Matthew Krabill
Student, MA in Intercultural Studies, MA in Theology

The Changing Global Church

Matthew Krabill, a Fuller student who brings with him a long Mennonite heritage, describes changes in the Mennonite church that are striking: Over the last century, it has been transformed from a North American and Western European ethnic clan of Russian, Dutch, Swiss, and German ethnicities into a truly global family—“realities that have triggered massive permutation in Mennonite identity,” he says. “In many ways, my grandmother represented the ‘typical’ Mennonite of her time: Swiss/German lineage, living in a rural area of the U.S., separated from the world.” Today, just decades later, “there are more Mennonites in Africa, Latin America, and Asia than in all of North America,” says Matthew. “The average Mennonite in 2009 looks more like a young woman in Addis Ababa and less like my grandmother; more like a teenager in Jakarta and less like my grandfather.”

The Mennonite church, like the broader Christian church, has been moving toward what is called the “global South”—and this has significant implications for what it means to be the body of Christ and how the body is called to respond to what God is doing in the world, Matthew believes. “The North-South split is, among many things, an economic one. The face of Christianity today is poor, hungry, persecuted, and oppressed.”

Moreover, “Christians from other contexts are asking different questions than have been asked by western Christians in the past,” he notes. “The shift in global realities means that we will need to practice genuine partnership, one that is characterized by a posture and attitude of learning and reciprocity. We in the U.S. must increasingly be willing to be a ‘receiving church’—since the newer heartlands of faith in the global South are now also a major missionary sending force. The emerging churches in our context,” states Matthew, “may very well be the immigrant ones.”