Does the "Charity Church" really exist anymore?

[Soloist]

Claiming to be followers of truth yet reading books with magic and making a big deal over D/R. The hypocrisy is obvious.

Please tell me about these books of magic! I am intrigued!

(and no, I didn't read the entire thread. I asked a simple question and got four pages )

Oh don’t worry… you already read them.

[Ernie]

Some feel that making "avoiding drift" a primary goal is a well intentioned mistake that leads to a dying church. Life and contexts and society change. Therefore our primary goal perhaps should remain the true North, being like Christ and discipleship, knowing that we will in an ongoing way make strategic adjustments. That is, to have a vibrant and living faith.

Maintaining a scriptural practice is a good thing. And just because a church loses their first love does not make the practice a bad thing. (Even though a practice without love for God/neighbor can turn a good thing into an ugly experience.) But maintaining a good practice across the generations is still a good thing.
I think we need to be able to acknowledge the good practice without condoning other things that may accompany a less than fully alive church.

[Josh]

I feel that maintaining the covering is much more possible when it was explicitly practiced during prayer and public church worship and is much more understated the rest of the time.

I don't know what you are basing this on as there are large numbers of Anabaptists who emphasize headcovering for most waking hours, who have maintained the practice for centuries.

I feel the head covering for worship should cover the head, be opaque, not be symbolic, tiny, etc. and it is suitable to be different than something worn when not worshipping or praying. Amish do this, Holdemans do too, although Amish band other practices like being strict about what’s worn when going to town.

I think a practice of a transparent covering that doesn’t cover the head and is more like a transparent bun cover is not particularly defensible and (despite the protestations of Easterns who insist things must be identical to what the Lancaster Conference did in 1956) seems to lead to diminishing of the practice.

And yes, I realise I also said I understand the traditionalists who refuse to accept any change. I sympathise with them.

[Josh]

What is RNC?

I believe you used to be the president of that denomination’s Bible school.

RNC - All I could think of was the Republican National Committee. Maybe it is a mental block - I've never been a fan of the new name and its distance from its Anabaptist roots (although I'll admit the "conservative" in CMC was not a helpful identifier)- plus the change happened after I moved on.

I feel “conservative” would be a good term nowadays as many RNoC adherents are both political conservatives and many of them are indeed Republicans too. Of course, plain people like to use their own words for things, such as “conservative” meaning “someone who would think voting in the Republican primary means you’re a liberal”.

[Praxis+Theodicy]

]A separate seating Charity church would be on the far end of conservative in the Charity / “Christian Fellowship” world.

I am wondering about a few other things.

Do they still kneel for prayer during the service? If so do they kneel forwards or turn around and face backwards?

Is the music primarily hymns or are there some more modern praise and worship songs?

What kind of attire do the members wear during the week (eg tshirts for men, tshirts with writing on them, etc.)

I have been only once (going again tomorrow). We did not kneel in prayer but we were meeting in the poured concrete basement, so that was good I guess.
The church that referred us to this church did kneel during prayer one Sunday. Another Sunday we stood to pray. It seemed to be at the discretion of the moderator.

The music at the segregated seating church was all from an old hymnal. The referring church also had a small booklet of maybe 20ish contemporary songs, but their hymnal had over 1,000. Both churches mostly asked brothers and sisters to suggest songs. Both churches were a capella.

Neither churches seemed to have many people who would wear graphic tee shirts during the week. The referring church had a church standard that included something about buttons for guys, but they talked about it as if it was an old document that needed revisiting. The women at both churches were a variety of dresses. Some with floral print, some plain. All of them typical ankle length dresses, double layered. Some capes. I don't remember if anyone wore skirts, it seemed all dresses.

Headcovering in the referring church was all whire veil style. Maybe a bit of variety, I forget. At the newer church (with segregated seating) there were several white veils, at least a couple white kapps, and one full-heair-covered head wrap (2 including my wife).

I don't know if any of that info informs you of anything. Again, the more conservative church was a plant of Harmony Christian Fellowship in PA. The first church that referred us was from a church in Philedelphia, NY which has since folded i think.

[Josh]

Very interesting. What is the background of most of the people there?

[Ken]

I feel the head covering for worship should cover the head, be opaque, not be symbolic...

I expect that the only women who actually meet this criteria are Muslim. All the Anabaptist head coverings I have seen are at some level symbolic, even the Amish ones. The head is not completely covered and you can still see the woman's hair, etc.

[Soloist]

I expect that the only women who actually meet this criteria are Muslim. All the Anabaptist head coverings I have seen are at some level symbolic, even the Amish ones. The head is not completely covered and you can still see the woman's hair, etc.

You haven’t met my friends from Canada or seen the commune in Oregon before it dissolved.

[Ken]

I expect that the only women who actually meet this criteria are Muslim. All the Anabaptist head coverings I have seen are at some level symbolic, even the Amish ones. The head is not completely covered and you can still see the woman's hair, etc.

You haven’t met my friends from Canada or seen the commune in Oregon before it dissolved.

Perhaps. But they are not your typical conservative Anabaptists then.

[Soloist]

Wife: As a lady, I know several people from a couple of the agape fellowship churches, which originally came from charity, that wore head coverings (had to be black or white hanging veil) at least as big as caps or Holdeman coverings. Some of them covered even more than that, and they don’t change apparel during the week, and in fact, some of them even sleep in their coverings.
The men wear button up shirts, either short sleeve or long sleeve, no shorts outside of presumably swimming, which was segregated at least at the one church, and I have no idea about the other one, and the women mostly wear cape dresses or vest dresses, and a couple wear jumpers. Skirts are not allowed in that group, and although I don’t think this is a church standard, most of the people I know would be anti red dresses.
No instruments during church service, and usually the songs came out of the Purple Martin or the Christian Hymnary, or rarely from a patched together printed hymnal with some Gospel style songs. Also, I think the recent change when they became a fellowship was that youth needed phones completely locked down to the point where they couldn’t even have Whatsapp until they were either 18 or 21, and I know that they also wanted Internet accountability filters for everyone, although I don’t know what all was required or not because we weren’t members at the time. A lot of them did not come from Anabaptist groups, at least in the churches that I went to, although some did. Anyone currently in that fellowship can feel free to correct this.

The one thing I appreciated about the church that we went to, which I don’t know if it will continue to future generations or not, was that even though they had less standards than the conservative Mennonite churches, they didn’t try to wiggle out of them or disobey under the table. Every church has upsides and downsides, but that was my experience with Agape.