Transition to a more *liberal* church??

[PeterG]

I don't know your situation. These two statements, one right after the other, leave me scratching my head.

I should clarify that we are not desiring more freedoms... the standards we had were fine with us.

What we are after is less emphasis on legalism and man-made rules, but where individual spiritual growth is a priority to the leadership.

I think I can identify with those statements. My own desire is to see people move away from depending on someone else to tell them what they cannot do (top-down standards), and develop the spiritual life that will lead them to set standards themselves, as a group (like a covenant agreement, where the statement of conduct for the congregation says things like "We believe that..." instead of "Members will not ...", or "... is not approved.").

Well said, Neto. For myself, I'm not really interested in doing anything commonly forbidden among conservative Anabaptists, but I am concerned that our standards may displace Jesus at the center of our faith. This is a danger that we have not adequately grappled with.

[steve-in-kville]

Lots of great replies... I took a chance on this thread and was totally expecting to get roasted pretty hard. I appreciate the words of caution, I haven't heard anything my wife and I already discussed. Thank you!

[Neto]

Lots of great replies... I took a chance on this thread and was totally expecting to get roasted pretty hard. I appreciate the words of caution, I haven't heard anything my wife and I already discussed. Thank you!

"... [hadn't] already discussed"?
Otherwise people will probably want to hear what you all discussed.....

[lesterb]

I don't know your situation. These two statements, one right after the other, leave me scratching my head.

I should clarify that we are not desiring more freedoms... the standards we had were fine with us.

What we are after is less emphasis on legalism and man-made rules, but where individual spiritual growth is a priority to the leadership.

I think I can identify with those statements. My own desire is to see people move away from depending on someone else to tell them what they cannot do (top-down standards), and develop the spiritual life that will lead them to set standards themselves, as a group (like a covenant agreement, where the statement of conduct for the congregation says things like "We believe that..." instead of "Members will not ...", or "... is not approved.").

[Disclaimer: I have not read the rest of this thread. I have been, and continue to be, almost unrighteously busy with business obligations. I just thought I'd let you all know I'm still alive, and respond to this subject, which has been much on my mind in recent months.]

I can sympathize with the feelings on this thread. But, I wonder, has anyone ever proven that this works? I noticed that a lot of people avowed that they weren't after liberty, etc. Yet I don't think I've seen a single case (including my own) where within a few years you weren't holding a different standard than you had before. Humans tend to take the path of least resistance.

So are your grandchildren going to hold a similar position to yours, Neto? Or have you simply provided that gateway to the world? I'm not trying to be nasty or critical. I'm just wondering.

My great-great-grandfather (I think) left the Old Order church after half of his family had left home. The first half of the family stayed Old Order, the second half joined the Old Mennonite Church with him. That was in the late 1800's. Jump ahead about 80 years. I went to high school with some of my relatives, who were part of the second half. My father came from the first half. The boys I went to school with could have been bums living on the street. Yet, Their grandfather wore a plain suit until he died.

Now if you go ahead another generation or two, the story looks a bit different. So maybe his decision just sped up the process. Maybe all of our great-great-great-grandchildren will be in the world anyway? Still it took about three generations longer to happen on the one side than the other.

[silentreader]

I don't know your situation. These two statements, one right after the other, leave me scratching my head.

I think I can identify with those statements. My own desire is to see people move away from depending on someone else to tell them what they cannot do (top-down standards), and develop the spiritual life that will lead them to set standards themselves, as a group (like a covenant agreement, where the statement of conduct for the congregation says things like "We believe that..." instead of "Members will not ...", or "... is not approved.").

[Disclaimer: I have not read the rest of this thread. I have been, and continue to be, almost unrighteously busy with business obligations. I just thought I'd let you all know I'm still alive, and respond to this subject, which has been much on my mind in recent months.]

I can sympathize with the feelings on this thread. But, I wonder, has anyone ever proven that this works? I noticed that a lot of people avowed that they weren't after liberty, etc. Yet I don't think I've seen a single case (including my own) where within a few years you weren't holding a different standard than you had before. Humans tend to take the path of least resistance.

So are your grandchildren going to hold a similar position to yours, Neto? Or have you simply provided that gateway to the world? I'm not trying to be nasty or critical. I'm just wondering.

My great-great-grandfather (I think) left the Old Order church after half of his family had left home. The first half of the family stayed Old Order, the second half joined the Old Mennonite Church with him. That was in the late 1800's. Jump ahead about 80 years. I went to high school with some of my relatives, who were part of the second half. My father came from the first half. The boys I went to school with could have been bums living on the street. Yet, Their grandfather wore a plain suit until he died.

Now if you go ahead another generation or two, the story looks a bit different. So maybe his decision just sped up the process. Maybe all of our great-great-great-grandchildren will be in the world anyway? Still it took about three generations longer to happen on the one side than the other.

Here where we are, it only took two generations for significant numbers of MW Mennonites to go back to the same things that moved their grandparents to leave the MC . (TVs, wedding rings, etc.) And then the next generation?

[Josh]

The answer is neither a focus on rules nor a focus on being "spiritual".

Instead, one can have both: a brotherhood that discerns together how to remain unspotted by the world, and yet also sees that being spiritually alive is important too.

Having a few seekers around really helps. Far from them being a worldly push, they often recognise weak spots the rest of the brotherhood is blind to. Churches do exist that are full of seekers or NMB members, yet overall maintain conservative distinctives.

I would argue that you can't really maintain long term spiritual life without conservative distinctive, and vice versa.

[haithabu]

Please excuse me as I ramble a bit.

It seems to me that the issue behind the question of plain vs fancy is how best to pass on our faith to our kids. Different people come up with different answers, but it's a matter of choosing the best means to the desired end. If I could guarantee my childrens' salvation by powering my vehicle with oats, then I would never have a car.

One advantage I can see of a family remaining conservative is that even if a child is not quite there spiritually, as long as he remains in the church there is a better prospect for the grandchildren to find the path to true faith. Whereas some who want to try a different way from their forefathers might find in a generation that it does not work and then the results on the family may be irreversible.

I acknowledge that when I look around at my cousins the results of our family going with the mainstream Mennonites has not been encouraging. Some few have dug in their heels with semi-conservative groups but it seems that over three generations many have kept on sliding straight out of the church and into the world. Or in a few cases the church has slid right along with them out into the world, at which point the youngest generation sees it as redundant anyway.

At the same time it is not always a downward slope (though it may be hard to tell sometimes from appearances). When I was young I was one of those whom Lester described as dressed like bums while our pastors still wore ties, but even in my scruffiest days I saw that our particular pastors had less faith than I did. I was that way in part because of the influence of the Jesus Movement which arose entirely outside of my church experience.

For my wife and I, it's always been a matter of passing on spiritual vitality to our children. Each one of us is born a pagan, and each generation must be evangelized anew. Our challenge and calling as parents must be to model a living faith so as to foster the same in our children with the help of the Holy Spirit and not just to produce well behaved pagans. I believe that that more than anything else makes the difference in whether ones children go on in the faith.

Having said that, we also took measures to protect them to some degree from worldly influences through Christian school and encouraging healthy friendships. We also did not raise them with the expectation that they should necessarily go off to college. They were all capable of it academically, but I did not know if they were all capable of it spiritually. The irony is that one of these measures had the opposite effect: because of certain issues the private school experience left a sour taste in some of our childrens' mouths whereas such public school experience as they had was relatively positive. But somehow God has worked in them anyway and most are walking with the Lord as faithfully as we could wish.

So I understand the desire to maintain a Christian subculture by maintaining certain standards of dress and of life which are not necessarily prescribed as such in the Bible. The trick I believe is is to keep it open enough that it will remain culturally accessible to seekers from the outside. It's not just a matter being faithful to the Great Commission, but like Josh said, it is necessary to the health of the group (though maybe from slightly different reasons as he gives). I think that any church that does not have first generation believers is at risk of becoming spiritually dull, and that is the greatest danger to it and to its children.

The other question in my mind is whether the plain approach can be maintained in the urban setting. Has any group been successful in doing so? Or is it only viable in a rural or small town setting - in which case must we write off the city? Or is our God a God of the valleys as well as of the hills?

[RZehr]

If being and dressing conservative is directly related to being legalistic and therefore dead spiritually, then it must correspondingly follow that being extremely liberal in thought and dress makes one more spiritual and closer to God.
Is this what we see? I don't think so. So the rule, is not a rule at all. There is conservative people who love the Lord and walk in his way and are not blindly legalistic.

[Neto]

I don't know your situation. These two statements, one right after the other, leave me scratching my head.

I think I can identify with those statements. My own desire is to see people move away from depending on someone else to tell them what they cannot do (top-down standards), and develop the spiritual life that will lead them to set standards themselves, as a group (like a covenant agreement, where the statement of conduct for the congregation says things like "We believe that..." instead of "Members will not ...", or "... is not approved.").

[Disclaimer: I have not read the rest of this thread. I have been, and continue to be, almost unrighteously busy with business obligations. I just thought I'd let you all know I'm still alive, and respond to this subject, which has been much on my mind in recent months.]

I can sympathize with the feelings on this thread. But, I wonder, has anyone ever proven that this works? I noticed that a lot of people avowed that they weren't after liberty, etc. Yet I don't think I've seen a single case (including my own) where within a few years you weren't holding a different standard than you had before. Humans tend to take the path of least resistance.

So are your grandchildren going to hold a similar position to yours, Neto? Or have you simply provided that gateway to the world? I'm not trying to be nasty or critical. I'm just wondering.

My great-great-grandfather (I think) left the Old Order church after half of his family had left home. The first half of the family stayed Old Order, the second half joined the Old Mennonite Church with him. That was in the late 1800's. Jump ahead about 80 years. I went to high school with some of my relatives, who were part of the second half. My father came from the first half. The boys I went to school with could have been bums living on the street. Yet, Their grandfather wore a plain suit until he died.

Now if you go ahead another generation or two, the story looks a bit different. So maybe his decision just sped up the process. Maybe all of our great-great-great-grandchildren will be in the world anyway? Still it took about three generations longer to happen on the one side than the other.

Only one of my (3) children is married, and our only grandchild will be 4 in December. So it's too early to tell. I will say that none of our children attend congregations as conservative as our current congregation was when we joined it, but neither are any of them anywhere near as 'liberal' in dress as I was before I decided to be plain. You may recall that I am from a 'non-plain' Mennonite background, and was in the Jesus People movement pretty strong for around 5 years. About a year or so after I {reluctantly} cut off my afro was when I became interested in being 'plain'. So in my case, the over-all 'drift' has been toward the plain side, not the 'liberal' side. But I have always been more interested in instilling a living faith in the lives of my children than in seeing them imitate my choices in dress & lifestyle. Sure, I wanted them to, because I would not have chosen that path myself if I did not believe it to be the best pathway. But I have found that it is easier to work with people who know they are not believers than with those who think they are, because of some external thing or another that they do or say. Where can you start with them? (What I do, not knowing if this is the best way, is just to act & talk to them as though I assume they ARE believers, even when I have serious doubts. Their presentation as believers creates the outward assumption that they are willing and interested in visiting about spiritual matters. So I do.)

So maybe I'm not the one to whom such questions should be directed, because I have never 'transitioned to a more *liberal* church'. But I will say that I would be saddened to see that my children or grandchildren ended up back where I fought my way back from, because THAT transition was not without risk of offending my parents & other family, who have to this day remained more *liberal* than I. But I know full well that "God has no grandchildren", and I would not be willing to sacrifice my children on a Plain altar on the off chance that at least my grandchildren may hear enough of the Gospel to believe. Being *un-liberal* is still my best choice, but I don't place it up there with a personal relationship with the Christ of God. I may answer these questions differently than others, because I came to a conservative view on my own - I did not have any brotherhood that supported me, other than another 'Jesus Freak', who believed that what ever got you closer to Jesus is what you should do.

[Sudsy]

I think I can identify with those statements. My own desire is to see people move away from depending on someone else to tell them what they cannot do (top-down standards), and develop the spiritual life that will lead them to set standards themselves, as a group (like a covenant agreement, where the statement of conduct for the congregation says things like "We believe that..." instead of "Members will not ...", or "... is not approved.").

I guess I lean toward what this guy says about this topic. Why not challenge this tradition altogether .

http://www.wordofhisgrace.org/wp/church ... -policies/

A couple of his excerpts that makes me question what man has done to further define what the New Covenant 'really means' in practise.

A church covenant or church membership policy, then, is a legalistic usurpation of the grace of the New Covenant. Quite frankly, I believe these covenants/policies to be attempts by the leadership of local churches to control the behavior of members with laws because the leadership does not have the faith to believe that Christians can be left to the care of the Holy Spirit and God’s Word (or, as Paul put it, commended “to God, and to the word of his grace” Acts 20:32). It seems to come down to a matter of control. Church covenants and membership policies are a means to exercise control over the members.

A church membership policy is, in essence, saying that the grace of the New Covenant, the in-dwelling of the Holy Spirit, and faith are insufficient. To these, we must add a law, called a church membership policy or church covenant. In response, I say with Paul, “This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh? Have ye suffered so many things in vain? if it be yet in vain. He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” (Galatians 3:2-5); and, “I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain” (Galatians 2:21).

However, I doubt few will back away from this practise or if they do they will likely be labelled 'liberal' to think Christianity can operate without these things. Looking forward to heaven when we all shall be like Him and none of this extra explanation on what this amounts to will be over.