Why have the Anabaptists FAILED at Reaching the Masses

[Sudsy]

mrbillian, what do you see as the solution for Anabaptists to reaching those outside their ethnicity ? How can a local church who are 95-100% Anabaptists of the same ethnic background begin to fill their churches with new converts from other ethnic backgrounds ?

[Judas Maccabeus]

Why have the Anabaptists failed at reaching the masses?

Mainline and Progressive Anabaptists have attempted reaching the masses. But their efforts have largely failed because of watering down the Gospel.

Old Order and Conservative Anabaptists have failed at this because they rarely attempt it.

But, is it desirable or even possible to reach the”masses.” I have seen my former denomination try to reach the “masses”:by watering down their message, to a point where the message is lost in the water of postmodernism of America culture.

Better a small and faithful church than one that is neither of these. As Robert pointed out above, it is a narrow way.

[Judas Maccabeus]

I agree with what Ken said as it pertains to the numbers. Not to many who don't grow up in our culture are attracted to the plain Anabaptist lifestyle. I know this is not always the case, but the ones from outside our Anabaptist culture who do attend our church tend to have a more colorful personality than the average person. Thats why I dont waste much effort in attempting to get seekers inside the Anabaptist churches and put more of my focus on having a relationship with the individual and planting a seed of the Gospel. If they chose to attend our church, then so be it. It's not "me" who gets credit to bringing them to salvation anyway. I'm just a mere tool.

Many plain Anabaptist tend to speak of outreach in terms of a "project" rather than "relationship". I think this could be why they get so many who are turned off by the conservative approach to outreach.

Maybe others have better advice for me so I'm open to hearing it!

It is largely because most in the general culture have not yet though it through, and reached the obvious conclusion that “routine middle class America “ is a catastrophe, and a total failure at producing a sustainable lifestyle across generations. We need to call people to escape its eternal dammnation, not attempt to cater to their latest whims.

[Sudsy]

Why have the Anabaptists failed at reaching the masses?

Mainline and Progressive Anabaptists have attempted reaching the masses. But their efforts have largely failed because of watering down the Gospel.

Old Order and Conservative Anabaptists have failed at this because they rarely attempt it.

But, is it desirable or even possible to reach the”masses.” I have seen my former denomination try to reach the “masses”:by watering down their message, to a point where the message is lost in the water of postmodernism of America culture.

Better a small and faithful church than one that is neither of these. As Robert pointed out above, it is a narrow way.

The 'narrow way'. Is this a certain way of being sanctified or is it a way of accepting Christ as our Lord and Saviour as there is no one else whereby we can be saved ?

[GaryK]

I like to take one issue at a time as the formatting gets weird.

Let's start with this.

"Anabaptists have no problem with strong church growth outside of North America."

Yes. They go into countries like Liberia. They bring big rich American dollars. They start churches using the strong dollar value based on being able to feed people physical food. The Liberians flock to them because they first want $ and their money. Sure they can make some converts. I'm also not knocking the entirety of foreign missions. I would say nothing if we Anabaptists were all in USA CITIES AND foreign missions. But we just go to foreign missions. There is still elitism. There is still the cultural thing. Volunteers then "serve time on the mission field" and then often return home to "menno way".

USA cities though, you pretty much can't bribe people with food - thus a major attractive card is gone. Apologetically most Anabaptists don't even know their founders or their theology. They know the culture and rules of their own church. They can't hold their own apologetics either in most cases when talking with other Christian denominations. They fail at USA cities because they have no bribes to offer. They are too scared to allow the church to impact the world.....

Because safety only exists when those people look like us and follow the rules.

Interesting how Bible school only allows "church members" to attend isn't it? Keep the system going...

You mention Liberia. We served 4 years in Liberia, being involved in the church planting effort that was under the direction of the church in Lott, TX.

You are correct that initially, quite a few Liberians became members of the church because they saw an avenue to the humanitarian aid CAM was providing. By the time we arrived in Liberia (2004) it was already becoming obvious that this was the case. Over the course of the next few years we attempted to make it clear through teaching and practice that the church was not to be seen as an avenue to CAM and put things in place to identify who was coming for what purpose. With these things in place and with making it clear that the church planting effort in Liberia was an attempt to eventually have indigenous Anabaptist churches there, under Liberian leadership, church growth slowed significantly.

In coming back to America, we felt led to involve ourselves in a church planting effort here in America, using a model similar to what we use in foreign endeavors, which we did under the oversight of the leadership team in Lott, TX. After 13 years, I have concluded that CA church planting in America, with the goal of reaching common Americans not raised in Anabaptist circles is significantly more difficult than what we experienced in Belize and Liberia.

The prosperity in America and the many, many church choices people have in America makes the CA church model appear very restrictive to most people, so why would they choose that when other churches are less restrictive. In our church plant here in GA we have attempted to stick very closely to NT principles without imposing strict guidelines for everyone to follow and we have still not been able to attract many people. Now, if all the Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian and other churches in our region would teach all of the NT principles we hold to I believe we would have a much better success rate in reaching the local people than we have had.

One year at the annual Church Planters Forums we had some former International Church of Christ people there to share some of the ways they went about discipling people and planting churches. They had a very successful model and we wanted to learn from that model. After the ICoC sort of fell apart, some of them began embracing some of the biblical teachings CA's hold to and the question was asked of them - do you believe your discipleship and church planting model would have been as successful if you would have included what you now believe the NT teaches, and the answer was no.

I believe some of the ripest fields in America for CA church planting are ethnic groups that do not hold to a Western worldview.

[GaryK]

Why have the Anabaptists failed at reaching the masses?

Mainline and Progressive Anabaptists have attempted reaching the masses. But their efforts have largely failed because of watering down the Gospel.

Old Order and Conservative Anabaptists have failed at this because they rarely attempt it.

But, is it desirable or even possible to reach the”masses.” I have seen my former denomination try to reach the “masses”:by watering down their message, to a point where the message is lost in the water of postmodernism of America culture.

Better a small and faithful church than one that is neither of these. As Robert pointed out above, it is a narrow way.

The 'narrow way'. Is this a certain way of being sanctified or is it a way of accepting Christ as our Lord and Saviour as there is no one else whereby we can be saved ?

It's whatever Jesus said it is.

Matthew 7:13-14 NKJV 13 "Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. 14 "Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.

[Soloist]

I think it’s relatively obvious the difference in overall quality and practice of members between Mennonites and everything else generally speaking.

If we are going to compare “Anabaptists” to Lutherans and not see the obvious problem or differences…
Or non-resistant Mennonites to Baptist…

Sure these other groups have many more churches but basically are presenting easy believism. The road is wide and well travelled in these churches. I could become a member there with little effort and no accountability on again, a general basis.
The Catholics at least have some standards…

[Josh]

Methodist and Lutherans are a particularly silly comparison since their numbers are consistently declining and evangelism is about nil.

As far as my own church’s efforts in other countries, we don’t combine distributing aid with church mission activity at all, for obvious reasons.

As far as Ken’s assertion that Islam is “growing”, well, it’s growing via ethnic birth rate (which is declining).

[mrbilliam]

mrbillian, what do you see as the solution for Anabaptists to reaching those outside their ethnicity ? How can a local church who are 95-100% Anabaptists of the same ethnic background begin to fill their churches with new converts from other ethnic backgrounds ?

They get out there in droves. They move into cities and start churches and businesses. They spread Jesus's message, hold community events, advertise on signs outside their buildings for "singings, teachings, and suppers..." all off busy roads. Hold "Men's seminars, marriage seminars, with big banners. Invite neighbors. Invite those who ask us about our distinct dress to church. Have "teen seminars" teaching morality and chastity advertised on big banners.

The attitude in the church is realize we are not elite. That we have in our ranks liars, thieves, adulterers, and molesters all the same as in the world. We can accept people with open hearts and without judgment (outside of righteous judgment).

Basically we just need to be there and evangelize rather than staying in a corn field saving our own lives.

[Ken]

As far as Ken’s assertion that Islam is “growing”, well, it’s growing via ethnic birth rate (which is declining).

I’m just looking at the data. If it is primarily birth rates then it is the same way that Anabaptists are growing except that they are doing a much better of job of it obviously: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads ... ous-group/

Why Muslims are the world’s fastest-growing religious group

In the next half century or so, Christianity’s long reign as the world’s largest religion may come to an end, according to a just-released report that builds on Pew Research Center’s original population growth projections for religious groups. Indeed, Muslims will grow more than twice as fast as the overall world population between 2015 and 2060 and, in the second half of this century, will likely surpass Christians as the world’s largest religious group.

While the world’s population is projected to grow 32% in the coming decades, the number of Muslims is expected to increase by 70% – from 1.8 billion in 2015 to nearly 3 billion in 2060. In 2015, Muslims made up 24.1% of the global population. Forty-five years later, they are expected to make up more than three-in-ten of the world’s people (31.1%).