George Blaurock-Early Anabaptist Leader Biography

George Blaurock was born in Bonaduz, Switzerland, about 75 from Zurich, in 1491.  We know he went to college and then became a priest.  He traveled to Zurich in 1524.  Somewhere before this he made a break with the Catholic church.  He quickly joined Conrad Grebel and Felix Manz in following the reformer Ulrich Zwingli.  It did not take long for these men to become unhappy with Zwingli’s rate of following what they clearly understood the Scripture to say.  After their beliefs were denounced by Zwingli and the city council, Grebel, Manz, Blaurock, and their friends were ordered not to hold Bible studies together any more.  They met and prayed for guidance.  As they finished, Blaurock stood up and asked to be baptized.  Grebel proceeded to do so, thus making Blaurock one of the first Anabaptist in Europe.

After this, Blaurock and Manz worked closely until January 1525 when Manz was martyred and Blaurock was beaten and thrown out of the city.  From there he moved persistently, working in a place until he was banished, and then moving on.  He was banished from four areas of Switzerland before he moved onto Austria in 1527.  He became the pastor of a church in 1529 after its leader was martyred.  In half a year he baptized many people and founded a number of churches.  This work ended with his arrest, torture, and burning in September of 1529.

George Blaurock is remembered as a man of action.  If he knew what was right, he tirelessly and forcefully pursued it with all his might.  He jumped up and with conviction declared that he wanted to be baptized, no matter of the price.  He was known to enter Reformed church services, call down the preacher, and begin to preach over him with his powerful voice.  He was kicked out of at least five areas and endured torture for about a month before his death.  He represents an unashamed voice of truth which stands as an example of commitment for modern Anabaptists living in America.

Primary Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Blaurock

Other Reading:

http://www.scrollpublishing.com/store/ConradGrebel.html 

 http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/B55760.html

Menno Simons-Early Anabaptist Leader Biography

For the youth at Life Fellowship, here is the first of the promised biographies. Enjoy. (And I promise the next one will be shorter.)

Menno Simons was born in January of 1496 in Witmarsum in the Netherlands. He was educated in a nearby monastery where he learned Latin (as a priest this made it possible for him to read the service), a little Greek, and no Hebrew. In 1524 he became a priest and spent much time drinking, playing cards, and carousing, as did many priests of his day.

Not long after becoming a priest, Menno (why don’t we call him by his last name like all the other early leaders???) began to receive vibes through the grapevine from Protestant reforms who challenged Transubstantiation (the Catholic teaching that the communion bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ after it is blessed). This caused Menno also to have some doubts. He decided to investigate and do something he had never done before-read the Bible. Like most priests of his day, Menno was taught to believe that it was dangerous to study the Bible because the common reader could easily be led astray. They were taught that the Catholic church’s teachings were absolutely flawless, so there was no reason to read the Bible.

As Menno read, he found no evidence for Transubstantiation. He also discovered no basis for infant baptism. He continued reading the Bible along with the writings of the early church fathers and contemporary reformers. He began to consider himself an evangelical preacher although he remained in the Catholic church. In 1534, approximately nine years after Menno began reading Scripture, Jan Matthijs and his gang of sword-carrying “Anabaptists” attempted to bring about end times by setting up the “New Jerusalem” in the city of Munster. Taking their cues from the Munsterites, a group of three-hundred people tried a similar end times event near to Menno’s town. It is believed that his brother and several the members of his church were involved and were killed in the siege that followed.

Menno was appalled by what these people did, although he admired their courage. Inspired to stand for what he knew, he declared his new commitment to follow Christ and turned away from the teachings of the Catholic church. In 1536 he was baptized by one of the main leaders of the non-resistant Dutch Anabaptists, Obbe Philips. A year later he was asked to become an elder of the church. He accepted because he saw that many people needed teaching to lead them to truth and to avoid events like Munster.

Menno is attributed with bringing about the change in the way most northern Europeans thought about Anabaptists. The news of the Munsterites had spread to all parts of Europe and whether they knew the truth or not, officials used this example to discredit Anabaptists. Menno wrote diligently for years and as a result brought about a change in the way Anabaptists were viewed. They were no longer seen as crazed, polygamist, sword-wielding heretics; but as suffering, loving, martyrs. Menno also provided strong articulate teaching and leadership which helped to unify and stabilize north European Anabaptism. He was such an influential leader that those he lead began to call themselves Mennonites.

Just a year or two after his ordination as elder, Menno was a hunted man. For the next twenty-some years he and his family moved constantly, always being pursued by the authorities. At one point he mourned the fact that he and his family of young children could not even live in one place for half a year before having to flee. A huge reward was to be given to anyone who captured him, and anyone who was found aiding or talking to him, would be killed. Amazingly he managed to escape capture and died a natural death in 1561. He was buried in his garden.

Primary source: http://www.mennosimons.net/life.html

Additional reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menno_Simons

http://mb-soft.com/believe/txn/mennosim.htm

http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/M4636ME.html

Bringing a Foreign Reality to Your Livingroom

I hope to post something original soon, but until then, I request that you go to Save the Children’s website and take the tour of Kroo Bay. This is a town built on a trash dump. The clinic, which is being helped by Save the Children, shares its building with other community functions like school and important social gatherings. The lack of equipment and medicines is shocking. Viewing this caused me to remember the reality of where I live and all that I have. There is another reality of which I know nothing. This kind of thing is what helps us to remember what is really important in life.

Gifts of an Untamed God

I asked for God,

He seemed so silent.

I looked for God,

He didn’t appear.

 

I bared my heart

And hoped to hear.

I felt just silence

And fought despair.

 

What should I do?

Where am I wrong?

I’ve surrendered my heart,

But where is God?

 

He is wild and He is free.

He does not come when I demand.

But He has promised,

And He does not lie.

“My peace I give to you,

Not as the world gives.”

The Loss of the System

If we are trying to perfect an activity, we come up with a system. NASCAR pit crews have athletic trainers and rigorous practices to perfect their system for servicing race cars in the shortest time possible. Part of the Industrial Revolution was the development of a system for manufacturing product. Submariners practice a procedure for responding to a leak or other emergency so that they can do it well under pressure. In todays factories, systems engineers work to make the manufacturing process as straightforward and efficient as possible.

Discipline in every aspect and detail of an activity brings perfection. To get things right, we make a system and perfect it. This is the way that humans (at least Westerners) achieve perfection. This is how we think about solving problems and making things work well.

God knew this. He designed the perfect system for man. He gave them the requirements, the procedures, for man to get as perfect as he could. He gave man the Law and for centuries a greater or lesser number of people sought to perfect their execution of this system.

Paul, in Philippians 3, says that in regards to the System (Law), he was as perfect a practitioner as they come. He was a professional reaching the heights of exactness. It would seem like Paul would be the man to listen to. He had achieved more than anyone else in perfecting a system to be perfect, but he denied the systems ability to bring perfection. He declared to all of us who try to save ourselves by a system, that he went as far as anyone in achieving perfection and he not succeed. He declared in Galatians 3:24 that the System was a schoolmaster. The System failed Paul and it taught him that in near perfection, it remains powerless to save.

On this realization Paul declared in Philippians 3:7 that the things that he sought to bring him gain, he now considers a loss for Christ. We frequently paraphrase the word loss as valueless. I do not think this is correct. In the context of the passage, Paul is saying that those things which he considered helpful in his perfection of the System, he now considers loss. The practice of the system as a way of bringing gain was detrimental.

We all make systems to perfect ourselves. We reward our careful eating all week with an ice cream. We convince children to be responsible with rewards. We threaten punishment for students who do not do their homework. All these things are to bring conformance to a System which, when perfected, will, we think, create the epitome of good.

Many of us have been tricked into thinking that if we perform, we are good. Paul declares that the System taught him his helplessness, but also a self reliance that needed to be abandoned. In verse 8 of Philippians 3 he says that his habit of depending on the System was (literally) a damage as he learned to know ( literally to have knowledge of) Christ.

What system have you fallen trap to in an attempt to make yourself perfect. Surrender all you learned under the system, except for the knowledge of your own inability. Forget the System and come to know the perfecting power of Jesus. The System will not work. Salvation can only come through the ability of the Kingdom of God to transform our brokeness and helpless into sainthood.

The Job of an Engineer

The job of an engineer is to find what works.  He can try to build for efficiency, economy, extra strength, any attribute you choose, but if he gets distracted from the main goal of making something that works, he has failed.  If object he designed does not performed the job it was made for, all his efficiency, strength, or good looks become a ridiculous effigy of misguided priorities.

The Rosebush

“Da harder ya prune de rosebush,

den da more flowers you’s gonna have.”

I trimmed till I thought

I killed that bush.

It bloomed beyond my wildest imagination.

Now I stare at the flowers

And wonder why beauty must come

Through cutting away.

Women in Leadership and Why I am again Glad to be an Anabaptist

(I suggest you read the interview before you read my scattered thoughts) Here is a fascinating interview from CNN. I was reminded again of how delighted I am to be an Anabaptist, particularly one who believes in women literally having their heads covered, when Dr. Jones was put in a corner on the issue of the covering and also war and the government. I felt that Janet Parshall should have been a little more definite in stating that women and men are equal in value and importance, they simply have role differences. The example of women not being an afterthought of creation was good. I think that God made woman later than everything else to give Adam time to learn how handicapped and incapable he was without woman.

This interview does clearly highlight how flawed it is to believe that we can just read the Bible and know what is right. Everyone views Scripture through a lens. I believe that Jesus needs to be our lens for interpreting Scripture. He was the fulness of God revealed. It is through this complete revelation of God that we can understand all the rest of Scripture. I did like Dr. Jones’ point that the Scripture and the will not be inconsistent with each other because they are both of God. Jesus is the Logos, the source of all good and truth. He is the Word.

Larry King Live

Should Women Be Pastors?

Aired June 14, 2000 - 9:00 p.m. ET THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

LARRY KING, HOST: Tonight, a Baptist battle over whether women should be pastors. Joining us from Greenville, South Carolina, Dr. Bob Jones III, president of Bob Jones University; from Nashville, the Reverend Raye Nell Dyer, president of Baptist Women in Ministry; with me in New York, radio talk show short Janet Parshall of “Janet Parshall’s America,” and the Reverend Stan Hastey, executive director of the Alliance of Baptists. It’s all next on LARRY KING LIVE.

Leo Tolstoy Edits My Blog Post

In a previous post I declared my belief that the church should not use the weapon of coercion. I said that while the good can be accomplished with coercion and the sword, it is an evil tool. The state causes good to happen but uses an evil or flawed tool. I said that the weapon of the church is the only way to truly accomplish good with a good weapon.

While I do not retract this, I have been led into a slightly different understanding or perspective on this issue by some of the statements in Leo Tolstoy’s wonderful novel The Resurrection. In it he asks what right men have to imprison and punish others when they themselves are evil. While the evilness of the common prison guard in Tolstoy’s country and time may have been more corrupt than in ours, our society has similar situations. While the prison guards of our day may not themselves visit prostitutes or steal money, some of them would visit a strip club or sue someone to get money regardless of that person’s guilt, and even more of them would consider these things to be okay. The guards hold little moral superiority over those they guard. The same with the judges, policemen, and politicians. While these people may not have committed actions that the law deems evil, they are evil like all are who have not been transformed into the image of Christ.

Tolstoy goes on to say that love and forgiveness are the way that Christians act. Here is where he brings a twist to my previous thinking. It is not purely because the weapon is evil that the church does not use coercion and the sword. Rather, because the church is made up of people who are like Christ, the church does what Christ did/does. The church simply acts out of who they are and offers forgiveness and love. They do not reject the sword only because it is evil, but because it is discordant with the nature of who they now are.

Discussions of a Trite Phrase

While I reject many of the petty bickerings and minute differentiations that generally accompany the statement that “Christianity is a relationship, not a religion”, I agree with the statement in the pure form of its meaning. A religion is a system of practices and dogma whereby one comes to meet the conditions of the divine. Christianity differs in that Christians do not, as the central method of their relationship with the divine, follow a religious system or declare belief in dogma.

Christianity not about pleasing the Divine by actions or beliefs, but rather about becoming like the Divine. It is not about doing, but being, being like Christ. Some may protest casting away salvific actions or beliefs, but I counter by saying that if we become like Jesus Christ (the fullness of the Divine Father) we will do all that is and only what is consistent to the nature of God. We will be like Jesus. This is the essence of Christianity.

Understanding this may revolutionize the way many view Christianity, Mennonitism, salvation, and church. Think how it would alter things if everyone understood that doing the right things does not make you right and if parents and teachers and preachers were not satisfied with a church or youth group full of people doing the right things, but would rather be concerned about the church and youth group being like Christ. Might I add that we must not associate being like Christ simply with doing right things.

You may say I have split hairs. You may say that the difference I have pointed out between Christianity as a religion and a relationship are very minor like so many others. I apologize if I have been a hypocrite, only let my words be heard and the truth that they contain be understood.