”

Ewert called for engagement that is high in both reflection and action. Scholarship of engagement, he said, quoting Ernest Boyer, means “connecting the rich resources of the university to the most pressing social, civic, and ethnical problems . . .” Ewert gave examples of how this plays out at FPU, as it attempts to see the world through the lens of faith and to assist locally with various programs such as helping children learn to read or victim–offender restoration.

Steps forward

An “incarnational theology of retirement looks like Dalton Reimer and Elmer Martens,” said Victor Wall, executive secretary of ICOMB. The retired professors Martens (l) of MB Biblical Seminary and Reimer (r) of Fresno Pacific University played key roles in organizing the global consultation on MB higher education.

If the Fresno consultation demonstrated the continuing maturation of ICOMB as the body that connects the global Mennonite Brethren family, it also revealed some gaps. The transition from relationship as North American mission agency (MBMSI) with mission “fields” to relationship as a body of equal conferences is still in process, especially when it comes to the financial struggles of mission-established institutions in some Majority World conferences.

An “economic missiologist” is needed “to help us deal with the disparities,” said Dalton Reimer, professor emeritus of FPU and a consultation organizer.

Reimer was encouraged, he continued, by MBMSI spokesperson Ray Harms-Wiebe’s acknowledgement that the agency’s response to the matter of school support has been “ambivalent” and further, by Harms-Wiebe’s call for all parties “sit down together” to find solutions.

Listening: (l–r) Ray Harms-Wiebe of Canada, representing MBMS International, and Victor Wall of Paraguay, secretary of ICOMB.

This was just one of the steps into the future envisioned at the consultation’s close. Being together had been wonderful, but participants clearly wanted follow-up.

“I enjoyed what took place so much,” Nzuzi Mukawa, academic dean of University School of Missiology, Kinshasa, DR Congo, said. “I wonder when we’re going to have the next one!”

Highly-ranked priorities included: meeting again (perhaps in 2010 or every 5 years), faculty exchanges, scholarships for students from developing countries, globalizing FPU’s Center for Peacemaking and Conflict Studies, and sharing – “from everywhere to everywhere” – of books and other written materials, fundraising ideas, online library access.

Consultation findings were to be presented to a meeting of ICOMB leaders in Kinshasa later in June. But, Merrill Ewert reminded, relationship building could be done in small steps and doesn’t need “official sanction.”

The event concluded with a celebratory supper, gift presentations to schools of 24 books (from the Believers Church Commentary and the Luminaire series), and communion.

Dora Dueck, outgoing associate editor of the MB Herald, covered the consultation for the Herald and the U.S. Conference’s Christian Leader. Plenary papers will be published in an upcoming issue of Direction; the worship and plenary sessions can also be viewed at Fresno.edu.

Beginning, and ending, with worship As a very lonely student, Takashi Manabe spotted an invitation to a campus Bible study and felt a strong impulse to go. There, for the first time, he heard the gospel of Jesus Christ explained and “something happened . . . the light shone into my heart.” Takashi Manabe Now principal of Japan’s Evangelical Biblical Seminary, Manabe is passionate that MB schools train their students to expound Jesus Christ “from every book of the Bible.” Speaking in the opening worship session of the global MB consultation on higher education in Fresno, Cal., June 4–9, Manabe urged, “let’s never leave the core.” On the second morning, Jim Holm, president of North America’s MB Biblical Seminary, summed up the mandate of Christian education in the concluding phrase of the Great Commission: teaching them to obey everything I [Jesus] have commanded you. This involves a deep and delighted love for God in Jesus, and breaking those habits that naturally lead to disobedience and replacing them with habits that naturally lead to obedience. P. Menno Joel, church leader and professor of pastoral theology in India, spoke of service. He recalled – “still with emotion 30 years later” – a missionary teacher who cleaned up a classroom after dogs made a mess inside. Such action on the part of a leader was astonishing in his culture, he said, and presented a powerful example of what Jesus also modelled when he washed his disciples’ feet. In the final worship session, Nzuzi Mukawa, academic dean of DR Congo’s University School of Missiology, preached on Proverbs 1:1–7. “After being here five days,” he said, “I want us to come back to this simple and profound moral: the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” —DD