Photo: Participants at the Anabaptist Faith Formation launch listen to a dramatization of the story in Mark 6:30-44.

The Western District Conference Resource Commission held an Anabaptist Faith Formation launch June 12-13 at Bethel College in North Newton, Kan. Katherine Goerzen, chair of the event’s planning committee, said it was “designed to build on the momentum of the Year of Bible, which was launched in 2013.”

In his opening address, “Claiming, Aiming and Framing: The Ecology of Faith Formation,” Andy Brubcher Kaethler, who teaches at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS), Elkhart, Ind., noted that “faith formation” goes beyond earlier movements of Christian education and discipleship.

In the New Testament, he said, a disciple is an active participant. While these earlier programs tended to emphasize knowledge, faith formation is more holistic.

He named five sensitivities of Anabaptist faith formation:

• knowing and doing must be connected;
• knowing and doing must be accompanied by the human dimension of being;
• faith formation is for all ages;
• faith formation is about daily practices;
• faith formation happens communally.

The evening worship on June 12 focused on the story in Mark 6:30-44 of Jesus feeding the multitude. Rachel Miller Jacobs, who also teaches at AMBS, spoke on “My Story, Our Story, God’s Story.”

Many believe ideas form us, she said, “but a greater formation comes from embodied knowledge,” or “habitus.” She named physical, intellectual, spiritual and emotional habits that form us as individuals and as a community.

The key to living in God’s story, she said, “is to not get caught up in the individualism of my story or the tribalism of our story. God is our habitation.

Relating this to the story in Mark, she said, “We are not shepherds but sheepdogs. We get to serve the banquet, but we don’t have to make it happen.”

On June 13, Shana Peachey Boshart of Central Plains Conference and Rachel Gerber of Mennonite Church USA introduced the Anabaptist Faith Formation Network’s website and invited people to go there for resources, information and to submit their own resources and suggestions for aiding faith formation.

The website’s content is curated by Anabaptists, said Boshart. Included there is a link to www.thegatheringplace.us, a website for Anabaptist youth leaders.

The launch included 13 breakout sessions, each presented four times, on how Anabaptist faith formation relates to such topics as technology and social media, youth and young adults, the Bible, the work week and daily life, aging in the Spirit, children and families, music and the arts.