Susan Kragt grew up in the Reformed Church of America, but found herself co-leading a small house church that had Anabaptist leanings, which lead her and her church on a journey to joining Mennonite Church USA.
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Susan Kragt
Photo by Alicia + Harrison Photography.
Susan Kragt is a co-founder and spiritual director with Grand Rapids (Michigan) Mennonite Fellowship, a congregation affiliated with Central District Conference. She received her training as a spiritual director from Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. Kragt lives in Grand Rapids with her husband and two daughters. She loves reading but can never read one book at a time. And she prefers precipitation to be in the form of rain.
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“Why Mennonite?”
As one of the co-founding members and lay-leaders of Grand Rapids Mennonite Fellowship, I have found myself answering this question quite often over the past few years. Well, first I am asked why I am not driving a buggy. Or, better yet, I just get stared at blankly until I offer an explanation to whatever similar, yet unspoken, question is being posed. It makes sense. I grew up in and still live in Reformed country, where the difference between Christian Reformed and Reformed is a very important distinction. Once we have cleared up the confusion regarding my use of an iPhone, we get to the heart of the issue: “But why?”
I often joke that I am an off-brand, accidental Mennonite. By that, I mean I did not grow up in the tradition. I grew up in the Reformed Church of America and attended a large, non-denominational church for a decade. I spent a year at a Pentecostal university and many more under the guidance of my thoroughly Catholic spiritual director. I have found the Spirit at work in these spaces and in many others. It is with this ecumenical hodgepodge of experiences that I found myself co-leading a small house church.
Within our small collective, several households had bumped up against Anabaptist traditions. And as we felt our way forward, these experiences just seemed to come up again and again as formational.
On a whim, I looked up local Mennonite communities and found Kalamazoo Mennonite Fellowship. A week later, I was on a call with their lay pastor. A montage of meetings and emails later, and our small community was meeting with leadership from Central District Conference to discuss joining Mennonite Church USA.
This is the “what” of it all, but not the “why.” I could go into detail about those meetings and all the theological debates and conversations of church polity that led to our decision. We needed guidance. We longed to be a part of something bigger than our little group. I was personally drawn to the witness of the Anabaptism and the practical ways in which faith was lived out.
I needed examples to draw from, while we dreamed of what it looked like to follow Jesus in our context.
But the “why” is more than the individual or collective motivations. Because between “what” and “why” is “how.” We spent a year in correspondence with Central District Conference, taking the time to talk through church polity and get to know one another.
Through this, I learned “How Mennonite.”
I learned the value of the process of building a peace church community. Consensus takes time. Disagreement, freed from an “either/or” mindset, can produce unexpected fruit. In a culture that demands results, it was this process that became my unexpected answer to the question, “Why Mennonite?” We were met with hospitality that made room for all of it — our commonalities and our differences. The most deeply held convictions were spoken of as “perspective,” not in a way that demeaned their importance, but so that curiosity and humility could thrive and make room for the Spirit to work. And she did.
The views and opinions expressed in this blog belong to the author and are not intended to represent the views of the MC USA Executive Board or staff.
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