Churches, Dealerships, and Franchises

[NedFlanders]

Does this change in Pilgrim mean they will stop setting up in other churches “backyard” as you call it?

I doubt it, since a significant portion of growth in Pilgrim churches is transfer growth from more conservative churches. This way of growing the church is a part of their model.

It might make sense for Pilgrim to establish districts that line up nicely with Nationwide, Eastern, W/F, and whoever else their “feeder” groups are, if that is where the majority of the membership will come from.

I wish they’d realize how hard this is on seekers who are essentially heading in the opposite direction they are. It creates such confusion.

[Ernie]

Somehow I think this has been tried before.

I think most attempts at this, do not establish solid parameters, but rather keep moving the fences, resulting in a bigger and bigger tent.
And I agree that this does not work.

I’ve seen too many removed bishops and ministers due to holding the line, any established fence held will eventually cause their removal as somehow the flock starts pushing and won’t accept no.

Only in transitional churches. In stable churches, such bishops and ministers are renowned.

[Ernie]

My brother’s church’s school used to try to do this. So one family might watch TV at home, another doesn’t really practice the veiling, and so forth, but they all try to go to the same school. The school has a certain dress code and so forth. Every family was supposed to respect the other families.

In practice, this hit absurd limits. In particular, the grandchild of one of the founding bishops of that church eventually departed for a more liberal church (formerly in BMA, eventually BMA disassociated with them). To repeat quote I heard, “We are such and such’s grandchildren. Nobody is ever going to tell us what to wear.” So they would let their children wear whatever and violate the school’s dress code. School administration seemed powerless to do anything about this, until…

Eventually, the nearby Beachys got fed up with this and started their own school, with stricter rules: basically to attend you needed to be in compliance with some of their church rules (not very difficult but respect for the dress code would be one of them). The the Beachy families stopped sending their kids to that school. My brother also switched, and shortly thereafter, other families switched. So now my brother’s church doesn’t send any of its own members children to its own school.

It has been a far more wholesome environment for my nieces and I feel a lot better about the friendships they are making there.

Sounds like parameters I would not be comfortable with.

[Ernie]

Lancaster Conference comes to mind...

Are you thinking of the difference between the Martindale District and the rest of LMC?

That seems to be all that's left of anything resembling what Ernie is talking about and I'm not sure how much longer that can last.

I was thinking though of the slightly broader sweep of LMC history going back to the 1950-60's splits that occurred. The Bishops essentially envisioned something similar to Ernie's vision when they loosened the discipline of the conference that thusly prompted the departure of various proto-Ultra Conservative elements. For a while the vision held even after they abolished the published discipline in 1983 that allowed for more district/congregational autonomy/discernment. I remember as a child in the 80's that much of the conference looked like an average KMF congregation looks today. Indeed, the KMF congregation nearest my home was once a part of LMC and our two churched would host joint youth activities together. Even in my own congregation where the church was well ahead of the rest of the conference in becoming more evangelical in look and style; there were many women with coverings and even older men with the old straight-cut coats. Our pastor wore a straight-cut coat until his retirement in the mid-90's.

The Lancaster (and we could add Franconia) vision was one of a biblically-based, big-tent Church where conservative districts/congregations and families could fellowship with those that drew the lines in more assimilated/evangelical place. Nature abhors a vacuum though, and lacking any uniform standard, more and more families/churches and districts drifted in the assimilated direction causing remaining conservative elements like the KMF and others to break off. As more lines were crossed by the majority of the conference (e.g. Merger, women in ministry, allowance for individuals to join army/police) more groups broke off, leaving behind a theologically, conservative evangelical group that looks fairly uniform and indistinguishable from the local non-denom. church.

Martindale District is of course unique and an outlier and I think they've managed to maintain a different standard in the face of drift by the rest of the conference while at the same time remaining a constituent of the conference because they're a small geographically defined district. They've remained cohesive and united in their small corner of the conference. That compared to my local KMF congregation that was the only conservative congregation in the North-Penn district when they finally decided to leave LMC and join KMF.

I don't know you could operate a church in which the parishioners love the world and are drifting toward it. My hypothesis doesn't have space for people on that trajectory.

In my mental hypothesis, those who grew up in Plain Anabaptist church would be expected to keep being Plain, and those who grew up in Evangelical churches and other not as disciplined backgrounds would be encouraged/expected to head in the direction of adding more disciplines to their lives, not less.

[joshuabgood]

Lancaster Conference comes to mind...

Are you thinking of the difference between the Martindale District and the rest of LMC?

That seems to be all that's left of anything resembling what Ernie is talking about and I'm not sure how much longer that can last.

I was thinking though of the slightly broader sweep of LMC history going back to the 1950-60's splits that occurred. The Bishops essentially envisioned something similar to Ernie's vision when they loosened the discipline of the conference that thusly prompted the departure of various proto-Ultra Conservative elements. For a while the vision held even after they abolished the published discipline in 1983 that allowed for more district/congregational autonomy/discernment. I remember as a child in the 80's that much of the conference looked like an average KMF congregation looks today. Indeed, the KMF congregation nearest my home was once a part of LMC and our two churched would host joint youth activities together. Even in my own congregation where the church was well ahead of the rest of the conference in becoming more evangelical in look and style; there were many women with coverings and even older men with the old straight-cut coats. Our pastor wore a straight-cut coat until his retirement in the mid-90's.

The Lancaster (and we could add Franconia) vision was one of a biblically-based, big-tent Church where conservative districts/congregations and families could fellowship with those that drew the lines in more assimilated/evangelical place. Nature abhors a vacuum though, and lacking any uniform standard, more and more families/churches and districts drifted in the assimilated direction causing remaining conservative elements like the KMF and others to break off. As more lines were crossed by the majority of the conference (e.g. Merger, women in ministry, allowance for individuals to join army/police) more groups broke off, leaving behind a theologically, conservative evangelical group that looks fairly uniform and indistinguishable from the local non-denom. church.

Martindale District is of course unique and an outlier and I think they've managed to maintain a different standard in the face of drift by the rest of the conference while at the same time remaining a constituent of the conference because they're a small geographically defined district. They've remained cohesive and united in their small corner of the conference. That compared to my local KMF congregation that was the only conservative congregation in the North-Penn district when they finally decided to leave LMC and join KMF.

It is probably a bit of an overstatement to say they remained united. Recently a number of them left and started a new church, Heritage, which is now BMA. And Churchtown as a whole church left and joined BMA.

[Soloist]

Only in transitional churches. In stable churches, such bishops and ministers are renowned.

That’s quite a package, what is a stable church then? I haven’t seen it.

Not eastern, not western fellowship and several independent churches.
Every single church we’ve seen with perhaps the exception of the Nationwide church has booted leaders.

That nationwide church, as much as we appreciate them, we could never be part of unless we want to be destitute.

[Judas Maccabeus]

Only in transitional churches. In stable churches, such bishops and ministers are renowned.

That’s quite a package, what is a stable church then? I haven’t seen it.

Not eastern, not western fellowship and several independent churches.
Every single church we’ve seen with perhaps the exception of the Nationwide church has booted leaders.

That nationwide church, as much as we appreciate them, we could never be part of unless we want to be destitute.

IIRC they have restrictions on employment that even Eastern does not have, right?

[Josh]

In my mental hypothesis, those who grew up in Plain Anabaptist church would be expected to keep being Plain, and those who grew up in Evangelical churches and other not as disciplined backgrounds would be encouraged/expected to head in the direction of adding more disciplines to their lives, not less.

What existing constituencies would meet the criteria of not being transitional? This would end up being some ultra-conservative groups, some of BMA, some of the Amish groups that left the main OO like the Dan church, Swartzies, Holdemans, the Scottsville-type churches, and so forth. But these groups are already very happy fellowshipping amongst themselves, and furthermore, think it's not a good idea to associate with people who are quite a bit more worldly (or quite a bit less).

They would be uncomfortable working too closely alongside each other. To give an example, Holdemans decided they don't want their young people participating in CAM type of activities, because it was too confusing for the young people to be around people who seemed to have a good spiritual life, yet were doing things like watching movies on their phone, listening to recorded music, and taking lots of photographs.

Likewise, a lot of more conservative Mennonites wouldn't want to associate too closely with Holdemans because they would feel our clothing is too worldly or they would be bothered by differing definitions of prohibited D&R.

The Scottsville-type churches don't want to be around Anabaptists who drive cars because they don't want their people to get into the habit of being comfortable hiring drivers.

In short, to find unity, there is more needed than simply a desire to not be transitional.

[Ernie]

Only in transitional churches. In stable churches, such bishops and ministers are renowned.

That’s quite a package, what is a stable church then? I haven’t seen it.

Not eastern, not western fellowship and several independent churches.
Every single church we’ve seen with perhaps the exception of the Nationwide church has booted leaders.

That nationwide church, as much as we appreciate them, we could never be part of unless we want to be destitute.

Yes, Washington/Franklin, Eastern, and most Nationwide churches. There are quite a few Old Order churches in the Anabaptist movement who also have the same dynamic.

[Sudsy]

I also don’t see it working to try to compose a church / school of people with wildly varying practices. It seems such a congregation lacks unity at a fundamental level.

I don't know what you mean by wildly varying, but as I said earlier, there needs to be parameters of course.

I'd rather be in a church with considerably different practices, in which nearly everyone in the church respects each other, than in a church with very little difference in practice, but little respect for each other or and little respect for churches who draw the lines a bit differently.

Me too. I guess such a church would be automatically labelled as 'worldly' or 'liberal'. When Christians, who believe in Christ as their Lord and Saviour, cannot get along with other Christians in a local church setting due to varied 'holiness' practises, then I don't care to be part of such a group.

There is the whole issue of individual maturing as a Christian that, to me, is interfered with by trying to get everyone conforming to some set of practises rather than allowing the Holy Spirit to work in each one's life as He choses to.

Seems much of this striving for uniformity is often not areas of sinning to be dealt with but rather some application of a word such as 'freedom' or 'modesty' or 'plainness' or 'separateness from the world', etc. This, imo, often drifts back into either a form of legalism or excess freedom rather than allowing for personal conviction of the Holy Spirit as one spiritually grows.

My experience in our local MB church was one to encourage one another to follow the Lord as the Holy Spirit was leading them and to encourage one another in this way to seek the Spirit's guidance. However, this approach by some here would be too liberal, too much freedom, too worldly.

It seems to me the main issue is whether or not a church can have unity without uniformity. I believe it can and have been in such church groups. It seems those who think the opposite believe unity must be forced upon all to reflect a certain look of Christianity to the world. It appears to me that there is an issue of pride involved here as in 'we are the model church' and this can be from either a 'liberal' view or a 'conservative' view. As in 'we are the best followers of Jesus with our requirements' or 'we are the most set free from legalism' (which I think the latter was the Corinthian church problem). Pride is one of the big sins that God especially hates.

Anyway, it is sad for me to read that in a quest for uniformity, Anabaptists have become so fragmented. Especially when I read what some of the issues were for these splits. I agree with Ernie that I would much rather be in a church where we respect one another's convictions. This is likely a big reason why some are not more soul winning minded as so much attention is being put on trying to make the local church 'without spot or wrinkle' which Jesus has already done. As scripture says, He has made us holy so live like it as the Spirit guides us to grow in Him. Pursue unity in Jesus and allow for growth in numbers and holiness as the Spirit works in each one in His timing and in His way.

Well, thats my 2 cents on this and some might think that is overstating it's worth.