Soloist wrote: ↑Wed Jul 19, 2023 8:06 am
#3. Holdemans may have been transitional on the “intake” side at one point, sourcing significant expansion from OO Amish and from Wengers. They didn’t ever have a culture settle of being transitional on the “outflow” side, which is part of what transitional means to me. See more notes below
I disagree with this, Holdeman do lose members and are transitional by the litmus of members leaving for more liberal positions.
Of course, we have argued about the liberal aspects of your group before.
There are very few people who leave for other conservative Anabaptist groups. Nearly all go straight into the world, perhaps to an evangelical church. There is the occasional person who ends in at a RNoC type of church.
This is a rather stark difference. In my old type of church, it was basically expected that young people would go to a BMA or liberal Charity church. I can’t think of a single young person in Holdeman circles who has done that. One person goes to a Church of Christ, which is neither plain nor Anabaptist.
As for simply arguing that a sign of transitional churches is leaving for more liberal camps then I would postulate that there are no non-transitional churches.
In my mind a better argument is the amount of change over the years and outside of old order groups… seems like everyone is changing but some deny it by not changing the standards while practice changes.
“Transitional” means a few things:
- The church leadership is comfortable sourcing the majority of its members from more conservative Anabaptist churches, as opposed to people who become members because the grew up there, new converts, people from Catholic, evangelical, etc. backgrounds, or people from
less plain backgrounds.
- The church membership is comfortable with many people leaving for a less conservative, but still Anabaptist, church, particularly young people, and continues to see them as “Christians” and fellowship with them. For example, a family grows up in a Mid-West church. Their daughter decides she wants to watch movies, wear makeup etc so she starts attending a BMA church and ends up having her wedding there. Later on, her and her husband decide to attend an RNoC church. All of these institutions are “transitional”. Everyone stays in fellowship with each other through the entire transition. (Her own grandmother may have grown up Old Order Amish, but married someone who went to an Amish-Mennonite church that transitioned to Nationwide and then disaffiliated with them and affiliated with Mid-West.)
- Nobody breaks fellowship lines over someone going to a less conservative church. OTC churches like Holdemans don’t do this.
- Another thing I have seen in transitional churches is “spiritual concern for people becoming more conservative”. They would be extremely concerned if someone started talking about going to a more conservative church and may even question if the person really is born again, or has fallen into “works”. The same concern does not extends to people becoming LESS conservative.
The reason I am interested in this topic is because transitionalism is a serious impediment to reaching the lost, evangelism, mission work, and discipling the weaker brother, which is what I see the church’s entire mission as being. (And no, persuading Amish people to buy cars and attend your church does not count as “mission work”, “reaching the lost”, “evangelism”, or “discipling”),
Transitional churches are, in effect, canker sores or cancerous growths on the body of Christ: they are still alive, but if left untreated, they will eventually cause parts of the body to become dead which will need to be amputated. Transitional churches are in need of a visit with the Great Physician, that they may be either cold or hot. They should buy gold refined in the fire and clothes that they might stop being naked.