A Pilgrimage Of Faith, J.B. Toews, 1993

follow diligently in the footsteps of Christ without giving thought to method, strategy or consequence. Followers of Jesus understood their calling to be witnesses to the ends of the earth, according to the command of the risen Lord (Acts 1:8). The witness of ordinary members was an important factor in the rapid expansion of Anabaptism. The "apostolate of the laity", as Wolfgang Schaeufcle described Anabaptism, was the consequence of being knit together into a covenant relation- ship.8 All believers, not just preachers or designated mission- aries, had a Sendungsbewustsein (consciousness of being sent). The exclamation of Acts 4: 20-" For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard'-found new reality in the sixteenth-century movement. The passion of the movement can be sensed in the following statement by Men- no Simons: Therefore, we preach, as much as is possible, both by day and by night, in houses and in fields, in forests and wastes, hither and yon, at home or abroad, in prisons and in dun- geons, in water and in fire, on the scaffold and on the wheel, before lords and princes, through mouth and pen, with possessions and blood, with life and death. We have done this these many years, and we are not ashamed of the Gospel of the glory of Christ. Rom, 1:16, For we feel 82 A MISSIONARY MOVEMENT his living fruit and moving power in our hearts, as may be seen in many places by the lovely patience and willing sacrifices of our faithful brethren and companions in Christ Jesus.9 The call in the I860 secession document to restore this vitality of faith and life was a guiding force in the missionary spirit of the early Mennonite Brethren. PIEnsnC INFLUENCES Exposure to Pietism led Mennonite Brethren to enlarge the scope of their missionary zeal to include all those around the world who were outside of the influence of Christianity* They shared the view of Philip Jakob Spener, the founder of Lutheran Pietism, who wrote more than a century earlier that "the Gospel shall be preached in the whole world and thus may continually be carried to other places whither it has not yet come, and that to this end no diligence, labor or cost be spared in such work on behalf of the poor heathen and unbe- lievers."10 This mindset dominated Mennonite Brethren for- eign missions from their beginning. The strongest missionary influence came from Count Zinzendorf, a disciple of Spener's, founder of the Danish Halle Mission and a key figure in the renewal of the Moravian Brethren, who later ignited revival in the Mennonite colo