Anabaptist church planting: a proposal

[Josh]

I don’t think focusing on different people groups is all that helpful. Just get to know people personally. Love them like Jesus and then all this ethnic, culture, and etc stuff is seen rightly - as useless. At least as a person who grew up in the world I had to give up everything and literally do that. I don’t want for you to focus on what I gave up. I want to focus on Christ. If you keep coming back to backgrounds and etc - then you are the problem and heightening the awareness of a newcomer being different.

Nothing overrides Christlike hospitality in making others feel welcome - they won’t hardly pay attention to what you wear or have. And when they notice they will be more encouraged to do. So stop worrying about culture, culture might be where someone comes from but it isn’t who they are.

This is more about awareness of one's own people group (and your own church's dominant ethnic group) and that it may be an unreasonable barrier to seekers, and what to do about it.

[Josh]

Yes, but conservative Anabaptists and Mormon missionaries from North America who have never tasted a drop of alcohol their entire lives and have never even seen alcoholism in their extended families are not necessarily the best people to help Guatemalan families ravaged by alcoholism. Especially compared to local men who have been through the wringer with it and have lived with the destruction it brings and have now turned their lives around through the church. From what I have seen, they are the ones who are laser focused on helping their neighbors battle the same addictions that they faced. There was a Pentecostal church behind my house in Guatemala so I got to see a lot of it across the fence first-hand. Many services were almost AA or recovery-focused. People would be called up and praised for 2 weeks or 2 months of sobriety and surrounded by others with laying of hands, praise, moral support, thanking Jesus, and all that sort of thing. People would be crying and singing. They would do the AA-style sponsor thing. That isn't normally what you would see in a typical Menno or Mormon service. Does it work? [[Shrug]]. It seems to work better than what other churches are doing which is not much at all. But who knows.

Suffice to say that you don't know very much about a typical Mennonite mission, particularly urban ones in America (those are the ones with which I would be the most familiar).

Do local people always know better than foreign missionaries? I doubt it. But a lot of conservative Anabaptists don't actually have formal seminaries and trained pastors but just elect their preachers from their own ranks instead of relying on professional trained and hired ministers from the outside. So I would think there would be support for local people in other countries doing the same.

There is plenty of support for local people in other countries doing the same. My own denomination has "local people" (if that's what you want to call them) in our national churches, specifically Haiti and Nigeria, which no longer are considered "missions". However, we expect a unity of doctrine and a unity of some practice to remain. Pentecostalism with all of the speaking in tongues, "faith healing", prosperity gospel etc is something we are not interested in uniting with.

[Ken]

Suffice to say that you don't know very much about a typical Mennonite mission, particularly urban ones in America (those are the ones with which I would be the most familiar).

I doubt there is such a thing as the "typical" Mennonite mission. They are all different. When I was working in Guatemala I was familiar with these folks. https://mennoniteairmissions.org/ I had an uncle who worked with them for a number of years. They did good work but also seemed focused on turning Guatemalan Mayans into carbon copies of ethnic European Mennos with the cape dresses and such. I don't think it is any coincidence that they aren't even amount to rounding error compared to the spread of indigenous evangelical and Pentecostal groups who don't expect people to change all their dress and customs to mirror North Americans (or 16 century German peasants).

I also spent time with MCC missions in northern Brazil which is pretty much the opposite end of the spectrum. They were working with Catholic-founded health clinics and helping with local projects like building cheap low-tech wheelchairs from inexpensive bike parts.

I actually don't have any objection at all to people doing mission work overseas. I think it is usually a good experience for all involved. And broadening one's horizons is always a good thing. Although I think it is hypocritical of Americans to expect to have the right and freedom to travel and live anywhere they want in the world, but then at the same time object to people from overseas wanting to do the same thing. I'm referring to some of the anti-immigrant rhetoric common here.

But I do reiterate my belief that those who want to "plant" churches or communities elsewhere should be focused on creating homes and investing on building permanent communities in new places like our forefathers did. Rather than dropping in for short "service" missions before returning home. Whether here at home or overseas.

Yes Paul did "plant" churches around the Roman Empire. But the churches he planted were local people who ran their own affairs and were of those communities. But we don't live in Paul's time any more than we live in the time of Exodus. Most corners of the free world are already full of churches of every variety, all of them claiming to be direct descendants of Paul.

[Josh]

The topic is conservative Anabaptist church planting.

If you want to discuss planting a different kind of church, please start a separate thread.

[Ken]

The topic is conservative Anabaptist church planting.

If you want to discuss planting a different kind of church, please start a separate thread.

Nowhere in your original post did you restrict or limit your comments to conservative Anabaptist church planting.

In any event, my comments are about church planting in general, conservative or otherwise. But I have said what I intended to say and will step aside.

[NedFlanders]

I don’t think focusing on different people groups is all that helpful. Just get to know people personally. Love them like Jesus and then all this ethnic, culture, and etc stuff is seen rightly - as useless. At least as a person who grew up in the world I had to give up everything and literally do that. I don’t want for you to focus on what I gave up. I want to focus on Christ. If you keep coming back to backgrounds and etc - then you are the problem and heightening the awareness of a newcomer being different.

Nothing overrides Christlike hospitality in making others feel welcome - they won’t hardly pay attention to what you wear or have. And when they notice they will be more encouraged to do. So stop worrying about culture, culture might be where someone comes from but it isn’t who they are.

This is more about awareness of one's own people group (and your own church's dominant ethnic group) and that it may be an unreasonable barrier to seekers, and what to do about it.

I think the fact that we have to literally give up everything and people born into Anabaptist’s settings don’t have to give up anything should really make those born into stop and think about their perspective in how they present themselves. I even found myself seeing that my 15 year old daughter is far detached from relating to me. I’ve only been a member three years yet that’s enough for her to fail to relate to an unchurch background person.

[justme]

But I do reiterate my belief that those who want to "plant" churches or communities elsewhere should be focused on creating homes and investing on building permanent communities in new places like our forefathers did. Rather than dropping in for short "service" missions before returning home. Whether here at home or overseas.

i agree completely.

[NedFlanders]

But I do reiterate my belief that those who want to "plant" churches or communities elsewhere should be focused on creating homes and investing on building permanent communities in new places like our forefathers did. Rather than dropping in for short "service" missions before returning home. Whether here at home or overseas.

I wasn’t aware conservative Anabaptist’s weren’t doing this?

I wouldn’t really call them conservative or Anabaptist if they weren’t actually…

[Neto]

But I do reiterate my belief that those who want to "plant" churches or communities elsewhere should be focused on creating homes and investing on building permanent communities in new places like our forefathers did. Rather than dropping in for short "service" missions before returning home. Whether here at home or overseas.

I wasn’t aware conservative Anabaptist’s weren’t doing this?

** It depends on how you define 'short'. Some think of that as meaning 1 week up to maybe 1 year on the outside. As a former 'career missionary', I am still embarrassed that we only stayed for 18 years. In a situation like ours, with two languages to learn, and the second one never having been written before, we only began to be productive (in terms of our objective of Bible translation) after around 5 years on the field.

(Not that we were not doing worth-while work - just not much in the way of our true objective. The things that really fed into the work later was having learned the culture, formed close friendships with the people, and getting to a place with the language where we could do the work. There are people who can get to that spot more quickly, but a family with small children not so much, unless the husband leaves all of the 'survival' tasks to his wife, including child rearing. I made a conscious decision right at the beginning that I would not do that. Having small children there was not a 'hindrance', however, because it made us 'real people' to them. I will readily admit that I am not the smartest cookie in the jar. But what I've seen more than once is that it is the 'plodders' who keep going, while the creme of the crop get bored, and move on to something else. The mission agency was also not willing to 'waste' the really top-notch people on a small group like the Banawa.)

** For learning a single language and culture, I would consider anything less than 4 years to be 'short term'. And that's borderline. A single person MIGHT be able to be productive before that, because they would find it easier logistically to get immersed in the language & culture. I know only a few 'conservative anabaptists' who have stayed anywhere near that long.

(Also, I'll go ahead & open this can of worms: Single women are far more likely to thrive in isolated mission environments. Very few single men make it long term. I know a few, but there is a reason they stand out in my mind. I''ll let someone else try to figure out why that is.)

[Josh]

In my church mission terms are 3 years long, with a 3 month furlough after that and then an option to return for 2 years. Occasionally, a missionary decides to transfer their membership and moves overseas permanently. (They aren't supported by the mission anymore then tho.)

Young people who go and serve will serve for 1 year (teachers) or 2 years (alternative service). There isn't really an option for short term service other than disaster-relief work when larger work crews may be needed.

I think the fact that we have to literally give up everything and people born into Anabaptist’s settings don’t have to give up anything should really make those born into stop and think about their perspective in how they present themselves. I even found myself seeing that my 15 year old daughter is far detached from relating to me. I’ve only been a member three years yet that’s enough for her to fail to relate to an unchurch background person.

Most plain Anabaptists lack perspective about this (including the feeling of starting to be alienated from one's own children since they are essentially now part of a culture that is foreign to your own).

This becomes painfully obvious if you ask a group of plain Anabaptists to give up something from the world, for the cause of following Christ. The concept is essentially foreign to them.