Question about Followers of Jesus (State College, PA)

Christian ethics and theology with an Anabaptist perspective
Ernie
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Re: Question about Followers of Jesus (State College, PA)

Post by Ernie »

Josh wrote:
Ernie wrote:The people who started this church come from Catholic, Assemblies of God, Beachy Amish-Mennonite, Nationwide Fellowship, Old Conference German Baptist, Independent Baptist, Washington/Franklin Conference, Charity, BMA, and Southeastern Conference backgrounds. These folks aren't really interested in trying to find a surname that means something historically but has very little meaning to the unchurched. If pushed, they would all say they fit under the Anabaptist umbrella and they are happy to be identified as such when the term is understood, even though most of them have not been rebaptized.
Would they be comfortable saying "we are similar to Mennonites"?
Some are. Some are not. A German Baptist has little interest in being identified as "we are similar to Mennonite".

If given the opportunity, I like to refer to the early Anabaptist movement and then talk about the surnames that developed. and what we all have in common. The problem is that this lets curious Christians off the hook. If you simply say that we are Christians or people who try to follow Jesus, it makes some people uncomfortable because many of them claim to be doing the same thing and they don't want to have a conversation about what it means to follow Jesus.
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Heirbyadoption
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Re: Question about Followers of Jesus (State College, PA)

Post by Heirbyadoption »

Josh wrote:That's what my particularly group does, simply calling ourselves the "church of God" and identifying a congregation by its location.

However, nobody else does, and they call it the Holdeman church, and call its members Holdemans. So even if you try hard not to be identified by a leader in your past, everyone else will still do so.
Are they no longer "Church of God In Christ, Mennonite"? I'd never seen it without Mennonite in it on any of their churches/tracts. Is this a new change?
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Josh
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Re: Question about Followers of Jesus (State College, PA)

Post by Josh »

Heirbyadoption wrote:
Josh wrote:That's what my particularly group does, simply calling ourselves the "church of God" and identifying a congregation by its location.

However, nobody else does, and they call it the Holdeman church, and call its members Holdemans. So even if you try hard not to be identified by a leader in your past, everyone else will still do so.
Are they no longer "Church of God In Christ, Mennonite"? I'd never seen it without Mennonite in it on any of their churches/tracts. Is this a new change?
That's the official name, mostly to avoid confusion with the "Church of God in Christ", a 6+ million member denomination, and with various "Church of God" groups, also numbering in the millions.

But in casual speech someone just refers to our own church as "the church of God", if it's clear we aren't talking about the Church of God (Cleveland, TN) down the street.
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Re: Question about Followers of Jesus (State College, PA)

Post by Heirbyadoption »

K, thanks. Interesting to know. The ones I grew up and attended with on occasion in CA generally referred to themselves in conversation as Holdemans, Mennonites, or Holdeman Mennonites, but I suppose it wasn't as much an issue for them, having almost no other Mennonites in California. I can think of once that Doug Koehn called them the COGICM in his sermon, but other than that I wouldn't have known it but from their church sign. Just my experience, though.
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Re: Question about Followers of Jesus (State College, PA)

Post by Josh »

Heirbyadoption wrote:K, thanks. Interesting to know. The ones I grew up and attended with on occasion in CA generally referred to themselves in conversation as Holdemans, Mennonites, or Holdeman Mennonites, but I suppose it wasn't as much an issue for them, having almost no other Mennonites in California. I can think of once that Doug Koehn called them the COGICM in his sermon, but other than that I wouldn't have known it but from their church sign. Just my experience, though.
There is a general feeling that we shouldn't refer to the church by John Holdeman's name. He specifically taught against this. So it would be improper to refer to my church as a "Holdeman" church.

Adding ", Mennonite" to the end was a compromise.
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Heirbyadoption
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Re: Question about Followers of Jesus (State College, PA)

Post by Heirbyadoption »

Understandable. And my current Brethren fellowship is technically not Old, it's no longer German, it was never associated with the actual Baptist movement, and it makes no claim to be "the" church, yet sometimes the names stick whether we like them or not... In general though, I confess to struggling with ANY denomination using a variant of the Church of God as a denominational name, because it inherently sets up a dichotomy between its members and nonmembers, even if well meant. I understand its not malicious and the One True Church ideology is fading, but it still creates the aforementioned division, and then the burden of explaining that it's not what we really mean... Do you think the COGICM will ever change their name?
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Re: Question about Followers of Jesus (State College, PA)

Post by Josh »

Heirbyadoption wrote:Understandable. And my current Brethren fellowship is technically not Old, it's no longer German, it was never associated with the actual Baptist movement, and it makes no claim to be "the" church, yet sometimes the names stick whether we like them or not... In general though, I confess to struggling with ANY denomination using a variant of the Church of God as a denominational name, because it inherently sets up a dichotomy between its members and nonmembers, even if well meant. I understand its not malicious and the One True Church ideology is fading, but it still creates the aforementioned division, and then the burden of explaining that it's not what we really mean... Do you think the COGICM will ever change their name?
The original intent was to just identify ourselves as part of the church of God, with the idea that lots of other churches of God exist elsewhere. (Church of Christ has a similar philosophy.) Eventually, John Holdeman ended up dismayed that most other churches weren't interested at all in the early teachings of Menno Simons, Michael Sattler, or nonresistance, but the name stuck.

There would be far too much resistance to ever naming the church after John Holdeman. I don't think the name will ever change. Personally, I don't think the name "Church of God in Christ, Mennonite" is particularly offensive or exclusionary; there isn't much of a focus at all on unity with other Mennonites, though, since there are walls way too high for that to ever happen. Most other plain Mennonites would never in a million years accept full communion with, for example, my own home congregation, as it has some divorced & remarried members.
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Re: Question about Followers of Jesus (State College, PA)

Post by Heirbyadoption »

The original intent was to just identify ourselves as part of the church of God, with the idea that lots of other churches of God exist elsewhere. (Church of Christ has a similar philosophy.) Eventually, John Holdeman ended up dismayed that most other churches weren't interested at all in the early teachings of Menno Simons, Michael Sattler, or nonresistance, but the name stuck.
With all due respect, could you back this up? Having gone to war with a few One True Church-ers in the COGICM in my youth, the proclaimed innocence of that first statement seems a bit incongruous.

And I wasn't meaning could the name ever change to something including Holdeman, just away from COG. The name is exclusionary in its identifying specificity by it's very usage (on a deeper level than more generic titles like Christian Fellowship or Assembly or etc), even if the people are not. And yes, we can disagree on that if you like. :)
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