Introduction to Church History - Leland Zehr

Good morning.

Had to want to welcome you all here this morning.

Greet you in the name of Jesus, glad that each

one of you have chosen to be here today. We

welcome Jessica Burke back. I don't know if you all know,

but your time in Mexico got cut short with I

guess the changes of the some things at the border

of Mexico in the United States. So she's out of

a job and came back here, so welcome her back.

Plenty to do here Bethel Bible School end at Isaac's back.

I don't think Cope's back yet, but we'll be coming back.

And we did a quick trip back there to that

program and got back late last night, but it was

it was good to be there again and see some

of the people speaking of Bible schools. I should just

mention maybe some or all of you know, but our

family does plan to go up again to Cornerstone here

and that's about two weeks from now to be involved

and teach there again this year. So you can remember

us in prayer that that is part of the reason

that plays into the schedule with my name being on

the program today and next Sunday, along with a little

bit more here. I'll explain in a bit, but I

feel like I have a little bit of a lengthy

introduction here. But how many of I'll start with the youth.

How many of you youth, or do any of you

youth know what what this last week January twenty one?

What that date represents or means any of you know? Yes, sir,

beginning of the beginning of the Anabaptist movement.

How many years ago? Is that? Five hundred? That's right?

So five hundred years ago this past January twenty one

is when is officially documented as the beginning of the

Anabaptist movement, when a few of the brethren were rebaptized.

And of course the actual beginnings of that movement started

before now, and that is when I'll get more into

that more what that was. But this has been getting

talked about a lot as the build up came in

the last year among the Anabaptists. If you read it

all on emails or connected with missions.

You see a lot of that.

The five hundred year anniversary coming up, the beginning of

the Anabaptist movement, And we talked about it as a ministry,

you know, should we we'd like to do something we

didn't know what for sure. I thought it was a

good opportunity to teach on some things there and one

thing that we did decide to do just I guess

it was an executive decision, and you can get honest

if that's out of line.

But we had to order some books a while back

to make this happen.

And there's some little study books that we would like

to do for our adult Sunday school lesson starting in

April once this period's over. So we did order those

and are planning to do that. We'd like the youth

to join to if you're willing, and just probably try

to target that next six months and go into that

a little bit more.

Now what I would like to do.

I'm not I don't know how you all feel about

church history. I'm sure there's a variation. Some of you

probably it's very meaningful and precious to you, and to

others it's.

Not. And you just assume that you wonder what that

has to do.

What does five hundred years have to ago have to

do with my life today in the Willamet Valley as

I'm living it, well, I would like if you if

you feel that way, I just I'd plead or beg

or ask a favor of you, Just to be long

suffering and do your best to be a good listener

and a student. Give it a chance, all right. You

don't have to love history. I'm not any I have

to study a lot of history. But I do believe

that not all people are called to be students in

a deep way of history. But we are. We all

learn from history, whether we know it or not, and

history should be respected even if we aren't historians.

And I don't.

I don't view myself as a historian in the in

the in the true sense. I do appreciate history in

a lot of different areas. But I'm not like even

some among us. I would say Jason and Dan have

taught in some of this and would be probably well

versed in it than I am. But I have felt

for some time I kind of thought about this, if

this is something I should try to study and give

a little bit on, And as time went on, I

felt like, if nothing else I it would be good

for me. I really needed to to try to try

to study this sum and so I want to try

to share a.

Few things in the next two messages

Down this line I started out thinking I would do

one message, and it wasn't long into that I realized