Why have the Anabaptists FAILED at Reaching the Masses

[Josh]

My list was not meant to be comprehensive, and there are churches in the DFW exurban metro area.

MCUSA churches? There are a couple of those.

The greater DFW metro area is the size of New Jersey and has a population north of 8 million. And yet I suspect you are including places like the Pilgrim church in Grandview which is maybe 40 miles south of downtown, completely outside the DFW metro area, and completely rural. https://maps.app.goo.gl/5VoB6ZkU2DKNnaVKA?g_st=ic

As I said earlier, people in Dallas are completely comfortable driving an hour to do basically anything. This isn’t a big deal.

[Ken]

My list was not meant to be comprehensive, and there are churches in the DFW exurban metro area.

MCUSA churches? There are a couple of those.

The greater DFW metro area is the size of New Jersey and has a population north of 8 million. And yet I suspect you are including places like the Pilgrim church in Grandview which is maybe 40 miles south of downtown, completely outside the DFW metro area, and completely rural. https://maps.app.goo.gl/5VoB6ZkU2DKNnaVKA?g_st=ic

As I said earlier, people in Dallas are completely comfortable driving an hour to do basically anything. This isn’t a big deal.

And no one living anywhere within the DFW metro area would consider Grandview to be part of the metroplex. No are they going to drive all the way down there for a Sunday service. It is a wide spot on the road from Fort Worth to Waco in the middle of wheat fields.

[Josh]

Ken,

Did you grow up in a large, global city?

People who live in global cities in America think nothing of driving an hour to something they want. It is entirely normal. If someone is seeking Anabaptism, driving an hour will not an impediment and it is silly to claim otherwise.

If you grew up in an isolated, rural community where you were used to church being just down the road and doing everything in “town” a few miles away, I can understand your perspective.

I posted a rather long list of cities with plain churches in them, including quite a few inside the city limits proper and all within the metro area.

Edit: forgot to add Pittsburgh to the list. Beachy church inside metro area, my own congregation is roughly 1 hr from PIT airport and there are several churches in the Columbiana area that are closer than that.

The idea Mennonites are a “failure” for not having churches in every city street corner is ridiculous. Most such churches are boarded up and closed now anyway. I don’t think Mennonites need to build big suburban churches with huge parking lots and try to get crowds of thousands either.

[Ken]

Ken,

Did you grow up in a large, global city?

People who live in global cities in America think nothing of driving an hour to something they want. It is entirely normal. If someone is seeking Anabaptism, driving an hour will not an impediment and it is silly to claim otherwise.

If you grew up in an isolated, rural community where you were used to church being just down the road and doing everything in “town” a few miles away, I can understand your perspective.

I posted a rather long list of cities with plain churches in them, including quite a few inside the city limits proper and all within the metro area.

Edit: forgot to add Pittsburgh to the list. Beachy church inside metro area, my own congregation is roughly 1 hr from PIT airport and there are several churches in the Columbiana area that are closer than that.

The idea Mennonites are a “failure” for not having churches in every city street corner is ridiculous. Most such churches are boarded up and closed now anyway. I don’t think Mennonites need to build big suburban churches with huge parking lots and try to get crowds of thousands either.

I have lived a lot of different places Josh.

I’m simply pointing out that tiny rural churches in farm towns far outside a metro area do not, in fact, represent any sort of presence within that metro area. There are thousands of churches that are actually within the DFW metro area. Many of them large and fast growing. Anabaptism is not even rounding error. There is a small MCUSA church in a strip mall in the North Dallas suburbs. But that’s the only Anabaptist church I know of that is actually within the metroplex. https://maps.app.goo.gl/Fi5M6Z9Wb8XdyTLp9?g_st=ic

[Josh]

Plain churches end up existing wherever there is “demand”. If someone in Dallas wants to go to one, they will drive down there. (It’s completely normal to drive 40 minutes to church; I personally wouldn’t like it, but tons of people do it all the time for years.)

If that church ends up full, they would consider starting another one elsewhere.

Overall, there isn’t a problem that people seeking Anabaptism can’t find a plain church to go to. It might not be the specific exact type they like, but in my experience most people want an Amish type of experience anyway. Well, you’re going to have to go to a place where you can live without a car and use a horse and buggy and that ain’t the big city.

[RZehr]

Another place we aren’t generally found too much, is in coastal fishing towns. I guess that makes us an even bigger failure, given how large a role fishing had in the New Testament. I know of a few churches.

[Ken]

Plain churches end up existing wherever there is “demand”. If someone in Dallas wants to go to one, they will drive down there. (It’s completely normal to drive 40 minutes to church; I personally wouldn’t like it, but tons of people do it all the time for years.)

So church spreading is about supply and demand now and not the Great Commission?

Clearly there is zero demand for plain Anabaptism anywhere within 8 million + DFW metro area then. Which I think was mrbilliam’s point.

[NedFlanders]

Mennos also collaborated with Nazi's and had violence in their beginning. Let's not forget about that.

Baptists and AOG churches have not been violent. Seventh Day Adventists are HUGE and growing fast and they are non-resistant.

The Nazi Mennonites are irrelevant to this particular topic, as are the Munsterites, unless you are saying that these two groups were particularly keen on evangelism. I doubt these two groups cared much about Brother Yoder’s wife’s flip-flops, or Brother Marlin Miller’s son Eli’s hair part, for example.

I do personally find the Seventh Day’er comparison convincing and convicting, as I do the Jehovah Witnesses. Not that they are correct at all, but I do view them as voluntary and evangelistic. I don’t know why we can’t do what they do. What are their growth rates compared to ours? I expect they are lapping us, but didn’t look it up.

The Baptist? Easy believeism, child conversion, eternal security, makes it easy to become and remain Baptist, without dying to self, or sinning. But I will give them credit for evangelism efforts for sure.

So are you saying the Anabaptists have been successful and righteously following Matthew 28's Great Commission?

I mean we can bash all the other churches we want. The numbers of members speak for themselves.

In my experience, Anabaptists are actually the only believers sharing the great commission! Christ said to teach ALL things he commanded in Matthew 28 - name one other church that does this! Go try and be part of a Baptist church where they explain away the teachings of Christ - as a Christian the Baptist church was not a place of kinship or close fellowship. Stop complaining and go give it a try. Christ said you will know them by their love one to another and not by their numbers.

[Judas Maccabeus]

The Nazi Mennonites are irrelevant to this particular topic, as are the Munsterites, unless you are saying that these two groups were particularly keen on evangelism. I doubt these two groups cared much about Brother Yoder’s wife’s flip-flops, or Brother Marlin Miller’s son Eli’s hair part, for example.

I do personally find the Seventh Day’er comparison convincing and convicting, as I do the Jehovah Witnesses. Not that they are correct at all, but I do view them as voluntary and evangelistic. I don’t know why we can’t do what they do. What are their growth rates compared to ours? I expect they are lapping us, but didn’t look it up.

The Baptist? Easy believeism, child conversion, eternal security, makes it easy to become and remain Baptist, without dying to self, or sinning. But I will give them credit for evangelism efforts for sure.

So are you saying the Anabaptists have been successful and righteously following Matthew 28's Great Commission?

I mean we can bash all the other churches we want. The numbers of members speak for themselves.

In my experience, Anabaptists are actually the only believers sharing the great commission! Christ said to teach ALL things he commanded in Matthew 28 - name one other church that does this! Go try and be part of a Baptist church where they explain away the teachings of Christ - as a Christian the Baptist church was not a place of kinship or close fellowship. Stop complaining and go give it a try. Christ said you will know them by their love one to another and not by their numbers.

I think you have hit the nail on the head here. Christianity is not simply about gathering a big group together, filling them with false doctrine (it is possible to kill for Jesus, swear lathe in his name, fornicate in all sorts of ways, and join forces with the godless state). If you are leading people in this direction, you are making them “twice as much a child oh hell as yourself.” It is about teaching people the WHOLE Gospel of God, not just what fits into the culture.

I know FOR A FACT that many of the so called “Evangelical “ churches ignore fornication between unmarried people in their midst. “You can’t be an Elder” just don’t cut it.

The Baptist churches fuse Christ and countery to a degree where it makes the entire messege they preach void. When they “recognize the veterans “ on Veterans Day, Memorial Day and/or the Fourth of July they are saying that service to country is equivalent to service to Christ, the mother of all heresies.

Don’t get me started on the mainline church, at present rate, they will be gone in 30 years.

Don’t try to tell me that EO churches are not ethnic, I grew up in a neighborhood that had a 40% orthodox representation. They clearly are. And nationalistic as well.

I would rather see a small, true church than a large group that is following Antichrist.

Oh, yes, I drive 30 mins to church. Have done that for a decade.

[Valerie]

The Nazi Mennonites are irrelevant to this particular topic, as are the Munsterites, unless you are saying that these two groups were particularly keen on evangelism. I doubt these two groups cared much about Brother Yoder’s wife’s flip-flops, or Brother Marlin Miller’s son Eli’s hair part, for example.

I do personally find the Seventh Day’er comparison convincing and convicting, as I do the Jehovah Witnesses. Not that they are correct at all, but I do view them as voluntary and evangelistic. I don’t know why we can’t do what they do. What are their growth rates compared to ours? I expect they are lapping us, but didn’t look it up.

The Baptist? Easy believeism, child conversion, eternal security, makes it easy to become and remain Baptist, without dying to self, or sinning. But I will give them credit for evangelism efforts for sure.

So are you saying the Anabaptists have been successful and righteously following Matthew 28's Great Commission?

I mean we can bash all the other churches we want. The numbers of members speak for themselves.

In my experience, Anabaptists are actually the only believers sharing the great commission! Christ said to teach ALL things he commanded in Matthew 28 - name one other church that does this! Go try and be part of a Baptist church where they explain away the teachings of Christ - as a Christian the Baptist church was not a place of kinship or close fellowship. Stop complaining and go give it a try. Christ said you will know them by their love one to another and not by their numbers.

I don't think that's fair.
I've known of very faithful Baptist people and churches.
Perhaps Joy on this forum is not reading this thread.
She comes from a very faithful Baptist Church.
She has been involved in spreading the Gospel all her adult life- she's been involved in prison ministry for decades. Her parents started a school to reach children, in South Carolina. She is one of 5 children. Her brother has spent decades with his family in Africa as missionaries. Joy and her sister denied the pleasures of life to reach the lost. It hurts to see attacks against Baptists (I am not one, but it was the Baptists that led my very worldly grandmother to Christ. She became a Christian late in life but truly converted, and her conversion led to get alcoholic brothers true conversion & his was a real testimony as well.

I understand where MrBrilliam is coming from as my former Amish friend shares his same frustration and he HAS spent decades spreading the Gospel and has a heart for the lost- he is so SICK of what he calls "churchianity" & says Holmes County is the most "mixed up Christianity" in the world.

But I do believe MrBrilliam, like others I've met like him, who desires his branch of Christianity to come out of slumber & get in the trenches with those in the highways & byways and actually care about souls more ghan appearing righteous, his words will fall on deaf ears.

I guess it frustrated me to see the rest of denominations painted with a broad brush. Until you actually visit every Baptist Church, you cannot possibly know so while you can accuse him of throwing stones, realize you're throwing them as if you know-

Joy if your reading this I hope I didn't embarrass you but to see your denomination knocked when I know people like you, and the family you recently introduced me to who are Baptist and were missionaries for what-50 years? You probably don't have time to read all this because you are serving the Lord in numerous ways and forum time is a luxury you rarely have time for.