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Stuart Murray Williams:

Essentials of a radical faith

The world is becoming Anabaptist; it just doesn’t know it!  Historic Anabaptist communities of faith like the Church of the Brethren have an important message for our time.

Join the discussion at the event blog post! 

During a very brief visit to Pennsylvania in November, 2010, Congregational Life Ministries was able to schedule four workshop events with Stuart Murray Williams. People representing the Church of the Brethren and Mennonite Church experienced learning and conversing with Stuart Murray Williams--church planter, pastor, seminary professor, and author of The Naked Anabaptist.

Murray Williams proposed that Anabaptism is a movement whose time has come. Christians from various denominations and traditions are discovering the Anabaptist tradition and embracing an Anabaptist vision. He commented that there are growing Anabaptist networks in Europe, Africa, Australia, and Asia. These networks are spreading in countries with little or no historic Anabaptist presence. The vast majority of Christians involved in the networks are not from historic Anabaptist denominations. 

In the US and Canada, Christians outside historic Anabaptist denominations are recognizing in the Anabaptist tradition resources for engaging a changing culture and context. New Anabaptist networks are emerging in North America too because people are being drawn to following Jesus as a way that inspires and calls Christians to worship and whole-life discipleship with the core convictions:

• Discipleship as following Jesus
• Hospitality and community
• Peace and evangelism
• Rediscovering the radical Jesus

As a word of encouragement to the workshop participants Murray Williams said, “Anabaptist denominations in North America are being pulled in different directions, uncertain about how to engage with contemporary culture, and confused about mission.” Murray Williams added, “Some are tempted to look elsewhere for solutions, but I urge you to look also to your own deepest roots. That’s part of what it means to be radical – to rediscover the essentials.”

Congregational Life Ministries deeply appreciates the hospitality and effort that made the events possible and especially acknowledge: The Young Center, Elizabethtown College, Frederick Church of the Brethren, Roanoke First Church, Somerset Church of the Brethren, and hosting districts.

Stuart Murray Williams Bio

Stuart Murray Williams is highly regarded as one of the world’s leading advocates for and scholars on contemporary forms of Anabaptism.  For more than 10 years Murray Williams was an urban church planter in East London. Murray Williams served as Oasis Director of Church Planting and Evangelism at Spurgeon’s College, London. Currently he is an Associate Lecturer of the college. Murray Williams has a PhD in Anabaptist hermeneutics.

He is chair of the Anabaptist Network. Since 2001, under the auspices of the Anabaptist Network, Stuart Murray Williams has served as a trainer, mentor, writer, strategist, and consultant with particular interest in urban mission, church planting and emerging forms of church.

He is the founder of Urban Expression, a pioneering urban church planting agency with teams in several cities in the UK and The Netherlands.

Under the name Stuart Murray, he has written several books on church planting, urban mission, emerging church, the challenge of post-Christendom and the contribution of the Anabaptist tradition to contemporary missiology. Recent publications include: Post-Christendom: Church and Mission in a Strange New World, Church after Christendom, Changing Mission, Planting Churches: A Framework for Practitioners, and his most recent book The Naked Anabaptist: The Bare Essentials of a Radical Faith.

Stuart is married to Sian, who is a tutor at the Baptist College in Bristol where they live, and he has two grown sons and a grandson. Stuart and Sian reside in Bristol, England.