Dr. David Plaster (left, red shirt), academic vice president for Grace College and Seminary, conducted a very informative and helpful tour of the Brethren history murals in the Quinter-Miller auditorium on the grounds of Camp Alexander Mack near Milford, Indiana.
Plaster, who wrote the BMH Books classic history of the Grace Brethren Fellowship, “Finding Our Focus,” took tour participants through a step-by-step explanation of the various mural panels up through the year 1882, which was the year of the “Holsinger split” from the Church of the Brethren.
The tour bus then went further north on Indiana Rt. 15, to Arnold’s Grove, the site of the Holsinger incident in which the Progressive Brethren broke away at a meeting attended by more than 16,000 delegates.
The tour enjoyed a buffet dinner on the grounds of Camp Mack, along with a guided tour of some of the Brethren monuments on the grounds, and then concluded the tour with an in-depth look at Anabaptist history at the MennoHof Anabaptist Interpretive Center in Shipshewana, Indiana. Every participant on the tour also received a free copy of “Heroes Who Live On, Vol. 2,” one of BMH Books’ latest volumes featuring the lives of 13 “heroes” who have been formative in making the Fellowship of Grace Brethren Churches what it is today.
Today, Friday, concludes Equip05 when classes end at 4:30 p.m.
In 2008, both the Church of the Brethren and the Brethren Church will hold a conjoint Conference at Richmond, Virginia, in an effort to celebrate the beginning of the Schwarzenau Brethren movement.