April 22ndSeeking to Be “A Church to Meet Jesus, Following His Way”
This is the sixth in a series of reflections from Executive Minister Michael Pahl on our new MCM Vision & Mission Statement, approved at our 2026 Gathering.
“Follow me.”
That’s the call of Jesus to all who would be his disciples. It frames his interactions with his original disciples, from initial encounter (Matt 4:19) to final words (John 21:19, 22). It forms his curriculum for all discipleship: “If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).
It’s the call of an itinerant rabbi to walk with him wherever he goes, to be with him, to learn his teachings, to imitate his way of life. It’s the call of one who would be our Lord, commanding our allegiance above all other allegiances, summoning us to his way of love.
This may well be why the early church referred to their movement as “the Way” (Acts 9:2; 18:25; 19:23). They recognized that following Jesus isn’t merely a “belief system” or even really a “religion”; rather, following Jesus is a way of life, a way of love—a way of being in the world.
These ideas carry on through the rest of the New Testament. “Follow me as I follow Christ,” the Apostle Paul says to the Corinthians (1 Cor 11:1). “Whoever says, ‘I abide in him,’ ought to walk in the same way as [Jesus] walked,” says the Elder (1 John 2:6). We are to be increasingly conformed to the image of Jesus, becoming more and more like Jesus in his character and virtues (2 Cor 3:18; Rom 8:29; Eph 5:1-2).
It’s no coincidence that Jesus is referred to on nearly every page of the New Testament: our faith and our life, both individually and communally, is to be centred on Jesus. And that’s why, at the centre of MCM’s new vision, we have the aspiration to be “A church to meet Jesus, following his Way.”
As Anabaptist-Mennonites, we aim for a holistic view of Jesus. All Christian traditions can be said to focus on Jesus. But some seem to focus on Jesus’ death to the exclusion of his life and teachings, or even his resurrection. Others seem to focus on Jesus as a good moral teacher to the exclusion of his incarnation or his exaltation as Lord.
We strive to focus on Jesus as a whole person, especially as we learn of him from the Gospels: Jesus of Nazareth, the eternal Word made flesh, who lived and taught love for God and neighbour grounded in God’s love for us, who gathered a community nurtured in this love, who healed the sick and blessed the poor and resisted evil non-violently, who suffered and died in solidarity with sinners and the oppressed, who rose again to be exalted as Lord over all earthly powers at God’s right hand, who is with us by his Spirit even now.
It is this Jesus who stands at the centre of who we are and what we do as a church; it is this Jesus who is the only foundation that has been laid for us (1 Cor 3:11). It is this Jesus whom we seek to follow, individually and collectively; it is this Jesus into whose image we are being shaped.
Centering on Jesus in this way allows for tremendous theological and practical diversity around this centre. We can recognize that there are many different ways a church can be structured or a worship service can be planned, centred on Jesus. We can acknowledge that there are many different ways “following Jesus” can be lived out in the world, depending on who we are and what our context is.
At the same time, centering on Jesus in this way gives focus to our faith and life. There are certain beliefs and practices, certain ways of being in the world, which align with Jesus’ community-gathering, justice-seeking, peace-building, evil-resisting, blessing-and-healing, sin-forgiving, life-giving way of love—and others which don’t.
All this means we need to be a church where people can truly meet Jesus, in all aspects of who he is. We need to be a church where people can encounter the risen Jesus, present among us by his Spirit. We need to be a church where people can engage with Jesus’ teachings, learning them and wrestling with them and their application in our lives and our world. We need to be a church where people can hear Jesus’ story and see themselves in it, where people can learn his way of life and live it out in community.
We need, in other words, to be “A church to meet Jesus, following his Way.”