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Living as the Global MB Family
From the General Director
This is the fourth Witness in a five-part series that explores Multiply’s Foundational Values.
Foundational Values
Many years ago, when our four daughters were experiencing the wonderful and tumultuous years of public elementary and high school, they noticed something about our family that was not common among their friends. As we sat together for dinner one night, one of them commented how their friends seldom ate meals together with their families - the others quickly agreed how they noticed the same thing. What we were doing was unusual in their circle of friends, yet we took it for granted. It was a ‘given’ for us that we would eat most evening meals together as a family, sharing ‘highs and lows’, tears and laughter, reflecting on the day we had each just come through. And in hindsight, it shaped our family more than we realized.
Foundational values are like that. You don’t often think about them, even take them for granted. But they shape you. They become part of the foundation that you start to build your life on, giving you footing and support in a world of shifting sand.
Over this past year in the Witness, we have been exploring our five foundational values and, in this edition, we want to highlight our fourth value:
> Joining the Triune God in Biblical Vision of Mission
> Depending on God in Prayer
> Obeying the Great Commandment & Commission
> Living as the Global MB Family
> Serving Holistically & Contextually
Throughout the following pages, you will read stories from your brothers and sisters around the world, living and loving as family. Our story from the Ukraine shares how churches there live as family by offering practical help to victims of war. In Mexico, pastors and their families are gathering together to strengthen relationships and build intimacy. In Southeast Asia, persecuted Christians have found solidarity and belonging within the International Community of Mennonite Brethren (ICOMB). God is clearly at work throughout our vibrant and growing Global MB family and we have much to celebrate.
Remember and Reimagine
2025 marks 500 years of the Anabaptist movement that demonstrated a way of following Jesus in radical discipleship that is foundational to our
story. This year, various celebrations will be held in honor of this significant marker, including a celebration on May 29th, in Zurich Switzerland, to where we can trace the origins of this movement. It is a year to remember and to reimagine this story for how we follow Jesus today.
Key elements that marked this movement from early days onward were the high regard for the authority of Scripture alone and the understanding that believers grew in relationship to Jesus purely by faith. Believer’s baptism replaced infant baptism and began a significant shift of separating church from state. This was seen as an act of treason against the state and the church, leading to many of these early radicals being martyred for their newfound convictions of faith. During the 16th century, the Mennonites and other Anabaptists were relentlessly persecuted, and learned to do ‘theology on the run’ out of necessity.
The early Anabaptists wanted to renew the church and today, the North American church has the opportunity to reclaim this Anabaptist reality again, by learning from people groups within the Global MB family who are rediscovering and living out this persecution story in modern times. These partnerships help us remember what it means to do theology on the run, proclaim the Gospel in the midst of suffering, and reimagine discipleship that is rooted in radical obedience to Jesus and to each other in community. Our North American comfort and wealth continually draw us away from this calling. Our Global MB family can help us, and we need more help than we realize.
The Context of Family
These values of both renewal and mission continue to be held to this day and are lived out in the context of family. As Goheen and Mullins state in their book, The Symphony
of Mission, “God does not carry out his mission by commissioning a roster of individual contractors; instead, he adopts a family and incorporates them into his family business of blessing the world” (p 40 of 201). This value of family was central for the people of Israel and continues to be a unique gift that people see and are drawn to as we learn to live as the MB family.
Jesus challenged our definition of family in Luke 14:25-33, where he talks about the high cost of discipleship. Our understanding of family needs to broaden and deepen to include those who have been abandoned by their families once they chose to follow Jesus, as we see in places like the Middle East and North Africa. Places where they are living into the radical and costly discipleship of the early Anabaptist movement and where we can re-enter the story together with them.
Room at the Table
This is an opportunity that I don’t want to miss. Just as my daughters recognized the significance of our family time around our dinner table, I too recognize the great value of gathering and communing with our global brothers and sisters as we join in God’s mission story together. We have so much to share with and learn from each other when we gather around the table. As God’s family grows in scope and diversity, there is always room for one more.
Bruce Enns General Director
One More Tree
UKRAINE | By Nikki White
As a plant, it was a pretty lame specimen. Limp, anemic leaves shuddered and dropped off as soon as she touched them, littering the bone-dry soil at the bottom of a cheap plastic pot. No wonder it was on sale.
The clerk looked puzzled, ringing up the purchase. “You collect dead plants?” she asked.
“Not exactly,” Anya replied. “I save them.”
Gardening is more than a hobby for Anya Oliferovski. Like the other therapies she and her husband Maxym offer to refugees at New Hope Center in Zaporizhzhia —art therapy, group therapy, professional counseling, family retreats in the Carpathian Mountains—gardening has become an intentional affirmation of life for those on the verge of giving up.
“We offer them a place to belong, a place to meet Jesus, a place to be loved,” Maxym says. “We offer them family.”
For victims of war, the Mennonite Brethren value of family provides a support which is relational, spiritual, and utterly practical. Even while physical needs are being met, Maxym and Anya are also constantly challenged to find new and creative ways to bring healing to the damaged soul.
For victims of war, the Mennonite Brethren offer a family that is relational, spiritual, and utterly practical.
“Children and adults are all experiencing the effects of three years of stress, anxiety and depression,” Maxym shares. “I do not need my degree in psychology to see this! Three years of sleep deprivation—from missile attacks timed to occur in the middle of the night—have left us fragile.”
Much like the leaves of the unwanted plants that Anya insists upon rescuing.
When drone and missile attacks made it unsafe for them to stay at their apartment in the city, Maxym and his family decided to move to a small cottage they owned on the outskirts of Zaporizhzhia. The relative safety helped to settle their frayed nerves, and when Anya began to deliberately cultivate a garden, her husband was at first bemused.
“It was a mess, a lot of hard work,” he remembers. “The land was full of old trees, old plants, old weeds. Cleaning it up took a lot of time!”
Then came a day when, instead of pulling up weeds, Anya began to plant small trees, bushes and flowers—lots and lots of flowers. Soon she was frequenting stores to buy cast-off plants, and then friends began to bring her their withered herbs and shrubs to replant. As Maxym watched his wife, he realized that this was an apt metaphor for what New Hope and the churches in Ukraine were trying to do for their countrymen.
“We take in withered families, and help bring them back to life.”
The years spent in developing programs for youth and families in crisis barely prepared Maxym and Anya for the influx of displaced and traumatized people that began flooding into their facility when Russia invaded their country three years ago. Since then, staff have devoted themselves to sheltering, healing and relocating the displaced. Partnering with Multiply, MCC and MB churches in Germany and Lithuania has enabled them to provide short-term shelter for more than 1,000 displaced and needy people, and emergency supply kits for countless more.
Space and resources at New Hope are limited, but everyone that comes is welcomed with the warmth and undeterred, defiant optimism that is characteristic of Ukrainian people.
“It is like Anya’s garden,” Maxym reflects. “Each time she comes home with another dying plant or shrub or fruit tree, I say, ‘Anya! Another one? The garden is already crowded!’ And she tells me, ‘Oh, just one more. I’ll find room.’”
For Anya (on left), gardening has become an intentional affirmation of life for those on the verge of giving up.
Unsurprisingly, people who experience this sense of belonging are reluctant to leave. “We noticed this even before the war,” Maxym remembers. “That is why we began a Bible study group. The next thing we knew, we had planted a church!” Their plant is named, aptly, God’s Family Church. It is a place where broken families can heal.
One such family is Julya and her son Vladislav. They both suffered from the trauma of being forced to flee their home town to seek shelter in Zaporizhzhia. Displacement leaves a mark that isolates the refugee, making it difficult to enter into community with others.
“My child and I just stayed in the shelter,” Julya remembers. “We didn’t go out anywhere, we were too afraid. Vladislav was so lonely, struggling to find a common language with others. For a child, it is so difficult to move from their own home, from the familiar environment they were used to. He had to learn everything new.”
At New Hope Center, their hearts were tended to, much as Anya lovingly tends to the wounded plants in her garden. “We were at the bottom; everything was chaos,” Julya recalls, “and they helped us to sort through our pain and put everything on the shelves of our minds, where we could cope with it all. My son came alive again!”
Today, Maxym and Anya are working to finish renovating a second small cottage on their land to serve as an accessible retreat center, where intensive ministry and healing can take place for those struggling with trauma.
“We call it the Wings Renewal Center,” Anya says. “Already we use it for small gatherings and church picnics and baptisms. One day, the war will be over. There will be many veterans and widows and orphans; people will need a place like this.”
Glancing out the window, Maxym grew pensive. “Maybe we are crazy,” he says. “Who starts a garden during war? Some of these seedlings will take five or ten years before they mature. Will we even live to see it?”
Then he shrugs, pragmatic once again. “Maybe so, maybe not,” he says. “In the meantime, we will plant one more tree.”
The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.
Help Ukrainian children and families recover from the trauma of war, build healing friendships, and envision a future with Jesus at the center. multiply.net/new-hope-center
Family to Family Evangelism Among Muslims
EUROPE & CENTRAL ASIA
| By George Dumitrascu
In 2023, our family was ministering with another mission agency in Northern Iraq. We met a couple named Ali and Nouria, and their son. Ali, an engineer, and Nouria, a pharmacist, lived in the same building where we lived, and we were eager to get to know them. At first, they kept their distance. We knew that they were watching us, though, observing our family dynamic.
One day, after months of silence, Ali finally approached me, saying, “We have been watching your family. You are not like other foreigners. Why?”
“Perhaps because we are Christians,” I said. “We Christians have many of the same values as you do in Islam. I would love for us to share more with each other about this.” And so began a great and significant friendship.
Over time, we realized that a consideration of family was key to Ali and Nouria’s understanding of the Gospel. The Western tendency to evangelize individuals made little sense in this context. We asked ourselves, What needs to change?
“We have been watching your family,” Ali told us. “You are not like other foreigners. Why?”
Today, around two billion people identify as Muslims, not only in traditionally Islamic regions but also in Western societies. They are our neighbors, our classmates, our co-workers, and they need Jesus. While there are many core differences between us, there are also many areas of commonality. One of those is that of family. Evangelizing among Muslims requires an understanding of their value of family. It is not so different from our own.
Muslim societies center on family gatherings in the home and at the mosque. The family is the primary institution where children learn Islamic beliefs and social norms, such as a traditional view of male and female roles in marriage, and family roles and responsibilities. In fact, about a third of the legal injunctions in the Quran deal with family matters, shaping generational behaviors and reinforcing Islamic social structure. Family matters very much to Muslims, just as it does to Christians.
We realized that a consideration of family was key to Ali and Nouria’s understanding of the Gospel.
There are, however, significant differences in how we define and experience family. While Western cultures prioritize individualism and the nuclear family unit, Muslims prioritize the extended family, spanning multiple generations, with elderly family members holding significant authority and influence. These extended households reinforce Islamic traditions and religious practices; following the teachings of the hadith, religious duties are prescribed for all family members from an early age, ensuring that each generation passes on their faith and cultural values. In short, family is the center of both social and religious continuity.
Prioritizing the entire family greatly aided us in our desire to share Jesus with Ali and Nouria, as we focused on showing how the power of the Gospel helped us to live out this foundational value. Our relationship became family to family, versus individual to individual. As we grew closer, we were also able to talk about our differences. At one point, they remarked on how Islamic marriage is traditionally more contractual, while Christian marriage seemed based on a covenant of love. I explained how Christians commit to demonstrating a Christlike love for one another, choosing to extend mercy, grace, and unmerited forgiveness. Explaining this perspective presented a challenge to their Islamic norms. It also offered a compelling alternative.
Some of the differences Ali and I discussed were also reflective of Mennonite Brethren distinctives. Our MB value of community, for example, seen in small kinship groups and house churches, aligns strongly with their Muslim value of having a safe, familial environment for spiritual growth. Also, in their culture, which prizes the extended family, our MB hospitality was very appealing, offering a diverse extended family experience; one that is radically inclusive.
Some of the differences Ali and I discussed were also reflective of Mennonite Brethren distinctives... offering a diverse extended family experience; one that is radically inclusive.
When Ali and Nouria became Christians, they were living proof of the significant role of family in communicating the Gospel’s powerful message. We learned from this experience that a modeling of love, a willingness to embody Christ’s presence, and a humble commitment to embrace cultural contextualization can profoundly impact Muslim societies, family to family.
George and Nicoleta are discipling Central Asian students at the LCC Christian university in Lithuania. Their passion is to use their roles in Bible teaching and counseling to help young people coming out of a postcommunist culture.
PRAY
Pray for LCC students who have been traumatized by war and loss to become vibrant followers of Jesus Christ.
Celebrating the Global MB Family
Lavern Pratt in Panama: “Most missionaries experience loneliness, and friendship is to be treasured. The bond I experience with fellow believers here is stronger— eating together, laughing, crying, praying, swapping recipes, life stories, heartaches and dreams. We are family, and more than family; I actually have withdrawal symptoms if I go more than a day without spending time with them!”
Travis Jost in Burundi: “The global MB family expands our worldview. Part of how we experience God is by being in community with one another, and that experience differs according to culture, location, education, experiences, families, and so much more. If we never ventured outside of our own nuclear family culture, we would have a one- sided view of God. Hallelujah for the family and all that we can learn from it and through it!”
Alex Suderman in Germany: “The MB value of family is critical for the steps we are taking to plant a new church. For example, although we are being sent out by PräsentKirche and remain in close relationship with them, we are also building partnerships with the AMBD conference and various churches here. This extended MB family ensures the support needed for mutual fruitfulness.”
Maxym Oliferovski in Ukraine: “Space and resources at our New Hope Center are limited, but each refugee family that comes is welcomed. We offer them a place to be together, a place to be heard, a place to heal and meet Jesus, a place to be loved. We offer them family.”
Cecil Ramos in Thailand: “As a Mexican-American raised by a single-mom in a poor part of California, I saw how Hispanic families come together for survival. In the same way, I see the MB family here in SE Asia coming together, helping shape the ways in which we contextualize the multifaceted nature of Jesus and his kingdom in this shame/honor context. We need our global family not only to survive, but to thrive!”
Sean Hildebrand in Uganda: “We have only been here a few months, but we have already felt a significant welcome into the church family here, which is part of one of the newest MB conferences to join ICOMB. I have actually heard it spoken from the front pulpit that we are their brothers and sisters, and should be treated as such! The honor that is undeservingly bestowed upon us testifies to their understanding of the broader family of Christ.”
Even Your Children
MEXICO | By Nikki White
“We have had many assemblies over the years,” said Carlos Ortega, president of the MB conference of Mexico (ICPM), “including pastoral retreats. Yet some of us were still having a hard time even remembering each others’ names.”
Over his seven-year tenure as president, Ortega has made many changes to the structure and health of the conference. Much of his focus has been in addressing the decades-long disarray of the legal status and financial procedures of ICPM. It was a monumental task. The task ahead, however, seemed in some ways even more daunting. Their nine churches had been together since the 1970s.
History has not led to intimacy.
“We don’t really know each other,” Carlos confessed. “Good administration is one thing; good relationship is another!”
In considering how to build trust between the pastors, Ortega and the ICPM board met to discuss a planned pastoral retreat, held annually at the Matthew Training Center in Guadalajara. At that meeting, Multiply global worker Israel Chavez, current vice president of ICPM, spoke up.
“Can we really know each other well, or be known, without telling our stories?” he asked. “And those stories include our spouses, and our children. Let’s make this a retreat for entire families.”
“It is the family that allows, strengthens, and even motivates a pastor to serve. Pastors can do nothing without that
support.”
Chavez pointed out that most of their gatherings were either entirely businessrelated, or else training events. “There is never time in our agenda for relationship,” he said. “What are we communicating to our pastors? From my perspective as a pastor, we are not honoring the role that the family plays in ministry. It is my family that allows, strengthens and motivates me to serve. Pastors can do nothing without that support.”
With this in mind, the retreat for February 2025 was rebranded as a pastoral family retreat. Invitations were sent out to the various churches. Ironically, at first no one took it seriously. Even our children? they asked, incredulous. Even your children, they were assured.
At the retreat, agenda-free time was allocated for relationship building, as well as intentional times where participants were invited to share their personal stories. “It was beautiful to watch this community become more than just names and faces,” commented Chavez. “These are real lives that have been through all the ups and downs that life can
Mexican MB Pastors and their families gathered at the Matthew Training Center in Guadalajara
throw at them. We learned things about each other that we had never heard before.”
One of the stories was that of Gilmar and his wife Esther, who pastor a church in Tijuana. Together, they set the bar for trust and vulnerability as they shared how they had both come to Christ from a background of crime, drugs, homelessness and despair.
“We
have not been caring well for our pastors,” Ortega acknowledged, “and Latino men don’t ask for help! We have not known each other’s struggles and needs. Now, we do.”
“Gilmar was actually a sex trafficker,” Chavez said. “We were shocked to hear this. We had no idea! God saved him in a miraculous way and called him out of that life. One day he was on a street handing out tracts, and gave one to a prostitute. He did not know, at the time, that this woman was on the verge of suicide. That woman was Esther!”
Eventually they fell in love, married, and went into full-time ministry together. “It’s an incredible story of redemption and grace!” Chavez said, “and it was so impactful for us to get to know who they really are.”
The pastoral family retreat allowed for ample time for these kinds of relational encounters. Space was then made for envisioning the growth of ICPM. “There were no rules, no restrictions, and nothing was impossible,” Chavez remembered. “Together, we shared our dreams for the future. Afterward, when we finally got around to our official business meeting, we were all so much more united. Everything went so much better and easier.”
As the retreat drew to a close, there was strong consensus that this newfound sense of closeness should not be taken for granted. A decision was made to create accountability groups: three family units that would meet online regularly for relationship and personal prayer. A pastoral council was also appointed to better care for church and ministry leaders.
“We have not been caring well for our pastors,” Ortega acknowledged, “and Latino men don’t ask for help! We have not known each other’s struggles and needs. Now, we do.”
GO
The Matthew Training Centre team disciples and trains North American and Latino young adults for global mission through their HADIME progam. For more information on their mission training program please go to multiply.net/mtc
The Nurturer
UGANDA | By Danae Schmidt
“When we hear you all talk,” I lamented to our friends, through a translator, “it is just a wall of noise.”
This last month, we realized we had to jump into some dedicated language learning! It has been hard to be outside the circle. We want so much to participate in conversations, but we can’t. We often just don’t understand what we hear. We knew we needed help.
“We need someone who will intentionally open up the circle to us, teach us, and help us to engage,” I explained. “And it will need to be someone with grace, patience and intentionality! We need a nurturer.”
In answer to our need, God gave us Angel.
I shared a picture with our group of six language learners: a drawing of a group of six stick people standing around in a circle—on the outside, looking in.
I have known Angel since I first started getting involved with the Vocation Chapel, over two years ago. She was a new student, and shy, but she also knew the most English and so was asked to translate for me anytime I shared. Angel also was a faithful member of my Discovery Bible Studies; a quiet leader among her peers. Over time, we developed a rhythm and a deep appreciation for each other.
When I asked Angel if she would be interested in helping us learn Luganda, I knew she would be a good nurturer, but I had no idea just how perfectly she would fit this role.
After she agreed, I spent some time training her in the natural language learning method, modeling how to lead the lessons and games. As I expected, she caught on very quickly. On the first day of our lessons, I shared a picture with our group of six language learners: a drawing of a group of six stick people standing around in a circle—on the outside, looking in. Then I pointed to a stick person in the center of the circle.
“That’s Angel’s role,” I told them. “She is helping us to belong, to take our places inside the circle.”
Moved by this, Angel later shared her memory of meeting me. “In the dorm,” she told us, “all of us girls would be speaking Luganda. I felt so bad for Danae. I wanted her to understand. I’m really excited to teach you all Luganda, so you can be a part of our group!”
Praise God for Angel, bringing us into her world of Luganda with such grace and enthusiasm.
GIVE:
Danae and Kyle Schmidt partner with Robert and Esther Mponye, founders of King’s Kid School. Together, they are working to bring quality education and essential vocational training to those who would otherwise be overlooked. multiply.net/project/uganda
A Longing for Belonging
SOUTHEAST ASIA
| By Bob Davis
The MB value of family has been a key factor in attracting global churches into our extended family, called ICOMB (International Community of Mennonite Brethren). And this should come as no surprise.
When I read the creation story, I see God’s value of family. He fills the whole earth, sea and sky with an abundance of life, but then he tasks the multiplication of humans to just one couple. God could have created a multitude of people; instead, Adam and Eve are told to fill the earth by becoming the first family. Multiplication through family is God’s idea.
Family can help give us an identity that is bigger than our own individual identity; people need this, and churches need this, too. ICOMB was created to connect global churches that might otherwise feel isolated. Without a sense of belonging, churches, like people, can struggle with fear, loneliness and a sense of inadequacy.
“You would not last long in my country,” Boon once told me. “Here, you need family just to survive.”
I know this from personal experience. As a new believer in my early twenties, another man in church called me “brother.” This had an incredible impact on me at the time. I remember thinking, These are not just words for him. This is a reality. These are people who want to know me, who think about me, who will care for me and help me in a crisis. This is family.
The longing for belonging creates a desire to be present with one another. There is no substitute for proximity. I have especially noticed this among the Khmu churches in Southeast Asia and with my friend, Boon, who is in fulltime ministry there. He and other believers in his country face constant opposition and persecution. Each time we visit them, there is an outpouring of appreciation—even amazement—that we care enough to be with them in their suffering.
I think their “amazement” is due to our reputation in the West of often valuing productivity and function over relationship. Ours is a history of pioneers and individualists. “You would not last long in my country,” Boon once told me. “Here, you need family just to survive.”
When Boon attended his first ICOMB global summit, he immediately gravitated towards delegates from other regions facing religious persecution. To him, they were like long-lost brothers. They shared an instant sense of solidarity. In the same way, when he heard the history of the Mennonite Brethren persecution, he knew he had found a place to belong.
“As a minority people group,” he explained to me, “we Khmu have also been oppressed by those in power. Even more so, as followers of Jesus! This is an Animist culture under a Communist regime; there is no place for Christians here.”
Boon went on to describe how the homes of Khmu believers are burned down, or torn apart board by board. They are expelled from their villages, and disowned by their extended families. That kind of rejection, in a shamehonor culture, is crushing.
For me, it is an honor to be a part of Boon’s life and ministry. He is the same age as my oldest son, but mostly we relate as if we were brothers. Although sometimes— like when he calls me to complain about his kids—he calls me “Grampa”! We have been in each other’s houses many times, laughing and crying together. Yet even when we are thousands of miles apart, there is a strong bond that holds us together. I think this is the kind of oneness that God wants us to have in Christ.
LEARN
Learn more about our global MB family from the International Community of Mennonite Brethren at icomb.org.
Central to the Plan
USA | By Christopher Lane
“Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family: Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.”
~ Jane Howard, American Journalist
Perhaps you’ve heard the story of the young boy who asked his father, “Where did people come from?” His father explained that God had created Adam and Eve, and they had given birth to babies, who had babies, who had babies... Unsatisfied with this answer, the boy went to his mother and posed the same question. She replied with an account of evolution involving monkeys that eventually became people. The boy then ran back to his father and accused him of lying.
“No, son,” the father explained, “Your mother was talking about her side of the family.”
As followers of Christ, we believe what the Bible says about the origin of life: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” That bold declaration of truth sets the stage for what follows: the grand story of God’s glorious intention for mankind. Central to that plan is the family.
After creating the heavens and the earth, the Genesis account tells us, “God saw all that he made, and it was very good.” Yet in the next passage, he says, “It is not good for man to be alone.” To remedy this situation, God’s invented marriage, and with it, the family.
In a fascinating parallel, God calls the Church to be a family – his family. While it’s up to each individual to respond to God’s invitation to eternal life in Jesus Christ, the journey of faith is to be one of relationships. God designed us to live and serve together in community.
“I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.” ~ 1 Corinthians 1:10
Paul spends much of the New Testament teaching, correcting, and encouraging the Church to avoid sin and embrace the practice of holy, selfless, Spirit-led unity.
In his first letter to the church in Corinth, he writes: “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought” (1 Corinthians 1:10).
Like any family, the family of God is vulnerable to bickering, competition, and conflict. These can give rise to serious dissentions and alienation, effectively neutralizing our participation in the mission of God. Instead of making the Good News of Jesus known through love and compassion, the Church is prone to dissolve into a brood of angry, resentful, isolated “brothers and sisters.”
“It is not good for man to be alone.”
To remedy this situation, God invented marriage, and with it, the family.
As Paul explains, that is not what God had in mind or expects from his family. “Strive for full restoration,” he tells the Corinthians. “Encourage one another, be of one mind, live in peace” (2 Corinthians 13:11).
The Great Commission and Great Commandment are not intended to be solo activities. As the big-C Church, we are expected to join together with God in His mission.
No matter how we refer to ourselves – Mennonite Brethren, members of a local congregation, part of the Body of Christ, brothers and sisters in God’s family –we need each other. Our lives, actions, and efforts are inexorably intertwined. God desires to weave us into a marvelous tapestry that declares our identity to the world: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples,” Jesus said, “if you love one another” (John 13:35).
As the Pointer Sisters once famously put it: We are family. In this case, God’s family. We can resist and fight against our brothers and sisters in Christ, or we can embrace them. The former grieves God’s heart. The latter pleases him. The choice is up to us.
PRAY
“Pray for God to help you be more forgiving, to display compassion, and to extend grace to others as we work together to make Jesus known in the world. “
Christopher Lane has been appointed Multiply’s U.S. missions advocate. Multiply is the mission agency of the Mennonite Brethren churches of North America.
In this newly created role, Lane will be a voice for Multiply’s global missionaries, communicating what God is doing in the world. He will also engage partners in the U.S., assisting them in discovering opportunities to join God in his mission to reach the lost with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Lane brings decades of experience writing and advocating for the fulfillment of the Great Commission. He has served with a number of Christian organizations and most recently was the communications manager for a multinational corporation.
“Christopher’s heart for missions and his passion to reach the unreached in our world make him a great addition to the Multiply team,” says Bruce Enns, general director of Multiply. “His unique skills and enthusiasm for facilitating God’s work will support our sending of disciples who make disciples. He will also function as a communication liaison to USMB, helping to ensure that we are aligned and moving forward together, that the world may know Jesus.”
