Walter Sawatsky

Professor of Church History and Mission
Director, Mission Studies Center

  • B.A., Goshen College, 1967
  • M.A., University of Minnesota, 1970
  • Ph.D., University of Minnesota, 1976

Email: wsawatsky@aol.com
Phone: 574 296-6209

Curriculum Vitae

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Seeing the church from a global perspective is important to Walter. In his church history and mission classes he brings this passion to see God at work throughout the world. Before joining the faculty of AMBS in 1990, Walter served with Mennonite Central Committee in Europe from 1973 to 1985 (as Europe Secretary, 1980-85). He continues to travel regularly to eastern Europe and Russia as East/West Consultant for MCC and he is a member of the Global Mennonite History Project Committee. He was the administrator for a Bible Commentary series (31 volumes) translated into Russian and coordinates an oral history project for Slavic evangelicals.

"Christian leaders who pursue a vision must constantly ask questions of Christian history, to seek to understand a past that is never fully past. Tracing out the movement of the Holy Spirit among God's people more often reveals tones of sorrow, suffering, and tragedy than it does success and victory since so often God's power is manifested in human weakness.

As students encounter those lesser heroes of the faith, seeking to embrace in their minds both the global and particular dimensions of Christianity over time and space, they learn as ministers to love the church, sharing in both the glorious and shameful parts of its history."

Scholarship

  • Mission Focus: Annual Review, editor
  • Religion in Eastern Europe (bimonthly journal), editor
  • Mission in the Former Soviet Union (Neufeld Verlag, 2005), coeditor
  • Evangelical, Ecumenical and Anabaptist Missiologies in Conversation (Orbis Books, 2006), coeditor
  • "Mennonite Ministry and Christian History" in The Heart of the Matter: Pastoral Ministry in Anabaptist Perspective (Cascadia, 2004)
  • "Elusive Road to Mutuality in Global Mennonite Mission" in Mission Focus: Annual Review, Vol. 10 (2002)
  • "Historical Roots of a Post-Gulag Theology for Russian Mennonites" in Mennonite Quarterly Review (April 2002)
  • "What Are They Really Saying? Recent Scholarship on the Proselytism Problem in Eastern Europe Assessed" in Fides et Libertas (2001)
  • "Dying for What Faith: When Do Martyrologies Inspire or Heal or When Do They Foster Christian Division?" in Conrad Grebel Review (Spring 2000)
  • Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II (Herald, 1981; Russian edition, 1996)

Speakers Bureau Presentations

  • Mennonites face Kairos moment: the coming together of three interchurch dialogues that beg a Mennonite response
  • Why the East/West tug of war over mission in Russia
  • Global mission forum and the elusive road to mission accountability
  • Training pastors and missionaries: a new world has opened in Russia & Eastern Europe
  • What's different about the global Mennonite story?