Toward an Anabaptist-Pentecostal Vision

“Sawatzky presents a stimulating case for an integration of a Mennonite focus on ‘horizontal’ discipleship and a Pentecostal ‘vertical’ spirituality. His argument develops from an examination of North American Mennonite partnerships with AICs in South Africa. For Sawatzky, if North Americans are genuinely going to embrace a ‘learner-teacher’ model of mission, then they need to learn from their partners’ focus on the Holy Spirit, prayer, and worship.”


—Jamie Pitts, Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary





“I heartily commend this highly original work in its conception, scope, and the range of material drawn upon. It brings together mission history and praxis, Anabaptist theology and ecclesiology, African theology and ecclesiology, and New Testament exegesis in a thoughtful, coherent whole, so making an important contribution to mission history and engagement, as well as intercultural interaction, which, given the fraught legacy of mission history in the South African setting, are vital areas of discourse for the health of church and community relations.”


—Gillian M. Bediako, Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission, and Culture





“This book provides a detailed and highly informed account of one of the most exemplary expressions of incarnational Christian mission in Africa. ‘My beloved friends’ was how George Schmidt, the natural ancestor of the Mennonite mission to Africa, greeted the Khoisan community when he arrived in Baviaanskloof in 1737. Sawatzky’s sojourn with African Pentecostals is imbued with the same sentiment and will inspire in all its readers the same vision.”


—Anthony Balcomb, University of Kwazulu-Natal