Beginning with a conference next February in Augsburg, Germany, Renewal 2027 will be a 10-year series of Mennonite World Conference events culminating in celebration of the 500th anniversary of the beginnings of the Anabaptist movement.

MWC’s Faith and Life Commission chair Alfred Neufeld of Paraguay also chairs the committee planning next February’s event.

“Do we still have anything in common with the founding mothers and fathers of the Anabaptist church?” he asked in an MWC release announcing the venture (MWR, April 25). “Should we? Can we?”

After half a millennium, it’s a fair question to ask. It also may be appropriate to ask how much we still have in common with each other. While noble efforts at unity and mergers have been made over the years (see page 20 for a report on a new Fresno Pacific Biblical Seminary master’s degree inspired in part by Mennonite Brethren conversations with Brethren in Christ and Mennonite Church USA leaders), the Anabaptist movement likely has never been more fractured than it is today.

Few details have been shared about Renewal 2027’s focus, but the precious things Anabaptists hold in common are sure to be key.

The planning committee faces the challenging irony of celebrating shared themes in the run-up to commemoration of the schism that inspired dozens, if not hundreds, of later schisms. Division even marked last summer’s MWC assembly in Pennsylvania, when Lancaster Mennonite Conference’s proposal to withdraw from MC USA became known concurrently.

A decade is a long time to sustain enthusiasm, but Mennonites might need at least that long to get enthusiastic about each other. It could be called Renewal 2027. It could be called a Decade to Overcome Division.

Though it didn’t get much attention within American Mennonite circles, German Mennonites — along with the U.S. Church of the Brethren — inspired a motion to make overcoming violence a more central part of the World Council of Churches’ work. Delegates adopted a motion in 2001 that became known as the Decade to Overcome Violence, and the initiative bore fruit.

After a 2004 WCC conference in Kenya, delegate Filibus Gwama returned home to Ekklesiyar Yan’uwa à Nigeria (Church of the Breth­ren in Nigeria). EYN began a peace education program, and in 2006 Gwama said “the church is working hard to see that there is peace.”

Eight years later, the Islamic insurgent group Boko Haram kidnapped hundreds of girls, many from EYN. More than 3,000 EYN members died. Tens of thousands fled Nigeria as homes and churches were leveled. In the face of such horrific violence, EYN persevered as people of peace trying to love their enemies.

May it be that a Decade to Overcome Division could inspire so firm a foundation with earthly stakes not nearly so high.