When you're Mennonite and your church isn't

Christian ethics and theology with an Anabaptist perspective
Ernie
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Re: When you're Mennonite and your church isn't

Post by Ernie »

RZehr wrote:
Bootstrap wrote:
RZehr wrote:It would be tough for me to go be a member of a Presbyterian church and call myself a Mennonite. But I do understand that some people would. But do you also deny being a Presbyterian? Or do you think of yourself as both?
I really don't think of myself as Presbyterian at all, and never call myself one. When people visited from the Bruderhof, my pastor introduced me to them as a Mennonite. When different understandings come up, I often explain that I'm used to thinking of things from a Mennonite perspective.
I understand what you're saying, but it still seems odd to me not to own (at least on some level) the Presbyterian name. Is anyone there a Presbyterian? If the members of a Presbyterian church aren't Presbyterian, then is it a ghost denomination?
I was part of a Beachy Amish-Mennonite church in AR for 10 years. I didn't call myself Beachy but would tell people that I am a part of Beachy church and that I work for the Beachy's Bible School and the Beachy's Publication Board.
West of us two hours were a couple other Beachy churches. One of them had only one family that grew up Beachy. The pastor of this church referred to their church as the "Gentile Beachy Church". Whenever members of this church learned that their church was a Beachy church, they would wonder what that meant. The pastor would explain that being part of the Beachy network facilitated opportunities for inter-church pulpit exchange, opportunities for VS, opportunities for Bible Schools, etc. This satisfied the NAB members and they didn't think more about it. It sounds to me that this mirrors what Boot is talking about.

I think that to be Beachy a person needs to think like a Beachy regardless of whether he calls himself that or not. Probably something similar with Presbyterians.
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Bootstrap
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Re: When you're Mennonite and your church isn't

Post by Bootstrap »

Ernie wrote:It sounds to me that this mirrors what Boot is talking about.

I think that to be Beachy a person needs to think like a Beachy regardless of whether he calls himself that or not. Probably something similar with Presbyterians.
Exactly.
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Wayne in Maine
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Re: When you're Mennonite and your church isn't

Post by Wayne in Maine »

The Mennonite church is only church my wife and I formally joined as full members (We were novice members of the Bruderhof). And though we have leaned more toward an older historic Anabaptist / Hutterite understanding, we consider ourselves Mennonite.

After we left the Bruderhof we fellowshipped primarily with the Old Order River Brethren in Lancaster County (unlike the Bruderhof Community, they treated us like their neighbors!). When we decided to move back home to New England we had little choice or opportunity but to attend the BRF brethren church here in Brunswick Maine.

There seemed to be an assumption, especially on the part of the Pennsylvania Brethren ministers, that I would get correctly baptized and start teaching in Sunday School and contributing to the leadership of the church. But I turned out not to be the Brethren Revival Fellowship enthusiast they expected.

It was not easy at times to sit through regular barbs tossed by the BRF preachers at Mennonites (sometimes tossed in the direction of the pew where I sat) and it wasn't easy having no opportunity to participate in the Lord's supper or have no real role in the church simply because I took believer's baptism too seriously to get dipped again three times in the proper Brethren form. Some of the young people treated us and our children like second class citizens (we don't know where they learned that from!). We took breaks from the church at times when things got too bothersome. We've stopped attending - issues just could not be worked out and the church was, in any case, becoming less and less Anabaptist and more Evangelical/Fundamentalist.

We've attended other churches (Nazarene, Baptist, Church of Christ) but we have not yet found a group of fellow believers or an assembly where we would not be left squirming in our seats or untaught by the ministry of the Word.
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Bootstrap
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Re: When you're Mennonite and your church isn't

Post by Bootstrap »

temporal1 wrote:how PCUSA votes is not a big mystery. :-|
Let's discuss in this thread, if it needs discussing. And I think the title is pretty much where I'm coming from: "When you're Mennonite and your church isn't".

My local church is not political and I have no idea how most members of the church vote. We do not discuss political issues or political figures in church. I think I would have a hard time being part of a church that was political. People do vote. We have had presentations where two people on different sides of the political spectrum share about how to put the Kingdom of God first.

And my local church has taken a stance against gay marriage and supports pro-life causes financially. We are part of a fellowship of churches that is against gay marriage. Our church strongly supports foreign missions and Bible translation, has a ministry to refugees, and is generally quite active in local ministries.

There are things I am uncomfortable with, but it doesn't look at all like some of the things you have implied about it. It's larger than I'm used to. The way we make decisions is a bit foreign to me. It's not Mennonite theologically, though it is quite biblical.

Temp, do you feel tension with the Catholic Church, do you identify with Mennonites in some ways? If so, how do you deal with that?
Bootstrap wrote:
RZehr wrote:It would be tough for me to go be a member of a Presbyterian church and call myself a Mennonite. But I do understand that some people would. But do you also deny being a Presbyterian? Or do you think of yourself as both?
I really don't think of myself as Presbyterian at all, and never call myself one. When people visited from the Bruderhof, my pastor introduced me to them as a Mennonite. When different understandings come up, I often explain that I'm used to thinking of things from a Mennonite perspective.

This is also not a particularly Presbyterian congregation. Our sister church calls itself a Bible Church, and is not affiliated with a denomination. Only 10% of the members come from a Presbyterian background. For example, when we have an infant baptism (ouch!), the pastor sometimes says something about the range of beliefs people in the church have. That kind of thing is really uncomfortable for me, but the church also has real strengths.

One area of commonality is the realization that we should look first to what Jesus said and did. This congregation is strong on that perspective.
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MaxPC
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Re: When you're Mennonite and your church isn't

Post by MaxPC »

Wayne in Maine wrote:The Mennonite church is only church my wife and I formally joined as full members (We were novice members of the Bruderhof). And though we have leaned more toward an older historic Anabaptist / Hutterite understanding, we consider ourselves Mennonite.

After we left the Bruderhof we fellowshipped primarily with the Old Order River Brethren in Lancaster County (unlike the Bruderhof Community, they treated us like their neighbors!). When we decided to move back home to New England we had little choice or opportunity but to attend the BRF brethren church here in Brunswick Maine.

There seemed to be an assumption, especially on the part of the Pennsylvania Brethren ministers, that I would get correctly baptized and start teaching in Sunday School and contributing to the leadership of the church. But I turned out not to be the Brethren Revival Fellowship enthusiast they expected.

It was not easy at times to sit through regular barbs tossed by the BRF preachers at Mennonites (sometimes tossed in the direction of the pew where I sat) and it wasn't easy having no opportunity to participate in the Lord's supper or have no real role in the church simply because I took believer's baptism too seriously to get dipped again three times in the proper Brethren form. Some of the young people treated us and our children like second class citizens (we don't know where they learned that from!). We took breaks from the church at times when things got too bothersome. We've stopped attending - issues just could not be worked out and the church was, in any case, becoming less and less Anabaptist and more Evangelical/Fundamentalist.

We've attended other churches (Nazarene, Baptist, Church of Christ) but we have not yet found a group of fellow believers or an assembly where we would not be left squirming in our seats or untaught by the ministry of the Word.
Wayne, I am just now seeing this as the thread popped up in the queue. Your discomfort and pain regarding your experiences with the BRF church has my sympathy. There are times we have experienced the same treatment in certain parishes as well. It's never a good situation. We forgave and moved on but took the lesson with us: we cannot control the attitudes of others. We can only control our own decisions and discipleship walk. It doesn't make it less painful but it refocuses our attention to more positive actions.
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