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What Does Anabaptism Mean to Me

Anabaptism at 500: What Anabaptism Means to Me – September 2025

September 4, 2025 by Cindy Angela

As Mosaic Mennonite Conference commemorates the 500th Anniversary of Anabaptism in 2025, each month we will share a variety of Mosaic voices reflecting on the question, “What does Anabaptism mean to me?”  


Submission from

Wendy Kwong, Souderton (PA) Mennonite

My husband and I were baptized in 1994 at a Chinese Mennonite church in Philadelphia, marking my conversion from a polytheist who revered ancestors and nature spirits to a monotheistic faith centered on Jesus. After immigrating from Hong Kong to the U.S., we settled in a suburban community with a strong Mennonite heritage, and our sons were educated at a Mennonite school. I was mentored by a Mennonite health care provider during my last school years. All these encounters shaped my spiritual formation.  

Over the past three decades, I have encountered a wide range of sometimes fascinating comments on Mennonites from Christians and non-Christians: “I have never heard of Mennonites before.” “Are Mennonites the same as Mormons?” “Mennonites discourage street dancing.” “Mennonites don’t use cellphones,” and “Mennonites shouldn’t refuse military service.” 

I have come to deeply appreciate the simple lifestyle, nonviolence, baptism by faith, caring for creation, and the mission of reconciliation of Mennonites. As a new believer, I struggled to practice peacemaking, but through prayer and reading Scripture, I received peace from the Lord and trusting in Him alone.   

I am deeply grateful for the pastors and leaders in my congregation who have organized events to help us to deepen our root as part of Anabaptists during this year commemorating 500 years of Anabaptism. As I reflect on this legacy, I add to my personal Mennonite convictions: justice witnessing, intercultural humility, sacrificial love, courageous discipleship, and innovative pedagogy. I may not fully live out every tradition, yet I entrust the journey to the power of the Holy Spirit.  


Submission from

Jacob Curtis, Co-Pastor of Ambler (PA) Mennonite

I’m a missionary kid. My Mennonite parents moved from the US to Ireland before I was born. So, growing up, Ireland was home. None of the other kids at school knew what Mennonites were. But I was proud to be one. It made me special. For me, Mennonites were the Christians who took Jesus seriously. We were the ones who actually tried to love our enemies, who’d die for them rather than kill them. The Mennonites I knew were all missionaries who’d left their homes to follow Jesus into the unknown. I wanted to be like them when I grew up. 

When I left Ireland at 18, I moved to Goshen, Indiana, to go to college. There, I met more Mennonites. And I learned that being Mennonite meant different things to different people. Sometimes, it was reduced to taking one side or the other in the American culture wars. Mennonites in conservative places could become obsessed with conservative family values. Mennonites in progressive places could talk a lot about social justice and not a lot about Jesus. 

But there were Mennonites in both places who still believed that to be a Mennonite was to be something special. It was a way of being Christian that took Jesus seriously all the time, not just when he aligned with a political agenda. It didn’t mean trying to recruit Jesus onto our side. It meant being on Jesus’ side and following him all the way to the cross. 


Submission from

Pastor Emmanuel Villatoro, Whitehall (PA) Mennonite

Anabaptismo, es un llamado a seguir a Jesús de forma auténtica, incluso 500 años después de su surgimiento donde el anabaptismo promovía la fe voluntaria, la comunidad fraternal y el rechazo a la violencia. Esos valores siguen vivos, especialmente entre nuestras comunidades que buscan una vida sencilla, pacífica y centrada en Cristo en medio de un mundo cada vez más complejo, materialista y acelerado. 

Ser menonita en este tiempo moderno es vivir con una conciencia profunda de la justicia, la paz y el servicio al prójimo. La vida sencilla no significa necesariamente vivir sin tecnología, sino más bien usarla con propósito, priorizando relaciones humanas y valores espirituales. Anabaptismo significa elegir caminos que promuevan la humildad, la comunidad y la reconciliación en un mundo donde la individualidad y la autoafirmación dominan. El anabaptismo nos invita a vivir una fe activa y comunitaria, centrada en el amor de Cristo y en la construcción del Reino de Dios. 

Anabaptism is a call to follow Jesus authentically, even 500 years after its emergence, when it promoted voluntary faith, fraternal community, and the rejection of violence. These values remain alive today, especially among our communities that seek a simple, peaceful, Christ-centered life amid an increasingly complex, materialistic, and fast-paced world. 

To be Mennonite in this modern age is to live with a deep awareness of justice, peace, and service to others. A simple life doesn’t necessarily mean living without technology, but rather using it purposefully, prioritizing human relationships and spiritual values. Anabaptism means choosing paths that promote humility, community, and reconciliation in a world where individuality and self-assertion prevail. Anabaptism invites us to live an active, communal faith centered on the love of Christ and the building of God’s Kingdom. 


Mosaic values two-way communication and encourages our constituents to respond with feedback, questions, or encouragement. To share your thoughts or send a message to the author(s), contact us at communication@mosaicmennonites.org.   

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Ambler Mennonite Church, Anabaptism at 500, Souderton Mennonite Churc, What Does Anabaptism Mean to Me, Whitehall Mennonite Church

Anabaptism at 500: What Anabaptism Means to Me – July 2025

July 3, 2025 by Cindy Angela

As Mosaic Mennonite Conference commemorates the 500th Anniversary of Anabaptism in 2025, each month we will share a variety of Mosaic voices reflecting on the question, “What does Anabaptism mean to me?”  


Submission from

Melkysedek (Melky) Tirtasaputra, Whitehall (PA) Mennonite

“But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.”- Romans 8:9  

This verse is painfully clear—something I cannot soften: without the Spirit of Christ, I do not belong to Him. 

That truth should sober me and also free me. It removes all illusion that the Christian life can be lived in my own strength or through cultural identity. It forces me to face this question: 

“Is the Spirit of Christ truly dwelling in me?” 

This was the burning center of the Anabaptist soul. 

They lived in a time of lifeless Christianity—religion without transformation, sacraments without surrender, baptisms without the Spirit. And they said no. Not with rebellion, but with holy hunger. 

They believed Romans 8:9 was not poetry. It was a “dividing line.” 

To be “Christian” meant more than confession. It meant possession: “being wholly possessed by the Spirit of Christ”. 

They didn’t die for theological debates. They died because they refused to pretend. 

They couldn’t walk in the flesh and claim to be alive in the Spirit. 

They longed for a church filled with those who had truly died to self— who had risen again, not just into new ideas, but into a new nature. 

Today, I am invited into that same radical simplicity: 

No Spirit, no Christ. No surrender, no life. No cross, no resurrection. 

This reflection cuts deeply:  

Where am I still living in the flesh—making choices rooted in fear, pride, or self-preservation? 

Where have I mistaken busyness for obedience, and religious memory for present surrender? 

Do I bear the fragrance of Christ—or only the vocabulary? 

The Anabaptists remind me that baptism in water means nothing without baptism in fire. 

And that to belong to Christ means to be shaped daily by His Spirit, until even my silence speaks of Him. 

May I not just carry the name of Jesus, but be carried by His Spirit, moment by moment. 

And when the world looks for Christ, may they not need to search far— 

because He lives and walks and speaks through me. 


Submission from

Javier Márquez, Associate for Communication and Community Engagement for Colombia 

Esta reflexión es un extracto de una más extensa, que puedes leer aquí. 
This reflection is excerpted from a longer one, which you can read here.

No soy anabautista desde mi nacimiento, más bien, me encontré con esta extraña manera de comprender la fe en el Señor y de vivir la iglesia, en el lugar menos pensado. Fue en una pequeña iglesia que se sostenía en la esquina de una de las cuadras más humildes del barrio donde crecí, y sin saberlo, en este lugar cotidiano y físicamente poco destacable, se anidaba una pequeña comunidad en donde realizaban servicios durante los viernes en horas de la tarde y no en los domingos -extraño-, sin embargo, a diario cumplían un servicio comunitario a través de un comedor donde llegaban a comer los niños más pobres de la comunidad.  

Puede que suene irónico, pero esa sencillez tan contundente fue la que me convenció, porque allí no me encontré con un gran discurso ni mucho menos con una doctrina reveladora, aunque eso sucedería después, únicamente me encontré con la transparencia que tanto venía buscando. 

Pienso -en ocasiones, deseo sobre todo- que el anabautismo significa poder encontrarnos con nosotros mismos a la par de que Dios viene a nuestro encuentro. Básicamente, la historia fundacional de nuestra fe se basa en que Dios vino a nuestro encuentro hace 2000 años y esto tiene mucho que decirnos y que significar. Y al dar la bienvenida a este encuentro, es claro que nuestra fe se convierte en un diálogo entre todo lo que nos hace lo que somos: nuestra familia, nuestra educación, el lugar del mundo donde nacimos, el momento de la historia en que vivimos, la sociedad en la que hacemos parte… y el Reino de Dios. 

English Translation:

I was not born into the Anabaptist tradition. Rather, I encountered this strange way of understanding faith in the Lord and living out church life in the most unexpected place. It happened in a small church located on the corner of one of the most humble blocks in the neighborhood where I grew up. In this ordinary and physically unremarkable place, there was a small community holding services on Friday afternoons instead of Sundays—strange indeed. However, every day they ran a community kitchen where the poorest children from the area came to eat. 

It might sound ironic, but it was that very simplicity—so striking in its honesty—that convinced me. There were no grand sermons or revelatory doctrines—though those would come later. What I found instead was the transparency I had been seeking for so long. 

I believe—and often hope most of all—that Anabaptism means the chance to encounter ourselves just as God comes to meet us. At its core, the foundational story of our faith is that God came to meet us 2,000 years ago—and that still speaks to us and holds deep meaning. 

And in welcoming that encounter, it becomes clear that our faith turns into a dialogue between everything that makes us who we are—our families, our education, where in the world we were born, the moment in history we live in, the society we are part of… and the Kingdom of God. 


Submission from

Pastor Eszter Bjorkman, Neffsville (PA) Mennonite 

I didn’t grow up in a Mennonite church, but I was raised as a missionary kid by Anabaptist parents. They raised me with the values of this tradition, and I thought those were what every Christian believed. It wasn’t until I learned about Anabaptism later that I realized this is the faith tradition to which I belong. Its values have shaped what I understand Christianity to be, and who I am today as a pastor and as a Child of God.

I love that I don’t need anything but the Bible and the Holy Spirit to be a Christian. This simplicity in both my spiritual and material life has stayed with me. I’ve also always been a pacifist. This value of another’s life before my own informs how I treat those around me and has taught me the duty to spread God’s love through authentic relationships. Lastly, I remain committed to the body of Christ, made up of those who have willingly chosen to give their lives to Jesus. To me, being a Christian means believing and living into these things. With God’s help, I will keep Christ and these values at the center of my life. 


Mosaic values two-way communication and encourages our constituents to respond with feedback, questions, or encouragement. To share your thoughts or send a message to the author(s), contact us at communication@mosaicmennonites.org.   

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Anabaptism 500, What Does Anabaptism Mean to Me

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