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MWC Officials Visit Baptist Colleagues

STRASBOURG, France — Larry Miller, Mennonite World Conference (MWC) General Secretary, and Pakisa Tshimika, Associate General Secretary, visited the Baptist World Alliance (BWA) headquarters in Falls Church, Virginia (USA) on April 24.

MWC and the BWA have engaged in close collaboration throughout the years. The most significant was the “Baptist Mennonite Theological Conversations” that took place from 1989 to 1992.

Among the recommendations coming out of the conversations were that “The BWA and the MWC invite each other to participate regularly through official representatives at their world congresses and, as appropriate, at their general council meetings,” and that “The BWA and MWC encourage cooperation in mission, service, and peace and justice projects at all levels.”

Baptists and Mennonites share common historical and theological roots. The Mennonite church grew out of the Anabaptist tradition of the Reformation movement in the sixteenth century, placing, among other things, emphasis on believers’ baptism, also a cornerstone doctrine of the Baptist faith. While the Baptist movement has historically been said to have begun in 1609, some historians claim that it is a successor to the Anabaptist tradition that came out of the Reformation.

Baptist-Mennonite collaboration takes place at both the international and local levels. Baptist World Aid, the relief and development arm of the BWA, and the Mennonite Central Committee collaborated on producing a Russian translation of the popular Barclay’s Commentaries for Russian-speaking countries. Baptists, Mennonites, and others joined together to form and run a Christian university in Paraguay, as well as a Christian university and a printing press in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Evangelical Theological Faculty in Paris, France, was founded by several churches, including Baptists and Mennonites.

There are approximately 1.5 million Mennonites in the world with the fastest growth in Africa, particularly Ethiopia. BWA has 36 million baptized believers in a community of over 110 million with more than 200 member bodies in 130 countries.

During the visit, Miller, who has been MWC General Secretary for seventeen years, presented a copy of the book, In God’s Image: A Global Anabaptist Family, to Denton Lotz who has been the BWA General Secretary since 1988 and will be retiring at the end of 2007.

— From a Baptist World Alliance release