Church Ordinances

Bethel Mennonite Church – Gladys VA

Sacraments/ordinances in the NT: There is no list of sacraments/ordinances in the NT. The picture we get in the book of Acts is unstructured gatherings in spontaneous, dynamic community life meetings, and activities such as baptism and the Lord’s Supper happened organically several times a week. In the NT mention is made of other community activities as well, such as community of goods, speaking in tongues, ordination, anointing with oil, but none of these are “institutionalized.”

Developments from 100-1150 AD: By the end of the second century, the Greek term mysterion and the Latin term sacramentum were being used to refer to a variety of religious activities like use of the Lord’s Prayer or reading of OT Scripture during public worship. Peter Lombard may have been the first writer to specify seven and only seven sacraments, in his Four Books of Sentences written about 1150.

Anabaptist understanding of sacraments/ordinances from 1525-1890: What we now lump together as “the Anabaptists” was a diverse, evolving, and sometimes disconnected set of church renewal movements designated baptism and the Lord’s Supper as marks of the true church, although they mentioned other ceremonies as marks of an ordered church.

The transition from two ordinances to seven ordinances: The first lists of the same seven ordinances that conservative Mennonites affirm today were promoted by J. S. Cauffman in 1891 and Daniel Kauffman beginning in 1914. J. S. Cauffman offered a list of our seven ordinances, but in two tiers: Principal Ordinances = Baptism with Water, Communion, Footwashing; Secondary Ordinances: Prayer Head-Covering for the Women; Greeting with the Holy Kiss; Marriage; Anointing with Oil for the Recovering of the Sick. The goal of these lists was to strengthen and maintain the practice of feet washing, anointing, marriage, the kiss of peace, and headship veiling, and to make a clear distinction between Mennonites and other denominations.

Evaluating the historical and Biblical data: Scripture does not speak about these seven activities in the same way. If we are going to call them all ordinances, we probably should put them in two tiers the way J. S. Coffman did. Also, I believe the Mennonite Church has created a theological and practical problem for itself by insisting that the ordinances are merely symbols, even baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The question we need to seek an answer for is this: what is the intersection of grace and faith or grace and symbols in the ceremonies of baptism and Lord’s Supper? I believe Scripture that speaks of baptism teaches that the person who identifies with Jesus’ death experiences a death to sin and a resurrection to life because of action performed by the Holy Spirit inside the person, whether at the time of conversion or at the time of water baptism. I believe Scripture teaches that the body/death and blood/life of Christ are available to us and sustain us, and in our times of fellowship with Christ and as we partake of the Lord’s Supper, we experience the sustaining and redeeming presence of Christ.

Summary: I have tried to be transparent and tell you what I understand to be historically and biblically true. I assure you that I am not trying to change any of our practices, but I am trying to help us think about and experience these practices in a way that is more in harmony with history and Scripture.

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