Discipleship and the Community of Goods
As taught in the Anabaptist / Mennonite tradition
How following Christ binds Anabaptist believers into a sharing, visible, voluntary church
For the Anabaptist tradition, discipleship is not a private inner experience that happens to take place near other Christians; it is a shared way of life that a gathered, voluntary congregation walks out together. The same act of repentance that turns a person toward Christ turns that person toward sisters and brothers, and the relationship of believers to their possessions is one of the clearest tests of whether the turning was real. This lesson traces how the tradition reads following Jesus (Matthew 16:24) as inseparable from the economic and bodily care of the church (Acts 2:44-47; Acts 4:32-35; 1 John 3:16-18), and why the community of goods, however modestly practiced, sits at the heart of Anabaptist self-understanding rather than at its edge.
By the end of this lesson
- Explain why the Anabaptist tradition treats discipleship (Nachfolge) and membership in a visible, voluntary church as inseparable.
- Describe the community of goods as the tradition understands it, from the Mennonite common purse to Hutterite full community, and ground it in Acts 2:44-47 and Acts 4:32-35.
- Show how 1 John 3:16-18 functions as the inner logic that turns love into the concrete care of needy members.
- Connect the tradition's nonresistance and cruciform discipleship (Matthew 16:24) to its readings of the sword, the oath, and martyrdom.
- State fairly where Anabaptist readings of these texts differ from Reformed, Lutheran, Catholic, and Orthodox positions without collapsing the differences.
Scripture
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