How Can the Anabaptist Vision Flourish? — Chester Weaver — Ep. 204

In this episode, we discuss what the Anabaptists have learned and not learned in the last 500 years of our story.

So I'm here with Chester Weaver, and Chester is a board member of Anabaptist Perspectives and has also been a school teacher for many years, and really has a vision for what is it that the Anabaptist way or worldview has to offer our people and the Church and the world as a whole.

Uh, and this episode, we want to tackle some of the things that we have learned from that story, the Anabaptist story, how that applies to us, what are maybe some things that that the Anabaptists haven't done so well, and and how can we continue to bring these teachings to each new generation. Uh, this is, after all, 500 years that the Anabaptists have have been in existence, and and what is it that that we have to offer. So, uh, thanks for coming on again, Chester, and, uh, I look forward to, uh, to hearing what you have to share on this topic. First of all, we are human beings, imperfect human beings, but we've tried, and I credit our people for trying.

Second of all, we did not just think about these things; we actually tried. Sometimes people like to theorize and then are content with the theory, but we have actually tried these things. And so I would like to go straight to the Scriptures for the first, uh, slide here, the three Ds. The Scripture says that Demas loved this present world and forsook Christ. That's one way: try and then quit.

The second is Diotrophe's love preeminence among his peers. He was using the system to advance himself. That's in the Scripture as well. But Demetrius loved faithfulness to Christ. But it doesn't actually say this, but we assume that his self-loss included suffering.

And so these three are kind of a generalized picture from the early Church, and we need to move more closely in our story now. Okay, so I understand these are the reasons that we still exist as a people.

And we, in our story, in our tradition, have experienced huge losses in proportion to the loss of these principles. There's 12 of them here. And so, uh, it would be interesting to pause and talk about these, and you may stop me if you want to. I'm just going to mention some of these. We've, uh, talked about some of these in other episodes, and so if if you don't have anything to stop me on, I'll just keep going.

Okay, so number one, the high view of the Scriptures.

And along with that, number three, Christocentric position. The essence of the Anabaptist vision is that Jesus Christ, through the Holy Scriptures, is the ultimate authority. Okay, number two, right with that, is the emphasis on the New Testament. The Anabaptists do not understand a flat Bible.

The New Testament supersedes the Old. It has been said, "But I say unto you." So the standard is higher in the New Testament, and the New Testament is our rule, faith, and practice. And as Anabaptists, we have started with the Gospels and understood that in terms of the Epistles.

Whereas some of our Protestant friends start with the Epistles and interpret that through the Gospels.

Like using the Epistles to to use that as your premises. Ah, and then that's the lens through which you read the Gospels. The Anabaptists would look at it the other way. That's right. And the reason for that is because the Anabaptist view is more centered around Jesus. Christocentric. Yeah. Right. So that's why you start with the Gospels. Right. That's the cornerstone. And actually, of the four Gospels, the Anabaptists were especially focused on Matthew.

All four are there, but I think it's because the Sermon on the Mount was there. It's like the Sermon on the Mount is probably like the constitution about how we operate, and that's in the book of Matthew. Okay, number four is the necessity of a believer's church, not a territorial church, not church as a resource group, but a believer's functioning interdependent group.

Number five is active discipleship, where every person listens to Christ, heeds the Holy Spirit, and works out his salvation as he is faithful to Christ. Active discipleship. Number six is egalitarian church membership. We don't have a clergy and a laity. We are together. Some people, some men have leadership roles, but that does not make them higher than anybody else in the Church.

Nobody is below. We're all together equal. Number seven, community experience, where we find our way together. We have brothers' meetings where we have issues, and the the brethren wrestle with these issues in light of what Jesus Christ, the Holy Scriptures, have to say.

That's a very good experience.

I think young men need to start going to brothers' meetings, say, by age 16, just to watch how this is played out. And of course, the men who are being watched need to provide some good examples of how this works out.

Number eight, separation from the world, which indicates the two kingdom concept, the people in Christ's kingdom just live, function, think differently from the people in the other kingdom. Just a given. And then number nine, right along with that, is the Church is a visible counterculture. This is what the world would look like if all people were disciples of Jesus Christ living in community. We are showcased to the world.

Number ten, commitment to peacefulness. We are de-escalators. We don't escalate situations. We don't produce conflict. We don't argue. Galassenheit says that we give in rather than argue. There's nobody gains. Nobody wins an argument. In fact, the Anabaptists would have said even a vote, a majority vote, is not right. We need to move forward by consensus, not by voting, because in voting, somebody loses.

Somebody wins and somebody loses. Now, I'm not talking about offices and that kind of thing. I'm talking about major issues.

Active servanthood for number 11. I get a chance to serve you. Thank you for allowing me to serve you. This is what I'm born for. This is my calling to serve, not to be served. The Son of Man came to serve into the world. Number 12, each congregation is missional, reaching out. Whenever a church does not reach out and just functions within itself, it's all defensive. It's all just self-focused, navel-gazing.

It's on the way out. So some people in Anabaptist churches or those interested in joining Anabaptist churches have maybe heard of these ideals and things that we say we stand for, but then when they actually do join some of our churches, sometimes it doesn't hold up to this standard, and then they get disillusioned, say, "Wait a second, I thought this was something we agreed on." What would you say to people that have found themselves in that situation? And what is it that we're missing here? Okay, thank you for raising the question. It's a very important question.

I wish I could say the Anabaptist people for 500 years have lived up to this, but we have not. And so anybody who's looking at us from the outside just has to understand coming in, we're not as perfect as we should be. But the people who are coming, I mean, who are offering a refuge in Anabaptist Church need to be very humble about these facts and just admit it. We're not up where we should be. Yeah, we know. The worst thing that can happen is if we tell those people, "Shut up," and be defensive about where we are.

That's the best way to turn them aside. And I feel that we have some accountability to those people. If people are looking to us as a showcase, then we better be the showcase, and we may not be a destroyer where we defend our failures and hurt people instead of help them. I don't know what the judgment is for that kind of stuff. I don't want to find out.

This is often brushed off or denied. Individuals or churches who have lost sight of their history, that's their story. Now, not their theology. They have lost sight of their story, are experiencing amputation from their historical trunk. They must die.

Their only hope for life is reattachment.

That sounds like a strong statement.

But if we're going to be, and I'm talking on Anabaptist perspectives, and so if we are Anabaptist people who have lost sight of our story and we are severed from our trunk, then we must die. This is not necessarily true for other traditions.

This is true for our own people, our own tradition. Okay, so it is the duty of the young among us to ask questions. And then we need to ask questions of God. This is the third stage in Christian growth. We need to ask questions. Ask God those questions. We ask questions to our parents. We ask questions of our teachers. We ask questions of history. There's all kinds of books around to answer those questions, but we need to ask those questions. As in like searching and probing questions and trying to understand. Because I think some of the challenge when people ask questions is they can feel like, "Oh, they're wanting to throw away these things and they don't believe them anymore, and that's why they're having all these questions."

Is there some way to ensure that it's coming from the right motive or, you know, or to make sure there's not misunderstandings there? Let me pursue this. I think we'll answer that question if we pursue this. It says, "What antagonizes the young against their own tradition?"

Well, the first thing is when the tradition carries an air of superiority. In other words, don't ask the questions. Just just just do it. You know, please just do it. Mm-hmm. When tradition defenders try to attach a chapter and verse to details, which is fundamentalism, it's not about proof texting.

It's about living into the truth that's what's there. And if we're down into splitting hairs and truth texting, that antagonizes because many times proof texting does not really solve the problem anyway. Number three is the don't question it mentality. It's back to this number two, stage two. Just just do it. Don't question it.

And that's not helpful at all. The fourth one, hypocrisy and integrity failure of the tradition defenders. That really antagonizes the young against their own tradition. And I don't want to ever be guilty of that.

Okay, so the fifth one is undercover parental disrespect. Now, a young person is often antagonized against his own tradition because he saw his own parents not being brave enough to confront it, but just to be antagonized, disloyal, didn't get it. So why would the son or daughter get it? If the parents are already disrespecting it, what kind of loyalty does that generate?

Okay, so the next one is the absence of historical background. And I confess this as a sin of our people that we have failed to even know the story and retell through generations our own story. Maybe I'm overstating it, but I do know that God feels very strongly about this. And if you look at the book of Genesis, it's entirely story, history.

And the book of Exodus, quite a bit of it is story. Some of it's law. The book of Numbers is mostly story. The book of Leviticus and Deuteronomy aren't much story. But Ruth, Judges, Joshua, First and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings, First and Second Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, all story. Mm-hmm. A little bit of story in Job, but Psalms, Proverbs are not. Uh, most of the prophets are not story. But when you come to the New Testament, the Gospels are quite a bit story. And the book of Acts, again, is all story.

Okay, then the new the epistles are there. So why does God use so much story? Okay, if he does, it's like human nature. If I tell Reagan, he's supposed to do something, his natural first response is, "No, why do I have to do that?"

But when you have story, it disarms people. Like, that's why God came to David with Nathan, told him a story. Nathan was aroused because of the injustice he saw in the story. And so to just simply preach at people, to tell them what they're supposed to do is not the most effective.

And if God has demonstrated to this, that's why I feel so strongly that it's almost maybe saying it's a sin is too strong. But it's not God's method. As in you've been given this piece to share, and if you don't share it, in this case, the story, then you will be throwing away what God gave us. That's right. That's how I feel. That's how I feel. And maybe that's what each and every one of us are doing if we have the opportunity to know that story, but we don't pass it on or share the lessons maybe that the churches have learned. Let's break this down a little bit. First of all, every family should know their own story.

For example, you're a Shrock. You should know something about the Shrocks. What's your mother's maiden name? Hostetler. Okay, so you should also know something about the Hostetlers. That's your family story. The heritage your family brings together in your person. You need to know something about that. It gives you identity, and it gives your family, your children, an identity as well. This is important stuff. So beyond that, that's your family story. Okay, so you're in a tradition, a religious tradition. You need to know something about that story because your religious tradition also gives you identity.

And if you don't know your own story, then you don't have your own identity fully, fully formed. Okay, so then we live in a nation. We need to know something about the nation's story. And we live in the world. We ought to know something about the world's story.

So maybe the failure is not so much that we aren't telling the story, but it's that we don't appreciate how important, yeah, our story is, how important history is. I think you're right on that. I hadn't thought about it quite that way.

Yeah, because I think that's something that can be hard is trying to articulate for our for young people. Why does it matter? Yeah, like why does church history matter? Yeah, you know, and it's like, oh, you know, that's. So maybe I shouldn't say it's a sin right off because that doesn't invite people searching. It's like I should say all these other things without saying it's a sin. To invite people in. Sure. And when I think, yeah, it's a good thing to clarify, but it's also, it is important though that we realize how key our history is. Okay, so I know that since people don't know the story, they're making mistakes.

And so it's like if I know that I could know and don't, the old colony people of Mexico literally say that, "Don't know, so you're not accountable." Ignorance is bliss.

Okay, simple, in my opinion. The takeaways here are, um, history really matters and is critical to our continuing into the future and that, um, we should take the time to learn these things and pass these things on. That's right. Because if we don't, we will be missing out on an incredible amount of lessons and things that we can learn for ourselves and help us help our churches to be stronger in the end. Exactly. Yeah, that's good.

And I will say that some of our, like Harold Bender and some of those people have done their job, but many others have failed to use what they provided to tell our story. And if people would really like to get started with our story, I'm going to mention several sources. One of them is the MEA series. It's Mennonite Experience in America. Four books that are written, they're easy to read, they have pictures. If you want to know what happened on this side of the Atlantic, those four are top.

Okay, if we want a larger picture, there's two books I would recommend. Smith's Story of the Mennonites, fifth edition, tells the story of all three branches, Hutterites, the Swiss, and the Dutch. Those are the three branches.

And it tells that story from the very beginnings around 1500 and traces it up to almost the present day of all three branches. The second book who does it very similar to that is Introduction to Mennonite History by Cornelius Dick.

It's a third edition and it does the very same thing. It's very readable and it traces all three branches from the beginning almost to the present. That one actually has some pictures in it. So those three sources are excellent.

And then if you want all kinds of more detailed books, there's all kinds. I have no idea how many books there are. But many times our people just have not read anything. And that's where the sin is.

Okay, so another thing that antagonizes young people against their own tradition is their own personal prejudice. They don't want it. You know, the new stuff is what is attractive, not the old stuff. Some of the Mennonites that lived in Prussia, they got tired of galassenheit and meekness. They liked martial music, the military, smart uniforms, you know, the excitement of the military. And so they're ready to move away from what they had into the new militaristic environment of Prussia.

Well, why? Well, it's because of their personal prejudice. They didn't see value in the past. They just want it. Don't ask me why. Don't confuse me with the facts. I just want that.

And the last one, the young people sometimes are antagonized against their own tradition because their own tradition competes with scriptural authority. I wish that would not be true, but sometimes it is. So maybe the question is, what do I mean by that? Well, we have 500 years practiced at this. And sometimes we get entrenched in our ways and we say, this is the way we do it.

But this young person reads what the scripture says over here. And it's not what we're doing. So what do you do about that? One of the things that has troubled young people in our tradition is that the book of Acts is descriptive of what the early church did. The epistles are prescriptive on how we ought to do church. And church history is illustrative of how the church has done it for years.

Many young people in their zeal want the church to practice the book of Acts and make that prescriptive. Now, the reason they do that is because it sounds so wonderful. It sounds like the idea of what we ought to do. And it's in the scripture.

But they don't understand. Again, it's a kind of fundamentalist way of looking at it. They just don't understand that Acts is descriptive. If we're going to make it prescriptive, then I guess we ought to run on ships and have shipwrecks too. And so when the Holy Spirit was poured out on the day of Pentecost, that's just what happens to the Gentiles. I don't expect that to happen again in a major movement.

We got Jews and Gentiles. And I think that's everybody. So why would we expect it again? Now, Cornelius's experience, theirs was a special, I'm sorry, the Acts 2 thing was kind of a general thing. What happened in Jerusalem, the Holy Spirit was poured out, period. Okay, so for Cornelius, it was the Holy Spirit was poured out on Gentiles and they were accepted in the church. And so there was special drama in both of those respects. But I don't expect that drama to happen constantly through the years because it's already happened. So you're basically saying that that's like a snapshot in a window of time, a piece of history. Yes, but it's not saying this should be the experience in every single church.

That's right. That's right for now and forever more, basically. Yeah, so young people who ask questions, it says right on here, only those who remain under the apprenticeship of their tradition have the power to transcend it. So human beings, especially young people, tend to react to problems they see here, but they react by running to the other ditch.

Then they gain nothing. So it's much better for a young person to ask questions and understand what's going on with the tradition and valuing what the tradition has to offer and step up, not react to. One sounds like growing and maturing. The other one sounds like, let me try something different. Perfect. Maybe? Yep. So at the bottom here, it says, if you want to be heard when you're 40, be quiet when you're 20. Just basically gain some life experience first. Yeah, that makes sense.

Okay, so the verdict of history, this is in now. So this is not just my ideas, but the best way to attack Anabaptist values is to attack Anabaptist symbols. Okay, so everybody knows that Anabaptist values are rather rock solid.

And they do contrast with the flesh. And so if you want to challenge some of these values, you don't frontally attack the values. You attack the symbols. You make issues over the symbols. So there's a hidden agenda here. The degrading of Anabaptist symbols is propaganda. It's a propaganda intended to change the perspective of Anabaptism as a whole. I have witnessed this in my lifetime. I've seen this.

And so it's all very subtle. Sounds all very spiritual. But I don't want to be a part of it myself. What specific symbols are you referring to? And then also, how do we discern between those good symbols and then maybe others that have become codified into this is the way we do things that aren't necessarily even right? Because you were just saying that a few minutes ago about how we get, we've been doing this for 500 years. Maybe we get stuck in a certain traditional vein. Yeah, how do we discern between those two? And which ones do you have in mind? Okay, so one of the symbols that for some reason has been under attack in more recent years, and I saw this in my early years, is that head coverings for women have a statement about how authority works in the home.

Okay, so the way you deal with this is that you decrease the size of head coverings just gently, slowly, and you make some noise about it. And so eventually in my story, it was lost. Okay, now what's followed that is feminism has come in. Okay, so human beings are are not given to God's order in the home. I'm not talking about male patriarchy. I'm not talking about that. I'm just talking about leadership, male leadership. If women do not appreciate leadership, there are certain nice things they can do.

Bucking and making noise is not a nice thing. So you can attack the symbol, the head covering, and you can make fuss about that. But eventually, that's not what it's about. That's not really what it's about ever. It's about the leadership thing.

Now, maybe you're too young to understand how the dynamics of all that work, but I've watched it in my own life and seen it when I was young. So then how do we discern between those symbols that might just be hundreds of years of tradition and we're just kind of stuck in a certain way of doing it versus ones that are actual good, biblical, solid symbols of this is what we believe and here's why. Okay, so we could talk about all kinds of specifics, but it's probably not so helpful to do that. I think that every congregation who is alive ought to, and they will by just living in the world encounter issues.

And then they need to discern whether this is a symbol that has a lot of message to it or whether it's just simply something like I said, Aaron Schenk, you know, the washing feet on the platform. Yeah, something like that. That was an illustration of something that had no weight to it.

Okay, so some people have said we ought to raise tobacco because it makes work for our children in the wintertime.

That sounds holy, doesn't it? We need to have work for our children. We can't have them lazy. That is a quote, it's a funny way of saying it, a symbol to justify raising tobacco and producing tobacco. And so the bigger issue is the principle behind the whole thing, not about giving children work. We just have to be honest about those things. It's like we have to examine it well, pull back some layers, what is underlying beneath these things and actually examine them well. Perfect. Is that a way of saying it? That's exactly right. Mm-hmm. Yeah, because I think it's really easy to have certain symbols that we may be very attached to that might be fine, but may not necessarily be biblical commands, for example.

For example, here's another one. This is not in our tradition, but the Dutch Russian people picked up Plotić in Prussia. And that as a symbol is one of the things that has bound them together. And that's almost considered a sacred language, Plotić. For us on the Swiss side, looking across, it's easy for us to see that the symbol is not really a biblical value. It's just a symbol.

Has it unified them? Has it brought them together in a certain way? Yes, but it's a sociological thing rather than a spiritual dimension. I hesitate to be too specific on some of these things. I'll get myself into trouble.

Sure, I understand. No, I think I think that makes sense. It's more an issue of discernment, really. And it's going to vary depending on, right, you know, depending on where it is and what's happening. And I don't know, it feels like there's a lot of variables. So I kind of wanted to peel it back a little and say, okay, like what's, yeah, what is it that we're looking at? Okay, some people, even in our tradition, have said that if you lose the Pennsylvania Dutch, then you are losing your distinctiveness as a people. Well, there's some truth in that, but my grandparents didn't even know Pennsylvania Dutch. And so I think enough history has passed now to indicate that togetherness in separation from the world is not dependent upon language.

There's something behind language that does that. Yeah. It's easy to use the symbol of language to do something or try to use it in ways that was never, that's not really God's sanction. Okay, so how to abandon in Anabaptist theology? This is the nice way to do it now.

Okay, so you may stop me at any of these. Some of this is a review we looked at before. Number two, make traditional ways of reading the Bible seem simplistic and inadequate. Now, I'd like a little caveat on that one.

Fundamentalists many times try to be very literal with the words to make a point. And you could use that to abandon Anabaptist theology. It has been done. We just have to be suspicious of ourselves to see if we have some hidden agendas here on this. Yeah. Do we really want to know what God means and what his intentions are? Or do we want to have our own little agendas and make our own little programs and then use the Bible to back it up? And we ought to catch each other doing it too and be nicely reminding each other about these things.

Number three, disparage Anabaptist history. I think I've said enough on that one. There's all kinds of good books out there. Some of our Anabaptist friends understand this problem better than others. Lose the two kingdom concept, that's very relevant for our day.

When we lose the two kingdom concept, we lost something huge in Anabaptist theology. So many other things depend on this one.

And so being involved politically is like we got the wrong focus. And if we have the wrong focus, of course we end up in the wrong places. That's not the kingdom of Christ. That's the other kingdom that we get involved with when we get involved with politically. Okay, number five is associated with it, enthroned self, wealth, and national welfare. When I have to defend my nation, I also am defending myself.

It's about me and mine. And we're supposed to be, if we are Christ's disciples, we are jealous of his kingdom, not our own.

Number six is justifying self-defense and promoting the just war theory.

Dean Taylor and David Perso did a debate with Peter Kreeft and Jay Charles years ago, and Finney Cravillo was the moderator. One of those men defending the just war theory grew up as an Anabaptist and switched to the other side. I don't want to go further with that. But there is no reason in the world, Reagan, why I should be justified in killing you. None. Zero.

My job is to love you and care for you, not kill you for any reason.

Number seven, adopt the good moral causes of our surrounding society. To be involved in a cultural war seems spiritual. You know, abortion is a real issue. So why not just go there and hold up signs or preventing these girls from going in there? That sounds spiritual. But it's not the way Jesus does things in his kingdom.

If you want to solve a problem like that, find some girl who wants to have an abortion and offer to adopt the baby. That's a much more redemptive way to deal with abortion than just try to stop the abortion from happening. It's like legalizing morality. Exactly. Doesn't always turn out very well, right, as we've seen. Right. Yeah.

Number eight, assimilate into surrounding society and identifying with it. I've watched that happen in my lifetime. And I just wonder, I just wonder about some of those people, what they're thinking by now. So this is a widespread reality in the Anabaptist world presently. This is an uncomfortable thing to say. I just have, I'm being honest with this. But the symptoms of approaching death, the very first symptom is that death is okay.

It doesn't really matter if this goes away because we don't see it as valuable. Basically, is that what you're saying? That's what I'm saying. Because there are some people that would have that kind of mindset. It's like, well, we don't really have anything that special to offer anyways, so it doesn't matter.

I'm sorry it is that way, but that's an illustration of it. And so if that's the case, then number two, there's little energy to fight for life. And we are believing comfortable lies that go along with not having to fight anymore. And so we acquiesce in the inevitable, and there's a feeble response to any kind of stimuli, and it's just like, let's just die. It's okay.

That's so sad. But it's a widespread reality right now, and I'm so embarrassed about this. People have lost sight of some of the most precious things in the world, and they're saying it's okay. And so here is our invitation to the darkening, our darkening host culture. It grows out of our worldview. It encapsulates our vision and our mission. I'm just going to read down this list here. Christian discipleship is an obedient, love, faith relationship with Jesus Christ.

And wonderful, wonderful.

We have everything to offer with that. And right along with that is the act of love and care for other people, especially fellow believers. We find joy in knowing Christ, and we find joy in serving other people. And I've talked about this in another episode, that work is worship and worship is work. Whenever life is whole like that, there's a lot of meaning in life.

And the next one is wholeness and dualism. Right there again, when wholeness is present, there is joy. There is meaning. And every day is worth waking up to because it's whole. We're not playing a game. And so when integrity is in all of life, I don't have to worry about, you know, saying this here and this here and how am I going to keep all my games straight. I don't have to worry about it. I'm free to just live in integrity.

Christian discipleship is also preparing the young for an adult life of service. You know, I thank you for allowing me to pay my debt to your audience. That's what I'm doing when I'm talking to you. I'm paying my debt to you because I owe this as an older person to younger people. It's not an option. Older people owe this to younger people.

Another illustration of Christian discipleship is the refusal to harm anyone for any reason, not just refuse to kill them. But if I work behind your back and I stab you in the back to some other person, I haven't literally killed you, but I've killed you.

See? That's not Christian. That's not Christian discipleship. I'm looking for your best interest in any way, emotionally, physically, spiritually. I'm here because you matter. And because you matter, I'm going to serve you. Christian discipleship is about practicing Golasen Height. And this is huge, but I won't go that any further because we've already covered that. Christian discipleship involves inviting others to participate in the kingdom, not because I'm supposed to, but I get a chance to because everyone's best interest is in the kingdom of Christ.

If I love you and I want your best interest, I'm going to invite you into the kingdom because that's where you're going to flourish and thrive. And the community will help you with your family. And I just, I'm 69 now and my children have grown and I have many grandchildren. I owe so much to my tradition in helping me raise my family. I wanted my children to go to school with other people's children because the flat spots in my home were not the same flat spots in other people's homes.

And my children have benefited so much by interacting with other children, the other young people who are good influences on them. I just rejoice in that. Christian discipleship is also a knowledge of how God's people have navigated the past. There's nothing new under the sun.

All the old issues are the new issues. Just new faces and new places. Yeah. And lastly, this is the way forward. William James, who is not an Anabaptist, said this, but it's an Anabaptist mindset. He said, "I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big success.

I am for those tiny, invisible, loving human forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, which if given time will rend the hardest monuments of pride."

That's profound. Yeah, it's that slow, steady, constant love. Yes. I think that you're referring to there, that not the huge institutions and the glamour, so to speak. I wonder if when we boil all this down, it comes back to that we are no longer selfish.

It's about others. That's right. Yeah. That's right. Thank you so much for sharing, Chester. My pleasure. This is a lot for us to think about, especially as young people move into more leadership and having to wrestle through these things of how do we do church, how do we do community and discipleship and following Jesus.

It's important, so. Thank you for joining us for this episode, and thanks to our donors and partners for making this possible. For more episodes, please subscribe or visit our website at anabaptistperspectives.org. You can also leave a comment or review to help more people find our content.