Anabaptist Meditations: Thirty days of Biblical Reflection from the Founders of the Tradition

"Colin Godwin's Anabaptist Meditations provides an accessible and attractive set of devotional readings that integrate biblical, historical, and contemporary reflections alongside discussion questions designed to provoke deeper engagement. The book is a very helpful introduction to Anabaptist spirituality."

-Stuart Murray, author of Biblical Interpretation in the Anabaptist Tradition (Pandora Press, 2000) and The Naked Anabaptist (Herald Press, 2010).



Five hundred years ago, a movement emerged in Europe that took seriously the call to follow in the footsteps of Christ. The Anabaptists developed a new form of Christian spirituality and practice in response to the political changes, spiritual confusion, violence, and the economic disparities that they saw around them. Their new faith went beyond carefully crafted creedal statements and instead, they developed a new understanding of Christian discipleship based on their reading of the New Testament and centered on the life and teachings of Christ.

In Anabaptist Meditations, Colin Godwin offers thirty devotional readings carefully crafted to guide you to the heart of the Anabaptist tradition. Five themes will challenge you to a more engaged and Christ-centered spiritual life: choosing faith (voluntarism), following Christ (discipleship), Christian community (church), separation (nonresistance), and witness (mission).

Each entry begins with a biblical passage, followed by a short meditation and quotation from an Anabaptist writer, and concludes with questions for reflection and a prayer. Anabaptist Meditations provides a devotional complement to the Anabaptist tradition that draws on its past to inform our present.

About the Author

Colin Godwin serves as the President of Carey Theological College in Vancouver, Canada. He was born in Belgium and educated at the University of Guelph, the University of St. Michael's College, McMaster University, and the University of Wales. He began his ministry as a youth pastor and served as a Baptist missionary in Belgium, Rwanda, and Kenya alongside the love of his life, Karen, and their four children. Colin is the author of an exploration of sixteenth-century Anabaptist missiology, Baptizing, Gathering and Sending: the significance of Anabaptist approaches to mission in the sixteenth-century context (Pandora Press, 2012), and articles on Baptist and Anabaptist history, church planting, and missiology.