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With the mention of so many notable personages both past and present in the history of Amish, Brethren, Mennonite, Hutterite, etc. I thought it would be interesting to see the list come together in one thread.

If you don't mind, would you share about those who you feel have had a considerable influence on your church? They can be past or present.

First two that come to mind are Jesus and Paul.

Satan.

God and Satan.

Beyond that, each individual in our church has been influenced heavily by different personages. For many in our church, it was teachers or mentors who are not very well known to others in the church. These teachers and mentors were influenced by a variety of people as well, who were in turn influenced by a number of other people.

That is why people keep coming up with terms like Anabaptism, Evangelicalism, Fundamentalism, Catholicism, Emergent church, Reformed Thought, Mainstream Protestantism, Post-Modernism, Antinomianism, Pentecostalism, Charismatic movement, Foundationalism, Early church thought, Pilgrim church thought, Kingdom Christian thought, etc., to describe the streams of thought that people are influenced by. We have elements of all of these in our church.

So I don't know how to answer your question in way that would apply to our church as a whole.

MaxPC wrote:With the mention of so many notable personages both past and present in the history of Amish, Brethren, Mennonite, Hutterite, etc. I thought it would be interesting to see the list come together in one thread.

If you don't mind, would you share about those who you feel have had a considerable influence on your church? They can be past or present.

My apologies: I could have done a better job of framing that query.
In addition to The Trinity and the Apostles, who would you say has influenced your church?

Additionally, a couple of you mentioned satan; I hadn't thought of it but I can see where that would be an influence. How do you see his influence?

MaxPC wrote:With the mention of so many notable personages both past and present in the history of Amish, Brethren, Mennonite, Hutterite, etc. I thought it would be interesting to see the list come together in one thread.

If you don't mind, would you share about those who you feel have had a considerable influence on your church? They can be past or present.

Do you mean local congregation or denomination? There's a lot of history to cover there...

Wayne in Maine wrote:

MaxPC wrote:With the mention of so many notable personages both past and present in the history of Amish, Brethren, Mennonite, Hutterite, etc. I thought it would be interesting to see the list come together in one thread.

If you don't mind, would you share about those who you feel have had a considerable influence on your church? They can be past or present.

Do you mean local congregation or denomination? There's a lot of history to cover there...

You're right: I was leaving it loose enough to make room for your interpretations. There are no wrong answers: whoever comes to mind is sufficient

If you don't mind, would you share about those who you feel have had a considerable influence on your church? They can be past or present.

I would say the past 4 pastors who are not of Mennonite or any Anabaptist background. Before this when I first came to this church, although treated very nice, I still felt like an outsider. In my first introduction to some folk they were trying to figure how a name like Sudds could be a German/Russian last name. Well, it isn't as my background is English. Most Amish, I think, call all non-Amish the 'English', regardless of their nationality. Anyway, over the past dozen years, non-Mennonite pastors have come in from Christian Missionary Alliance, Pentecostal and other backgrounds and the church today is very multi-ethnic. Even though we are still affiliated with the Mennonite Brethren, we no longer are primarily ethnic Mennonite. Our church name went from Mennonite Brethren to Meadow Brook Fellowship to Meadow Brook Church.

This was a decision by the elders to reach out into the community and look more welcoming to outsiders. Through this transition there were some rough times and many ethnic Mennonites left the church. Most of these went to Baptist and Christian Missionary Alliance churches. I had left during this period but have come back to quite a different, vibrant, younger, modern worship style church. We are soon embarking on more evangelism and ways of reaching out further into the city.

Bringing in non-MB pastors that believe in Anabaptist ways has had considerable influence on what the church is today. The ethnic issue is gone. For me, even though an old guy (who is more of a Gaither music fan), I am entering into the newer worship band music and enjoying seeing how the younger generation worships. I suspect most here on this forum would not like our church. I would say we are a cross between Pentecostal-lite and Mennonite-lite. That combination suits me fine.

Now that we have more active members I thought I would give this thread another bump and see if others would care to share their thoughts.

MaxPC wrote:With the mention of so many notable personages both past and present in the history of Amish, Brethren, Mennonite, Hutterite, etc. I thought it would be interesting to see the list come together in one thread.

If you don't mind, would you share about those who you feel have had a considerable influence on your church? They can be past or present.

MaxPC wrote:Now that we have more active members I thought I would give this thread another bump and see if others would care to share their thoughts.

MaxPC wrote:With the mention of so many notable personages both past and present in the history of Amish, Brethren, Mennonite, Hutterite, etc. I thought it would be interesting to see the list come together in one thread.

If you don't mind, would you share about those who you feel have had a considerable influence on your church? They can be past or present.

I think you may be stumbling onto an area where our marketing does not always match our product. Let me be clear: I am most at home in the Mennonite / Anabaptist strand of Christianity best, but we are very much human beings. And there are contradictions in all human beings.

As Mennonites, our brand is following Jesus, simply, without all that fancy systematic theology that can so easily turn into excuses, without a lot of hierarchy and authority structures, just following what the Bible teaches in love as a brotherhood as the early church did.

But there were already differences and disagreements in the early church, and it quickly became natural for some to see themselves as followers of Paul and other to see themselves as followers of Peter, living out their faith in different ways. These are things they struggled with in the early church, and unfortunately, this is a way that we often resemble the early church. Since the Bible clearly speaks out against becoming followers of Peter or Paul, we can be in denial about this too. But you see quite a few threads where start out talking about how to simply follow Jesus, and by the end of the thread we're talking about whether you should simply follow Jesus like a Swiss Anabaptist or a Dutch Anabaptist, like a Sattler or like a Marpeck, like a plain Mennonite or a non-plain Mennonite. And we can't even agree on the names to give each of these categories. We also disagree on the history to some extent - just exactly what did the early church teach, and how much variety was there in its teachings? And what exactly were the areas of agreement and disagreement among the various groups of Mennonites and Anabaptists? These are things where we do not all agree, and some of the versions probably are reconstructed history that props up the beliefs of one subgroup or another.

Can we do better at this? I suspect we need to acknowledge that we learn a lot from human beings, but also see that the goal really is to simply follow Jesus. Sometimes we take current leaders and raise them to a level where people are expected to not publicly disagree with them, while emphasizing how humble they are. That's another contradiction.

I like the model where small groups of people prayerfully discern how best to simply follow Jesus, love and serve each other, love and serve our neighbors, seek holy living, and grow in biblical wisdom. I think it's helpful to learn from history, seeing how others have done the same and letting that illuminate our own path. But the goal is always to simply follow Jesus.