Conservatism and Progressivism - It's impact on missions.

[mike]

Tearing oneself out of a community is a very difficult thing to do.

Yet every seeker is asked to do exactly that.

Ironically, this is why I say Mennonites don’t really understand what submission is.

There is some truth to this. I have experience with leaving a church community and joining another that required a certain amount of submission, and there have been some good things about the experience even if it is not always pleasant. When you grow up in a culture, submission has an somewhat different flavor than if you join it from outside. Although it is still a feature of Mennonite life for sure, even for natives.

[Wesleyb]

Tearing oneself out of a community is a very difficult thing to do.

So what could be done to help more people be willing to do this?

I heard of some parents who raised their children with such simple living, that for them to move anywhere in a developing country would be very natural or maybe even a step up.
This is not how our church planter friends in Mexico lived while they were in the US. So I don't think this is the only answer. But living simply all through life is a good help.

Another thing might be to prepare for such a prospect all one's life. The couple in Mexico did this for years.

I would also add that tearing oneself out of a community is very difficult later in life. To find 500 couples with no children at home, in good health, the means and ability to permanently migrate, and with the vision and skill set that could help them be successful in such a venture, seems like an impossible task. What could be done to make it happen? About the only thing that comes to my mind would be a massive upheaval for American Anabaptists in terms of their economic situation or most likely some form of religious persecution, where they are motivated to move for what is in some way a better situation for them. That's why Anabaptists migrated to America, I believe.

A thought: would it be about as easy, and as profitable for the Kingdom to get 500 anabaptist couples to move here from Central America or Ethiopia to minister in our cities and isolated rural areas with no anabaptist presence? Why or why not?

[mike]

What do you think could be done to get 500 Anabaptist couples to do something like this?

Tearing oneself out of a community is a very difficult thing to do.

Yet every seeker is asked to do exactly that.

Ironically, I just happened to read an article this morning in an Amish-published magazine begging older people not to leave the community where they spent their lives up to that point. Apparently there may be a growing number of plain people who move in their older years, perhaps to another area where they have children, or to an area with a better climate, or because they are at the end of their farming career, or for other reasons. The writer suggested that older people are sorely needed in the community as examples and teachers to younger people, and that they should stay in order to enjoy the fruits of all the efforts they have put into their community over the years.

The point is that community means a tremendous amount to plain people, especially on the more conservative end of the spectrum. My guess is that the more conservative the Anabaptist group is, the less likely you will find an older couple willing to move out by themselves to a new area to build a new community like Ernie describes. This will absolutely never happen with the Amish or other old orders for instance. The more progressive the Anabaptist group, is my guess, the more likely you will find people willing to go out on their own on a mission project.

[cooper]

I think it's very possible the foreign missions of the Mennonite Church are a primary factor in abandoning fundamentalism. Being immersed in a strange culture where people think and live very differently I think made many missionaries more open to understanding the world more broadly. Experiences in missions caused missionaries to understand that expressions of Christianity in other cultures would not look Swiss-German. When they returned home, they didn't see the sacrifices to maintain the practices worth is since they didn't see that as the only way anymore. This broadened view of what it meant to be Christian paved the way for post-modern ways of thinking. I don't use post-modern as a pejorative. I think modernism and post-modernism both have their problems and include some truth.

Conservative Mennonites, especially ultra-conservative, decided that foreign missions did need to look Swiss German and natives would be required to dress in identical or close to the dress of the sending conferences. Unbundling Anabaptism from Swiss-German traditions is seen as too risky.

[mike]

I think it's very possible the foreign missions of the Mennonite Church are a primary factor in abandoning fundamentalism. Being immersed in a strange culture where people think and live very differently I think made many missionaries more open to understanding the world more broadly. Experiences in missions caused missionaries to understand that expressions of Christianity in other cultures would not look Swiss-German. When they returned home, they didn't see the sacrifices to maintain the practices worth is since they didn't see that as the only way anymore. This broadened view of what it meant to be Christian paved the way for post-modern ways of thinking. I don't use post-modern as a pejorative. I think modernism and post-modernism both have their problems and include some truth.

I think this is the thesis of the book "Gospel vs. Gospel" by Theron F. Schlabach, which I own but haven't read entirely.

Conservative Mennonites, especially ultra-conservative, decided that foreign missions did need to look Swiss German and natives would be required to dress in identical or close to the dress of the sending conferences. Unbundling Anabaptism from Swiss-German traditions is seen as too risky.

Because if it's OK on the mission field, why wouldn't it be OK at home.

In our church's foreign missions, there are only a few differences between dress practices on the mission field and those at home. The only one that I can really think of is that our missions allow women to wear hanging cloth veils as opposed to the kapp-style we require at home. I also suspect that we don't enforce our rule about women wearing sandals/flip-flops in public on the mission field, but I'm not sure.

[barnhart]

I see two streams of thought in this thread that seem to be in conflict. First that Missions are suspect because they work against uniform practice and second that Anabaptist groups are inflexible and cause too much friction for those wanting to join.

[ohio jones]

What do you think could be done to get 500 Anabaptist couples to do something like this?

Why does it have to be couples?

A thought: would it be about as easy, and as profitable for the Kingdom to get 500 anabaptist couples to move here from Central America or Ethiopia to minister in our cities and isolated rural areas with no anabaptist presence? Why or why not?

I like the concept. Getting them here legally could be an obstacle, unfortunately. And you'd have posts on MN calling them "those people" and labeling them criminals.
It would not have to conflict with Ernie's idea; both could be useful.

The point is that community means a tremendous amount to plain people, especially on the more conservative end of the spectrum. My guess is that the more conservative the Anabaptist group is, the less likely you will find an older couple willing to move out by themselves to a new area to build a new community like Ernie describes. This will absolutely never happen with the Amish or other old orders for instance. The more progressive the Anabaptist group, is my guess, the more likely you will find people willing to go out on their own on a mission project.

Yes, the "by themselves" part does not resonate with those who value community. They might be open to colonization, which was a common approach among mainstream Mennonites in the early 20th century. The challenge is to keep the transplanted group small enough and intentional enough that they interact with local people rather than becoming inward focused.

A hybrid idea might be shotgun colonization (pardon the non-nonresistance of the term) where the transplants are spread across a region with a small group in each town.

[barnhart]

A thought: would it be about as easy, and as profitable for the Kingdom to get 500 anabaptist couples to move here from Central America or Ethiopia to minister in our cities and isolated rural areas with no anabaptist presence? Why or why not?

I like the concept. Getting them here legally could be an obstacle, unfortunately. And you'd have posts on MN calling them "those people" and labeling them criminals.

If you can expand your definition of faithful believer to include central America Pentecostals we have been doing that for decades. I know some of them.

[Soloist]

I see two streams of thought in this thread that seem to be in conflict. First that Missions are suspect because they work against uniform practice and second that Anabaptist groups are inflexible and cause too much friction for those wanting to join.

This is hard to really articulate what I mean, but it’s not that they’re inflexible on standards generally, that’s the culture.
When we move in to try to be part of a shared culture that is very difficult without shared life.
For Mennonites, their culture revolves around family and church secondary. for a seeker, often the culture revolves around church first, family secondary.

[joshuabgood]

When one experiences differing cultures, in a sustained way, one is able to more clearly see ones own culture. And almost always this results in a more tolerant (in a good sense) world view and religious view. Generally it leads to less ethnocentrism and more humility around their own practice of Christianity. The returned missionaries almost invariably are not "so taken" with the minutia of those who have much narrower cultural experiences. Because of this "perceived liberalism," many conservative factions have been suspicious of "modern missions" types of movements and organizations.

I can't think of one single instance where anybody with sustained "mission field" exposure ended up more entrenched in CA fundamentalism when it comes to cultural mores.