Why have the Anabaptists FAILED at Reaching the Masses

[Sudsy]

If the goal is to see how many people we can get into heaven, I think quite a few old orders and ultra-conservatives probably do about as good as anyone, when you think of the number of descendants who get a good spiritual start in a greenhouse, and have a better chance of surviving spiritually.
I think it probably comes down to our goals/vision. Are our goals for the here and now, or do our goals include our posterity?

If the latter... it could look like this if families average 6 children who raise families, and "command their children and their households after them" like Abraham did.

2 parents - 6 children - 36 grandchildren - 216 great-grandchildren - 1296 great-great grandchildren - 7776 great-great-great grandchildren. Total =9,330 if they don't marry their third and fourth cousins. Not something at all to sneeze at.

BTW, If you have 10 such sets of parents in ten different places in the USA, that is nearly a million descendants. Sort of seems like reaching a MASS number of people to me.

If that is the primary way scripture says to grow God's Kingdom but it isn't. The masses Jesus came to save is far beyond raising children. Rather we are to 'Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame. ‘Go out into the country lanes and behind the hedges and urge anyone you find to come, so that the house will be full.' Luke 14:21 & 23. Salvation is a invite, not a command.

Are the old orders and ultra-conservatives reaching out like Jesus did even outside His ethnic Jewish community ? Jesus ministry was primarily to His own people, the Jews, but He sent His followers into the whole world with the Gospel. Paul writes - 'For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile'. – Romans 1:16

So, the way I see it is that Jesus had a training strategy. That strategy required that his messengers needed to learn first by engaging those of the same culture and language. This would give them some training to then go out into cross-cultural evangelism in the future. So the Gospel is a first to our own households but then to the world. Those English, rather Gentiles. The latter seems to me to be where evangelism to our own family and ethnicity and not extending to everyone is an incorrect understanding of who the lost are that Jesus desires to save.

If Christianity remained only to the Jews, that could be regarded as a big number but compared to the population of Gentiles, non-Jews, that could be reached that number would be very small. I, for one, am very thankful that I am one where the Gospel was not confined to the Jews only but was shared with my unchurched parents and I was blessed to have been raised with teachings of the Gospel.

[Ken]

If the goal is to see how many people we can get into heaven, I think quite a few old orders and ultra-conservatives probably do about as good as anyone, when you think of the number of descendants who get a good spiritual start in a greenhouse, and have a better chance of surviving spiritually.
I think it probably comes down to our goals/vision. Are our goals for the here and now, or do our goals include our posterity?

If the latter... it could look like this if families average 6 children who raise families, and "command their children and their households after them" like Abraham did.

2 parents - 6 children - 36 grandchildren - 216 great-grandchildren - 1296 great-great grandchildren - 7776 great-great-great grandchildren. Total =9,330 if they don't marry their third and fourth cousins. Not something at all to sneeze at.

BTW, If you have 10 such sets of parents in ten different places in the USA, that is nearly a million descendants. Sort of seems like reaching a MASS number of people to me.

If that was actually how things worked then we would currently have hundreds of millions if not billions of conservative Anabaptists populating the US today. Since we started with tens of thousands of Anabaptist immigrants two and a half centuries ago.

[Josh]

Yes, OOs and UCs do care a lot about their neighbours and focus nearly all of their attention on them. UCs give some focus to foreign missions. OOs focus almost solely on their neighbours.

[ohio jones]

Since we started with tens of thousands of Anabaptist immigrants two and a half centuries ago.

GAMEO estimates the Anabaptist immigrants of two and a half centuries ago at 4400.

[Neto]

I have met several young Old Order women who spent time teaching at Old Colony Mennonite schools, both in the States, and in Mexico. One of these I met first when she was around 17, and she taught out in western Kansas. I feel that I knew her well enough to know that she had a spiritual concern for the children as well, as a "social" concern. (She got married now some years ago, and I also don't do work for her dad and brother anymore, either. Or her husband's dad, either.) Some Old Colony people from Bolivia asked for help as well, but since the Old Order generally do not fly, they passed that request on to some New Order people. (Some of my wife's New Order cousins are the ones who are doing that.)

There were also Amish men who helped out on construction projects for WBT missionaries. My father-in-law headed up a construction project for a missionary's house on the center where my wife & I were later assigned. That project was done in 1971, 15 years before we moved to that mission center, and some Amish men helped on that construction job. In directly, their contributions to projects like this make it possible for the Gospel to be taken to isolated tribal peoples. It takes an entire team to do this type of work, and every such person plays an important (and essential) role in bringing Christ to the lost of the world.

[Ken]

Since we started with tens of thousands of Anabaptist immigrants two and a half centuries ago.

GAMEO estimates the Anabaptist immigrants of two and a half centuries ago at 4400.

Fine, do Ernie's math with that starting point. You still reach the same conclusion.

[Ernie]

Since we started with tens of thousands of Anabaptist immigrants two and a half centuries ago.

GAMEO estimates the Anabaptist immigrants of two and a half centuries ago at 4400.

Fine, do Ernie's math with that starting point. You still reach the same conclusion.

It has been hard for Plain Anabaptists to command their children and their households after them, but do the research and you'll find that in general, they help a much higher number of people into the kingdom than your average "community church" regardless of the denomination.

[Judas Maccabeus]

GAMEO estimates the Anabaptist immigrants of two and a half centuries ago at 4400.

Fine, do Ernie's math with that starting point. You still reach the same conclusion.

It has been hard for Plain Anabaptists to command their children and their households after them, but do the research and you'll find that in general, they help a much higher number of people into the kingdom than your average "community church" regardless of the denomination.

From my former evangelical church, my hand count is about 10-20%. I am sure mennonites do better than that.

[Ken]

GAMEO estimates the Anabaptist immigrants of two and a half centuries ago at 4400.

Fine, do Ernie's math with that starting point. You still reach the same conclusion.

It has been hard for Plain Anabaptists to command their children and their households after them, but do the research and you'll find that in general, they help a much higher number of people into the kingdom than your average "community church" regardless of the denomination.

Really? Hmmm....https://premierchristian.news/en/news/a ... nts-in-usa

Non-denominational Christians now the largest group of Protestants in USA

The number of people who don't identify with any denomination in the US has increased by 30 per cent since the Cold War years, according to a new survey.

New data released by the US Religion Census has found at least 9,000 churches which do not identify with traditional denominations have surged in the last decade.

The increase takes the number of non-deminational churches in 2010 from 35,496 to 44,319 in 2020.

This means that, in total, there are now 3.4 million more people in non-denominational churches than there are Southern Baptist Convention congregations, one of the largest denominations in the US.

The report also found the number of people adhering to Southern Baptist and the United Methodist Church, has decreased by two million in comparison to those adherent to non-denominational churches, which has increased by nearly nine million.

[Sudsy]

Yes, OOs and UCs do care a lot about their neighbours and focus nearly all of their attention on them. UCs give some focus to foreign missions. OOs focus almost solely on their neighbours.

So, do you have any stats on how many of these neighbours are getting born again ? What is their percentage of growth in new converts that are of another ethnicity ? What is meant by focusing nearly all their attention and what results are they having ? Not that it doesn't happen but just that I am not aware of any outreach by these folks in our area that is reaching others with salvation that are not of their ethnic background.

I do believe and have observed various church groups who get involved in the community in good deeds but they are not growing with new converts to Christ. Something we are working on where I currently fellowship as the evangelism efforts through good deeds is not producing souls saved.