Convincing ethnic plain people to engage with the lost

Christian ethics and theology with an Anabaptist perspective
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Josh
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Convincing ethnic plain people to engage with the lost

Post by Josh »

Sometimes I have contact with someone who is seeking and is ready to hear about the kingdom, and so do some of my friends. But one of our challenges is that we aren't always the right person to continue to the conversation and get closer to them. I hope this doesn't seem too "gossippy" but the issue is weighing very heavily on my heart. Please do not assume I am talking about specific people or a specific congregation.

Here is an example. A young man knew me before and after I was born again. He was impressed by the changes he saw in me and also impressed with the role a conservative Anabaptist church had in that, so he eventually moved where I live, and after attending about 2 years, was finally accepted to join the church and be baptised.

Now he has a passion for living in the kingdom too, and that passion usually results in telling everyone you know. One particular person he knew was someone who had an unplanned pregnancy and was planning to get an abortion. Through a serious of miraculous conversations and coincidences, she listened to him and did not get the abortion - she ended up marrying the child's father.

During this time he and I encouraged each other with every person we have contact with, especially to share the good news with them, and also to invite those who are lonely / isolated to come be part of our community. But there are limits to how much we can, as a single man or as a divorced man, engage with a woman, particularly after she gets married. So he asked around - especially of the girls at church her age (20s) who use social media and text messaging, which is a good way to start such communication. Unfortunately there was no interest in their part on that. Since neither of us sit in a place of authority over the young women in our church we just let it drop. We also asked the younger minister's wife, who had some interest, but she doesn't use social media and only texts with a plain non-smart phone, not really usable for longer conversations. (Young people tend to like to text / use Snapchat or Facebook to talk instead of phone calls or email, esp. when they are just getting to know a person.)

Before my friend moved here and became part of church, I used to ask around for the same thing, when I was a very young, immature believer of just a few months but met lots of people at a friends' Bible study. Some of the young people were just teenagers and not even Christians yet, or had just made a decision to be born again. I did my best to engage with the young men but there are limits to how much I can engage with a young woman, particularly one who sees the need to dress modestly and adopt the veiling - that's just not something I can really guide a young woman through. I needed the help of sisters.

Unfortunately, I was not successful in really engaging anyone in that. I could definitely bring people to tag along to my own dinner invitations, and I did invite people to the youth group. But it's hard for people who aren't ethnic Mennonite to really connect a lot especially if they aren't athletic, and a stronger spiritual / Bible study focus was needed. I am not in charge of the youth group so there were limits to how much of this I could do.

I engaged some of the women my age (30s / 40s) in church who I thought would be good candidates for "older women to instruct the younger", but it was hard to get much interest at all in them putting together a girls' Bible study or prayer group etc that would be a half hour away, especially at the level of intensity and interest I had (weekly or twice weekly, not just once a month). I did what I could with the original Bible study to try to keep everyone together. But it was very painful to watch some people fall away, esp. ones who I could tell were interested in kingdom living, but I just couldn't get them there myself, and there was no local church / congregation they could walk to or get a ride to in their city. (We did used to often drive people to church but I hit hard limits of how many people I could drive around picking up on Sunday mornings, and being part of church is more than just Sunday morning.)

Part of me is just exhausting with fighting this battle - and just wants to retreat into the safety of my own denomination now - if I pass info along in my own Holdeman congregation about any seekers I have no trouble getting someone age and sex appropriate who will talk to them. But there are some challenges there, for example we don't use social media, Snapchat, etc. which makes it harder to engage with young people who primarily communicate that way. And unfortunately my congregation is an hour from the nearest large city where most of such connections would be. Nevertheless, one of the reasons I feel bound to stay in my congregation is that at least I have a chance of getting other people in my congregation to engage with seekers in ways that actually can get results.
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Ernie
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Re: Convincing ethnic plain people to engage with the lost

Post by Ernie »

I could have written something like this myself. (same story different details)

One of the ironies of conservative Anabaptism that I learned about 15 years ago is that the CA's who have interest in engaging with the lost, have various restrictions that keep them from being able to do so effectively and those groups who basically have unlimited freedom to reach the unchurched, learn how to interact with non CA's, and plant churches aren't very interested. They want to hang out with CA's, play games, go on choir tours, go on hunting trips, or spend an additional 4 or 5 hours each week working to pay tithes for someone else to be a missionary instead of using that time to be the missionary themselves. Such is life in the moderate conservative world.

It is exasperating!

There are a few of course that are different and do get involved, but then it seems that most of them want to live and teach a Protestant gospel, which if they teach lordship salvation, is possibly better than nothing, but in the end, it doesn't draw people into the "Kingdom Christian"/conservative Anabaptist understanding.

We need to keep praying that God will change this.
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Neto
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Re: Convincing ethnic plain people to engage with the lost

Post by Neto »

I think I wrote on MennoDiscuss about an experience I had when I still living in Oklahoma (late 70's - early 80's), and in the MB (Mennonite Brethren) congregation where I grew up. I was working in a shop in Tulsa where some of the employees were into drugs. In the course of talking with people there, one of the employees, a young married woman, turned to Jesus. She & her husband, who was also interested, and, I believe, also became saved, invited me to their home for Bible study. Another guy from work also came, but I think I tried to get them to church services too soon. Then they wanted to be baptized, and in the church, but they wanted me to do it. The pastor would not go along with that, and they drifted away. I still wonder what would have happened if I had just left it as a Bible study group, and baptized them myself when they asked. (The so-called "Great Commission" - who is it addressed to, anyway? We commonly hear people preach it as though it is for all Christians, but our conservative congregations would go nuts if as "lay people" we actually started obeying it.)
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Josh
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Re: Convincing ethnic plain people to engage with the lost

Post by Josh »

Is there any advice you have for young seekers or outsiders who have a great passion to share Jesus' kingdom and encourage new disciples to join it?

Holdemans do seem to get this a lot more right, which is probably why they're the biggest conservative Mennonite group now. I wonder if others could learn from this, or find out just what exactly makes the difference. I hope this facet of us doesn't change - some folks say changes are rumbling, particularly with regard to doctrine of the church of God.

I fear that if we start interacting / mixing broadly with other CAs, it will move us in a completely unspiritual direction. Currently at my church we mix with Ohio Wislers, Nationwide, and (just a little bit) Northeastern and Pilgrim, but otherwise completely avoid the rest of the CA world and Amish world.

I am sadly seeing good reasons for this. :-(
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RZehr
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Re: Convincing ethnic plain people to engage with the lost

Post by RZehr »

Josh wrote:Is there any advice you have for young seekers or outsiders who have a great passion to share Jesus' kingdom and encourage new disciples to join it?

Holdemans do seem to get this a lot more right, which is probably why they're the biggest conservative Mennonite group now. I wonder if others could learn from this, or find out just what exactly makes the difference.
Maybe they do better on this. But I certainly don't believe that is why they're the biggest. I strongly believe it is because of their one true church teaching. I have no doubt about that.
Josh wrote: I hope this facet of us doesn't change - some folks say changes are rumbling, particularly with regard to doctrine of the church of God.

I fear that if we start interacting / mixing broadly with other CAs, it will move us in a completely unspiritual direction. Currently at my church we mix with Ohio Wislers, Nationwide, and (just a little bit) Northeastern and Pilgrim, but otherwise completely avoid the rest of the CA world and Amish world.

I am sadly seeing good reasons for this. :-(
I hope this does change. It is a wrong doctrine.
But I agree with the fear you mentioned, there will be consequences with more interaction and not all of it will be good, and I don't like that either. I think there would be losses, but the ends doesn't justify the means -one true church teaching.
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Josh
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Re: Convincing ethnic plain people to engage with the lost

Post by Josh »

RZehr wrote:Maybe they do better on this. But I certainly don't believe that is why they're the biggest. I strongly believe it is because of their one true church teaching. I have no doubt about that.
I've thought about this a fair bit, and I know that's what the rest of the Mennonite world believes, but I don't really see that it's true. Other "One True Church" groups like Deer Creeker Brethren or Reformed Mennonites are not that big and aren't growing. And Holdeman growth is significantly from conversions from the outside; the church is 8% non-ethnic Mennonites outside of North America now, and that's in spite of a rather large number of our converts ending up excommunicated within a few years (and very accurate numbers/statistics on membership & excommunication).
Josh wrote:I hope this does change. It is a wrong doctrine.
But I agree with the fear you mentioned, there will be consequences with more interaction and not all of it will be good, and I don't like that either. I think there would be losses, but the ends doesn't justify the means -one true church teaching.
But there's no resistance to mixing with Nationwide or with Ohio Wisler people, because (at least in my own congregation and our own ministers' there) in our perspective, they are pretty close to being a genuine church of God. (Nor is there any desire to try to convert their people to come over to our church.)

We do have a little concern that Ohio Wislers are drifting, which was shocking to me when I first heard it. In the Holdeman point of view, these are things that are of concern for drifting, and the concern I heard is these people will start not being a true church of they keep drifting too much:

- (Ohio Wisler) Reading "millenialist" books, or allowing a preacher who holds pre-millenial views, even if he promises not to preach it from the pulpit, lack of any visible local evangelistic outreach / tract work etc

- (Nationwide) Lack of church discipline, influence from evangelical / Protestant views of doctrines, not enough visible local evangelistic outreach

You can imagine how shocked I am to hear these things.
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Bill Rushby
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Re: Convincing ethnic plain people to engage with the lost

Post by Bill Rushby »

Josh wrote: " Other "One True Church" groups like Deer Creeker Brethren..."

By "Deer Creeker Brethren" I guess you mean the Old Brethren German Baptists. I have some familiarity with this group. They are indeed growing! Over the last several years, they have established a second settlement at Trenton MO. As far as I know, both the Camden IN and Trenton MO groups are growing, partly through conservative Old German Baptists joining them. Both church districts report regularly in *The Budget*.

By the way, there is another horse-and-buggy group in the Covington OH area. They are the Old Order German Baptist Church, and their group is now growing very vigorously too. The Deer Creekers farm with horses, but the Covington group (the "Petitioners") use tractors and modern farm equipment.

When I had my first contact with the "Deer Creekers", they were a somewhat static and despondent fellowship; that has changed dramatically. A German Baptist friend and I attended the annual meeting at Camden where they elected a young brother to the ministry. He and his wife both cried profusely, and he told them he wasn't up to the responsibility. They assured him that he could do it, and he wound up closing the meeting! It was a very touching occasion. (By the way, both husband and wife go forward and the elders pray for them with the laying on of hands.)

I think this brother proved to be a very effective leader. A few years ago, he was driving his spring wagon to town, to settle his father's estate. A truck hit his rig, and he was killed. Despite this tragic event, the church continues to flourish, as it did under his leadership.

I have never heard that the OBGBs consider their body to be the one true church. Do you have any documentation for this claim?
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Bill Rushby
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Re: Convincing ethnic plain people to engage with the lost

Post by Bill Rushby »

Another reason the Brethren horse-and-buggy groups are growing is that they are English-speaking; Deitch and German are often serious barriers for English-speaking outsiders who want to join a horse-and-buggy church.
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Joy
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Re: Convincing ethnic plain people to engage with the lost

Post by Joy »

Convincing Bible-believing churches to engage with former prisoners has been a disheartening thing in my experience. Cults are happy to take them, even in prison--why not Christians? Yes, a church must be careful not to be naive in its dealings with former criminals, but if a person is sincere in wanting to follow Jesus, he desperately needs a church fellowship. If I have been writing to certain guys from fifteen to almost twenty years, and see big changes in attitude toward the Lord and life, then I feel they should be given a chance in a fellowship. Obviously I am very limited in how much I can get involved in a man's life once he leaves prison, and mature men should step up and disciple such converts.

Off my soapbox.
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Bill Rushby
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Re: Convincing ethnic plain people to engage with the lost

Post by Bill Rushby »

Good comment, Joy! But the task of helping a released inmate can be quite formidable.
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