Learning and new experiences don’t end with retirement, at least not for one group of seniors who spent most of October traveling in China.

The combined group had extensive overseas experience and represented decades of college classroom teaching, but few had ever been to China. As retired Temple University professor Elmer Miller stated, "China was never on my radar screen."

Mennonite Partners in China (formerly China Educational Exchange) arranged the visit at the request of the Anabaptist Center for Religion and Society (ACRS). ACRS is a group of retired professors, primarily from ²ÝÝ®ÉçÇø, who seek to connect faith and life in contemporary academia and the church. ACRS members and long-time Mennonite Mission Network workers Robert and Nancy Lee sparked the interest in the tour.

The 17 participants visited major historical sights like the Great Wall and the Forbidden City in Beijing, the canals of Suzhou, skyscrapers in Shanghai and the ancient terracotta army in Xian. A visit to the 7th century site of the first Christian church and monastery in China was a highlight for many. An ancient pagoda marks the site of this Nestorian mission.

Listen and Learn

According to John A. Lapp, former executive secretary of Mennonite Central Committee, a primary objective for the group was "to listen and learn what the Spirit is saying to the churches in China." Following a worship service in Beijing, the senior pastor shared the history of her congregation of 7,000 and fielded questions from the ACRS group.

Visits to seminaries in two different cities highlighted the progress that the church has made in training pastors. However, leaders admitted that most churches and meeting points still rely on lay leadership.

An unusual privilege was the visit to a meeting point in the remote countryside of Sichuan province. The Christian faith came to this area of China less than 20 years ago, but already more than 300 believers attend. Park View Mennonite Church in Harrisonburg, Va., contributed funds for the completion of the building where the believers meet. Albert Keim and others from the Park View congregation continued the ties between the two congregations by bringing greetings. Members who gathered at the meeting point shared several songs, and the pastor explained how the church had been helped by other churches in the province in their battle against false teachings.

After numerous conversations with Chinese pastors, seminary teachers and North American Mennonites working in China, the ACRS group admitted that the situation of the church in China is highly complex. In a signed letter to Mennonite mission agencies and MCC, the group stated: "We are sure that to work in China without a profound respect for differences and divergences from conventional western assumptions about authentic Christianity would be a serious mistake.: The group commended Mennonite Partners in China for their work in :interpreting the faith and practice of the church in China, serving as helpers and facilitators of its vision."

Looking at Christianity for Answers

Calvin Redekop, retired from years of teaching at several Mennonite colleges, was impressed with the incredible interest in the study of religion at China

For 50 minutes on Friday morning, Feb. 18, in the President’s Room of Hartzler Library, it was something of a time warp.

Three scholars, part of a seven-member group who assembled in 1952 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to critique the status and direction of the Anabaptist movement, interacted with students in a "Mennonite History and Thought" class.

Irvin B. Horst, 89; Paul Peachey, 86; and Calvin Redekop, 79, outlined their involvement in what proved to be a landmark 12-day meeting that also included John W. Miller, A. Orley Swartzendruber, David A. Shank and the late John Howard Yoder. All were living in Europe at the time, doing graduate study or post-war work with Mennonite Church agencies.

"Dr. Al Keim, professor emeritus of history at EMU and author of a major biography of the late Mennonite theologian and educator H.S. Bender, called that gathering "the most creative event in Mennonite history," Mary S. Sprunger, professor of history, told the class in introducing the speakers. "This ‘reunion’ today of three of those original group members is also an historic event."

Dr. Horst, a one-time professor of church history at EMU who later taught 18 years at a Mennonite seminary in Amsterdam, was instrumental in bringing the original group together and in providing insight into similarities and differences between American and Dutch Mennonite faith and practice.

"American Mennonites were becoming more and more acculturated, especially after World War II, just as Dutch Mennonites had generations before," Horst said.

Dr. Redekop, a sociologist and author, is the only "Concern" member not of "Old Mennonite" background. Of Russian Mennonite descent, Redekop said he was raised "a fundamentalist" and was "quite taken back" upon enrolling at Goshen (Ind.) College in 1946.

"Although at first I felt like an alien [at Goshen] my experience there made me appreciate my Anabaptist heritage, and I quickly found myself stimulated and encouraged by the interaction in that European group meeting," he told the students.

The gathering became known as the "Concern" movement, and from this initial meeting came subsequent gatherings and the issuing of a series of widely-distributed "Concern" pamphlets addressing several key issues they felt the Mennonite Church needed to squarely face.

"Even though we all had done graduate study in church-related areas, our group didn’t focus as much on theological issues as on polity – the question of power and authority in the church and are we congregationally structured or more of an authoritarian body," Dr. Redekop said.

"Our aim was to ‘critique’ the Mennonite Church, not to set it off in a new direction," Redekop stated. "We all were influenced by the thought and writings of Harold S. Bender, the most prominent Mennonite leader of the 1940s and 1950s."

"Unfortunately, Bender felt threatened by our efforts, when really what we wanted was to take his work a step farther," Peachey said. "However, a number of the younger generation of Mennonites appreciated what we were trying to do."

"Our desire was to work at reform and revival as an Anabaptist people and not to promote divisiveness and schism," Redekop said. "I think we achieved that goal."

He noted that an intentional church community, Reba Place Fellowship in Evanston, Ill., evolved from the "Concern" movement with one of the group members, John W. Miller, giving leadership.

"I wanted to introduce students to the story of these young Mennonites who were trying to find a way to make 16th century Anabaptism relevant for the church in the 1950s and ’60s," Dr. Sprunger said. "They took these issues seriously and dared to propose radical ideas about New Testament congregationalism to a hierarchical church leadership that didn’t welcome the Concern group’s critique of Mennonite denominationalism.

"Even though they wore suits and listened to lectures on Mennonite history, this was a kind of activism," she said. "Scholarly research, discussion and publishing was their way to raise issues and call the church they loved to be more faithful."

"The speakers captured an important topic that still faces the church today – distribution of power," said Paul J. Yoder, a junior history and social studies major from Harrisonburg. "I appreciated the emphasis on reform that they voiced. It’s rare to get to talk with and hear from actual figures that we’re studying in class," Yoder added.