The ban is that thing in the Anabaptist closet. Stories abound of this severe and condemnatory method of church discipline—its use and mostly its misuse. But what was it that Anabaptists intended and is there a redemptive way to employ the ban?  

The Anabaptist suspicion of top-down leadership remains alive and well in EMC churches, but does congregational governance actually work, and if not, why not and what are the alternatives? If leaders shouldn’t have or don’t accept power, where does the power go?

Mennonites have had an ambivalent relationship with politics from their earliest days, and despite our move into evangelicalism this flavour remains. In today’s episode we ask what the church’s obligation is to the state? What is the state’s obligation to the church and how should Christians interact with politics?

In the world, but not of it, has been a particular challenge for Anabaptists who isolated themselves early in their history and still carry some of that culture. Guests today acknowledge the strengths but also challenge some of the assumptions we may make about things like holiness, our culture and our role in the world.

Is the body just a helpful analogy of how the church functions together or is it more than that? Is it expressing something more real? And if that is true, is the connection between baptism and membership more important than we may think?

This episode dives into the account of the first church as portrayed in Acts 2 and asks if, and how, their way of being the church applies to us. Whether that makes you nervous about what’s coming in this episode or eager to hear more, you’ll find a range of potential applications of the early church model and plenty of things to think about.

After looking at the beginning and at the end, we’re back to the centre of the gospel story—Jesus—born and raised with a human body like everyone else on earth. What does that fact—something that’s so basic it’s easy to overlook—mean for how we live as Jesus' followers? What does it mean for a believing community?

Having looked at the beginning, Jesse and Andrew now ask if you can find guidelines for community in Revelation. Does God’s plan or design for how things end, provide insight about what our communities should look like?

This episode tackles some tough and foundational concepts but guests Dr. Meghan Larissa Good, Dr. Patrick Franklin, Dr. Betty Pries and Dr. Beth Stovell make a convincing case for why the concepts matter and how they apply to community.

In the second part of the question of why it is important to talk about community, hosts Jesse and Andrew focus more tightly on anabaptist communities specifically. Community is universal to the church—something the church the world over is grappling with. However, it has been particularly important to anabaptists historically.

Join Jesse and Andrew as they interview Layton Friesen, Stuart Murray, Meghan Larissa Good and Steve Bell on why community is worth talking about.

Season 2 is coming soon!