Jonathan Erb, the speaker in today’s episode has 16 years of teaching experience, half in Anabaptists schools and half in a Russian Baptist school. His work with the Russian Baptists involved helping them to establish a school similar to that of North American Anabaptists. This required Jonathan to translate his knowledge and experience into a new context. He’s now working as a school rep for Christian Light in the West, which includes helping at teacher training events and administering a week-long teachers’ camp.
What does it mean to be Anabaptist school? Jonathan recognizes the daunting breadth and variation across the groups of people that see themselves as inhabiting the Anabaptist tradition. I’m summarizing the introduction here. Jonathan cares about contributing to a discussion about Anabaptist education. He is not offering his perspective as definitive. You should hold onto any ideas you have as you consider the question: What distinguishes an Anabaptist school? Bring your ideas and questions into this talk and let it provoke you to further reflection and dialogue.
Jonathan is forthright that the attributes he expounds are ideals as he sees them. It’s difficult if not impossible to neatly set the borders of Anabaptism and decide who’s in and who’s out. It’s still more difficult for us to see the whole picture of what God is doing in the world and how we as Anabaptists fit in. In the face of these challenges, Jonathan lays out the central issue of forming schools that have the attributes of Jesus. To the extent that we can accomplish this we honor the best in our Anabaptist heritage and more importantly, we take seriously our heritage as part of the people of God.
Jonathan also notes that trying to answer this question historically is made more difficult by the fact that few of the early Anabaptists had their own schools. He begins with a quick survey of how they did educate their children.
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