Anabaptist church planting: a proposal

[Ken]

But if I was going to guess as to which ones will still be around 100 years from now like the Mennonite communities our forefathers built. I know which I would pick.

Are you attempting to plant such a community? Why or why not?

During the time that my wife and I spent in Texas we spent a lot of effort trying to decide where we wanted to make our permanent home and future "homestead" for our children and grandchildren and those to follow. Since Texas was never going to be our permanent home. In doing so we shopped around to various communities and church communities all around the country. And since relocating have gotten involved in the church community that best matched our own beliefs and values. Which isn't a perfect match but no church (or human institution) is.

I suspect there are probably very few communities in the US (at least ones that we would consider) where we couldn't find like-minded Christians to fellowship with. But then we are less doctrinaire or dogmatic than many here and already come from different backgrounds since my wife was raised Catholic and I was raised Mennonite. So there is no small amount of compromise already involved in our marriage.

Would it have been interesting to be involved in some sort of church planting project? Perhaps. But the likelihood that I would have found a group of like-minded people to join us in that sort of project is far smaller than the likelihood that we could find an existing community that suits us.

As an aside, this Christmas break I have gotten involved in researching our family tree with my daughter on Ancestry.com which is a astonishingly powerful tool. We can trace many of our family threads back to 1500 in Germany, Switzerland, France. I think we may have to pay for an upgraded package to go back further than 1500 since it is odd that so many of them end at 1500.

But the point is that a vast number of our ancestors arrived in PA between about 1700 and 1750 where they set about building the Anabaptist communities in Mifflin, Lancaster, and Bucks counties that exist to this day. I find that impressive. They built something that lasted for 10 generations. Going forward I'm more interested in doing the same. Rather than dropping in and out of places that I have no intention of building a future in for ourselves and our future generations.

[Praxis+Theodicy]

Well, actual reality is that most people like to associate with other people with whom they have lots of things in common.

The truth is that people "like" a lot of things, and absolutely no where is it the mission of the church to be driven by the natural whims and divisive instincts of unregenerate sinful humans. The church is not a social club where I can find people "like me", it is a place where people come together to help each other shed the old self with its preferences and desires, and to put on the new man, which resembles Christ Jesus. I venture to say that if a church makes it a goal to become a like minded body where people find other people "like me" instead of "like Christ", that church is a heretical cult which can only operate by (1) ignoring the very purpose of the church to disciple people into the image of Jesus, and (2) ignoring very obvious New Nestament principles about integrating various cultures together into one body.

[Josh]

The truth is that people "like" a lot of things, and absolutely no where is it the mission of the church to be driven by the natural whims and divisive instincts of unregenerate sinful humans. The church is not a social club where I can find people "like me", it is a place where people come together to help each other shed the old self with its preferences and desires, and to put on the new man, which resembles Christ Jesus.

Let me express this another way. Most people don't have the capability or skills to learn how to effectively form a community, resolve conflicts, and so on with people who are vastly different than them.

God explicitly has organised people into families, clans, tribes, tongues, and nations. We work against God's plan when we think we can overcome what God decided to do with human beings at the Tower of Babel.

I venture to say that if a church makes it a goal to become a like minded body where people find other people "like me" instead of "like Christ", that church is a heretical cult which can only operate by (1) ignoring the very purpose of the church to disciple people into the image of Jesus, and (2) ignoring very obvious New Nestament principles about integrating various cultures together into one body.

I think it's fine for congregations to settle around being (for example) a place where 1 language predominates. And I see nowhere in the NT that it says a single congregation is supposed to be some modernist American melting-pot of different cultures. To the contrary, excessive attempts to do so brought in endless conflict, and the early church very quickly adapted to having different cultures in different places, different rites, and so on. (The apostolic churches to this day have a huge diversity of cultures, but a given congregation usually reflects just one of those cultures.)

But go ahead and try to form a conservative Anabaptist congregation with a diversity of cultures, and get back to me in 10 or 20 years and let me know how things like conflict resolution, having marriages that last, etc. is going.

[Josh]

I find that impressive. They built something that lasted for 10 generations. Going forward I'm more interested in doing the same. Rather than dropping in and out of places that I have no intention of building a future in for ourselves and our future generations.

In a nutshell I would say this is the main point of what I believe (and what I spend much of my time arguing about on this forum). I think the West and America have turned into an entire society full of people dropping in and out of places with no intention of building a future for themslves (or for others). Instead, it is a society defined by people who either relocate halfway across the country for a better "job opportunity", or end up forced to relocate halfway across the country because undesired, unwanted changes in society mean they have to do so to survive.

Often the reason for these seismic shifts are in the name of "free markets" or "free trade" or "commerce", with many (empty) promises like lower prices for consumer goods. The end result is shattered communities, families that are strangers to each other, and eventually those consumer prices go up anyway.

[AndersonD]

But if I was going to guess as to which ones will still be around 100 years from now like the Mennonite communities our forefathers built. I know which I would pick.

Are you attempting to plant such a community? Why or why not?

As an aside, this Christmas break I have gotten involved in researching our family tree with my daughter on Ancestry.com which is a astonishingly powerful tool. We can trace many of our family threads back to 1500 in Germany, Switzerland, France. I think we may have to pay for an upgraded package to go back further than 1500 since it is odd that so many of them end at 1500.

But the point is that a vast number of our ancestors arrived in PA between about 1700 and 1750 where they set about building the Anabaptist communities in Mifflin, Lancaster, and Bucks counties that exist to this day. I find that impressive. They built something that lasted for 10 generations. Going forward I'm more interested in doing the same. Rather than dropping in and out of places that I have no intention of building a future in for ourselves and our future generations.

Sort of funny listening to you, Ken along with Josh talk of creating a community that last 10 generations. If I am not mistaken, both of you have moved geographically quite a bit which is 21st century behavior. We're a highly mobile society, unlike the 18th and 19th centuries. Sorry I don't understand.

[Ken]

Sort of funny listening to you, Ken along with Josh talk of creating a community that last 10 generations. If I am not mistaken, both of you have moved geographically quite a bit which is 21st century behavior. We're a highly mobile society, unlike the 18th and 19th centuries. Sorry I don't understand.

Well, I certainly can't speak for Josh. But for myself, my thinking and priorities have changed over time as I have gotten married and made a family. I did not get married until my mid-30s and our 3 daughters span 8 years. When I was younger and single I was very much the adventurer. I went to Guatemala in the Peace Corps out of college and then followed that by shorter term development assignments with different agencies in Honduras, Costa Rica and northern Brazil with MCC. And then worked as a fisheries biologist in Alaska which led to graduate school and a professional job with NOAA in Seattle, Alaska, and Washington DC. But that was my single life.

Eventually I fell in love and got married to a young doctor from Chile who moved up to join me in Alaska. But her required medical residency in the US brought us to Texas through no particular choice of our own. The selection process for medical residencies is a complicated lottery system and it turned out that the top programs that were interested in bilingual Hispanic doctors were in Texas (also New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada) and not the Pacific Northwest. So we ended up matching with a program in Waco, TX. I clung to my old life for two years doing consulting work with my old agency but eventually tired of having a professional life 3 time zones behind and having to travel back to Alaska for weeks at a time with young kids at home so I made a big career change into science teaching and began to invest myself much more into the local community rather than a professional world in distant states. We looked at moving back to the Pacific Northwest but in the early years my wife's professional options were so much bigger in Texas and as a newish teacher I was invested with my work and co-workers and teaching team in Texas so the years kind of slid by.

When your kids are young, your world is their world and they go wherever you go. We frequently traveled back and forth to South America with our kids in tow, and to the Pacific Northwest to see my family. But as they began to get older and start having their own lives it became clear that the geography that we had picked for them was very much going to determine the trajectory of their lives. We were involved in two local churches during that time but they were small and our girls' circle of friends were not really centered on our churches. In fact most of their friends were Southern Baptists and they were getting sucked into that world. The big Baptist mega-churches have endless youth and social events that they would be getting sucked into and it is hard to say no when your daughter wants to go to some entirely wholesome Christian youth related function with her friends.

So I began to think much more about how geography really does affect the trajectory of your family and future generations. We had never really intended to stay permanently in Texas and began to think much more seriously about moving to some more permanent place to finish raising our kids and set up something of a family homestead for future generations. Not a physical homestead so much as a geographic one. We looked at Pennsylvania and upstate NY and Vermont where we have family (especially in PA). We looked at various thriving and growing places around the country where we didn't have ties but had good opportunities (CO, MN, CA, NC, NM). And after much vacation travel, research and thought we landed in Southwest Washington just north of Portland. The location provided both of us with good professional opportunities which wasn't the case everywhere. There were good schools and university options for our girls. We were close to my parents and lots of extended family so our girls got to know cousins much more than in TX. And in terms of the environment, the Pacific Northwest seemed to be on a much more sustainable trajectory with climate change and drought and population pressures from Latin America. One can never know the future, but for potential grandchildren growing up in the 2030s, 2040s, or 2050s it seemed like a better bet than TX. As did the upper Midwest.

Despite having lived here now for over 20 years, my wife is still very much a Latina and wants to have her children (and future grandchildren) within her orbit. We have a bigger house than we need because she likes to fill it on holidays and likes to be the center of everyone else's orbit. And we wanted to put down roots that would not only last for our immediate family but provide stability and opportunity for future generations as well. She wants to be the home that our kids and future grandkids want to come back to. And geography plays a big part in that. We have daughters not sons, and their interests are not rural. One is in college and thinking of a future career in biomedical research. The other is about to go to college and wants to be a psychologist. And the oldest is a marketing exec with a social media marketing company. These are not rural careers. And while carving out some rural off-the-grid compound in Alaska or Montana or Nebraska or someplace might appeal to one side of me. It would not interest my wife or my daughters. So life is about compromise too. I also think much more locally than I did when I was young and want to be much more invested in my local community than I ever did when I was in my 20s and early 30s and only saw home as a launch pad for international adventures.

In the end I think we made the right choice for us. My wife has one unmarried brother and I have two unmarried brothers so it is really just us carrying on the next generation. Will our family roots take hold and last for future generation? Who knows. But at least I think we have picked a location where that is more likely and where there is plenty of opportunity. We have found plenty of church community to get involved with here. The physical geography (cool green climate and beautiful outdoors) suits us more than flat sweltering Texas. A warmer planet will affect us less than most other places in the US and world. And our girls are all thriving and not growing up as Southern Baptist Texans and marring into Southern Baptist Texan families.

Long story short? As we have gotten older we have thought much more about the legacy of place and family than we ever did when we were young and more carefree and adventurous. And putting down roots for future generations and investing in our own local community has become much more important to us, especially in this global world. And I have come to appreciate and admire those who came before us and built the world we live in now. People who were building a world not just for them and their children but for their grandchildren and great grandchildren and generations yet to come. History and heritage are still important in a 21st Century world. Perhaps more so because they are more fragile.

[Josh]

Sort of funny listening to you, Ken along with Josh talk of creating a community that last 10 generations. If I am not mistaken, both of you have moved geographically quite a bit which is 21st century behavior. We're a highly mobile society, unlike the 18th and 19th centuries. Sorry I don't understand.

Well, I spent most of my life being a fully modern Western person who frequently moved for “career opportunities”.

After I became a Christian 9 years ago I decided I should instead choose to (a) be where I could find a good congregation and (b) be close to family. So I’ve spent 8 of the last years in Ohio near my parents and brother and sister, and one of those years near my brother in Australia. The Beachy church in Australia has sadly folded up.