An Amish Church Service Explained

[Music] now fine [Music] if you used to be amish that intro that song quite possibly triggered some feelings in you maybe some bittersweet feelings some some of good memories some of bad some of uh just kind of a lost life anyway that song is always the second song saying in an amish church service it's called what is it about i have no idea i do not know what the lyrics say although i've heard it over and over it's sung in german and not pennsylvania dutch which is a language we speak so amish people have church every other sunday and they take turns hosting it at their house church starts at nine o'clock on sunday and it ends usually around 12 o'clock and then people will mingle and hang out for another couple hours and then go home having church at your house is a it's a pretty big deal and and you start preparing for it weeks ahead of time um the men they'll start cleaning out the barn cleaning out all the cobwebs and and and organizing all the tools just taking usually what we did was we took all everything out of the barn we cleaned it swept it and we put everything back nice and neat and the yard gets manicured the leaves get raked flower beds get done up really nice the men will set up a hitching line so that when the church members do come they have somewhere to tie their horses to and they'll have hay out there for them on the other side the women [Music] they start cleaning the house they've already canned pickles and beets they'll start cleaning the house and even a couple days before that sunday the neighbor ladies will get together and they will clean the house top to bottom like every wall every ceiling gets scrubbed furniture sofas couches they all get taken outside and shampooed and aired out the china cabinet gets cleaned out all the dishes get scrubbed inside the cabinets everything's clean and and they have fun doing it and you know the fellowship of it uh you don't want a bunch of people showing up at your house and notice a dirty house so this is in my community anyway i don't know how some of those stricter communities the more conservative ones i'm not sure how they do it they weren't i don't think as clean as our community like they only took a bath once a week we took one or took showers every day so i don't know how their houses looked i've never been in one full disclosure this is how we do it in the northern indiana amish community i have to keep saying this because people um keep thinking that we're all the same and it's not it's not the case like amish people are different the funniest thing is when non-amish people are on the facebook groups telling amish people how amish people live i find that i find that uh comical because it's i just so everything's prepared for weeks ahead of time the peanut butter is made the cheese is ordered the bench wagon is brought over from the previous person's house who had church they'll maybe with a tractor or with a team of horses they'll pull the bench wagon over and saturdays the the men usually will bring in all the benches and set it up they'll set them up so a lot of a lot of people in our community now have uh big shop areas where they would park their buggies in but they're big enough to host a church so they'll set the benches up so that the ladies can sit on one side the men can sit on the other years ago when i was a kid you know there was summer places that didn't have a house big enough to host it in there so they would do it in the summertime in their like farm shed where they kept the implements or even in the barn loft or you know and then we didn't have a big barn so in the winter times we would have it in the basement or we even had it upstairs in our house but the benches would be set up so the women can sit on one side and the men on the other and the preacher could kind of stand in the middle so everybody could hear him and then it's ready for sunday morning so sunday morning comes around and an amish people have a strict dress code obviously so the men always will dress in black or dark gray pants with a white shirt and then they'll have a what they call a mozza suit or a jacket that they wear usually with the vest underneath and the boys in the summer time the young boys won't wear the jacket they'll just wear the black pants and a white shirt with suspenders and obviously the black hats and then the women they have dresses in our community they were allowed to wear different colored dresses to church although they were stuck with the the um not so bright colors for sundays they would wear reds and oranges and and whatever during the week but on sundays they would wear the darker colored dresses sunday mornings everybody would be getting around getting dressed making sure everything's looking good you know the head covering is good and the dresses are looking good and the shoes are are clean and shined and [Music] and they would load the family up in the buggy and they would head to wherever the church is at and they would pull into the churchyard and usually the men are out by the barn standing in a circle waiting for church to begin but the families would pull in and the men would turn the horse to the one side which meant the wheel would uh turn or yeah turn the wheel away from the the his wife's side of the buggy so that she could get out without getting her dress all dirty and then like kids would climb out the girls go with mom the boys go with dad so dad would then drive out to the field usually or the lawn unhitch the horse take him over to that hitching line rail whatever or inside the barn if it's big enough and would uh tie up his horse in there where he could chomp on hay for all day um and then the man would come in and and he would start that circle of men he would start at one end and he would go through each man doing a handshake and giving him the holy kiss [Music] don't ask me what the holy kiss is i don't know why i don't know why they believe in doing the holy kiss thing i don't know i don't even know what it like it's mentioned in the bible but i'm not sure what it means i haven't really ever looked into that so i don't know what that means i don't know if the guys actually touched i don't think they touched lips i'm not sure i was never a part of that since i was never married only the married men do that so only married men walked through that line shaking hands and [Music] and doing that all the little boys up to a certain age i can't remember what it was five six i i just can't remember they stay with their dad they go with their dad and they stand with their dad and anybody older than that goes hangs out with the rest of the boys who are usually in a separate part of the barn just hanging out and uh waiting for the the host to come get him to see them now i'm assuming the women are doing a similar thing in the house um however i i don't know why it was never it and i was never in there so i don't know how they handled things but they were always in the house the women and the girls sometime a little bit before nine o'clock uh the host of the place would he would start sitting people so he would start with the ministers and he would start he would put them in the front then he would skip a couple benches and then the rest of the married men would file in by age and sit down according to age and on one side of the room in the meantime uh all the women were filing in on and sitting on the other side of the room by age two so the older sat up front and the younger one sat in the back maybe that was so they could hear the preacher better i'm not sure or it was just a way of doing things uh it's kind of when you went out to dinner at somebody else's house with big groups of amish people you would always like the kids would eat and then uh the men would start eating by age like they would file through the line to fix their plates by age instead of yeah that's just how it was done a lot of a lot of things were done by age i keep saying by age there you go keep hearing it so the men are all seated the women have come in and been seated and now the um the sick the girls the youth the young girls um that don't have to sit with their mom anymore they will file in by age uh one by one you know this is all regimented like like it's it happens the same in every church district and and it's like so regimented maybe not that it has to be but that's just how it is like and if when you're walking into a church everybody's watching and you don't want to mess up you know you don't want to have something out of order like your head covering you don't want to look you know you're head covering you want that on right you want your dress and your belt to be perfect so you can look as good as you can because you know everybody's watching as you're coming in so the girls file in and they sit up usually up front somewhere closer to the preachers and then last they would bring in the boys from the barn and they would also come in by age usually by the single single boys who have aren't married but have have joined the church they will come in first and then all the other younger boys that aren't still aren't members of the church that aren't 16 years of age yet so and they would all file in and usually shake hands with the preachers and then we would have to sit in the front and i think we sat in the front so that all of our fathers could keep an eye on us and keep us out of trouble so then at nine o'clock the bishop of that church would call out that church is starting and the a person who kind of takes care of songs calls out uh a page of a song and and then he picks on somebody in the congregation to start singing that song and what that is is is one person just a church member he sings the first uh first word of the line and then and then the rest of the church joins in so and as you heard it in the um song the lord right there's one person singing the first word then everybody else joins in for the rest of that line and then then he does the the next line he does that first word again and everybody joins and so on and the songs are all written in german uh they they pick these songs out of the the os bone aspan osbound it's a german it's a book full of german songs written by the anabaptists um who were martyred right or who were uh going through persecution they were writing these songs um as they were being sitting in jails or or hiding or whatever so um and they're not they're all like they're all serious like church amish church services is you don't see a lot of smiling you don't see a lot of joy and happiness it's all very solemn and and serious right uh you're here this is god's time and and you're there's there's not to be a whole lot of joking around and and stuff it's yeah so they sing a song and then when that's over they do the same thing with the low atlea which is the second song always a second song in a service every sunday the other songs change from sunday to sunday i don't know how they choose those yep so they do the second song they do third song and in the meantime right after the first song started all the preachers and the visiting preachers went out to a separate room as where they uh i think pray and and go over some things and they discuss who is going to preach that day so as a minister you don't you show up to church on sunday and you don't know if you're going to preach or not you can kind of have an idea because the person who went the longest without without preaching on a sunday will be the one preaching that day so if he is gone quite a bit of sundays without you preaching then you might your turn might be up just just depends on who's there so they decide who's going to preach that day there's uh two people that preach and another person who reads scripture so they sing three or four songs the ministers come back in sit down they finish the song they're on whether that's the third or fourth song um and then the first preacher stands up and starts preaching those songs are sung slow and it takes a long time and i never experienced it a church really as an adult or a married adult you know i never yeah i just never really experienced the amish church like most married amish people who have left you can go watch my testimony it's the first video i did on this channel um but a drug on like it was like a lot of us boys we would we would put our hands down on our knees and we would fall asleep you know those benches were so uncomfortable um sometimes just out of boredom we would follow along in the books you know obviously our parents would have wanted us to sing but we didn't care um we didn't understand a single word right and or not many words because because we spoke at pennsylvania dutch and the church songs and the bible reading was out of german which is a different language so anyway songs were over preacher stood up he started preaching and um you know if he's an older preacher he would know more german so a lot of what he preached was in german which we also didn't had a hard time understanding we always liked when a younger guy preached because he didn't know as much german we could understand him better and he did his preaching and and we would pray like we would kneel down we would when it was time to pray we would turn around kneel down on our benches and pray and then we would stand up and uh and scripture would be read the women we men would face the preacher when we stood up for some reason the women faced um away from the preacher when those prayers were being said i don't know why any of you ex-amish know why let me know in the comments that's just how it was it could get a little awkward when you're facing this way and there's a row of ladies over here facing this way it's like but this is how it was and that and and usually after the first time we prayed and stood up that was kind of a break time where we could go outside and uh use the bathroom so the men would run out we go out to the bathroom and use the bathroom and use the barn as a bathroom and the women obviously use the house and then we would all come back in and the second preacher would stand up and preach and then some more praying but after that first little break or prayer the lady of the house would come out with cookies and crackers and pretzels and pass it around the families with the little kids just as a little snack to keep them you know from getting too hungry keep them you know a little bit more occupied because the whole family was sitting in there and you know these little three four-year-old kids they kind of get unreal they don't want to sit still for three hours it's hard for them but they did that's they brought the little kids brought toys little tractors and dolls that they could play with uh while church was going on and us boys who weren't sitting with our dad we would always look at those crackers and and pretzels and be hungry and we wouldn't necessarily be allowed to have any unless the guy hosting was cool he would send the down arrow which didn't happen that often um but anyway so yeah church church kept on pre praying preaching um after both preachers were done and scripture was read uh the the preacher would the bishop would ask for uh technus i don't know what that word means translated to english but what he was doing was he would ask the other preachers or men of the congregation who hadn't preached that day to kind of give their testimony kind of kind of you know share with what they heard and if it what they all they heard was uh was good and biblical right um and they all usually agreed i don't think i've ever heard anybody disagree what was being said on a sunday and then another song would be sung and then church was over if there was somebody who had to confess their sins or if there was church there needed to be some discussions made where only the members of the church should be involved after the last song was sung all the members the the baptized members of the amish church would stay in the the room and everybody else had to leave so um all usually just the kids left and so they could discuss their church things without ears that it shouldn't be there then churches when church is done you know us boys and the girls those boys separately from the girls we would go play usually it was basketball we would go play until we were called for lunch so after church all the men would take these benches that we sat on and they had little adapter leg adapter things and they would set two benches up on a on these little legs and then have two benches on either side of that and we would and the women would spread out tablecloths and then the food would be brought in all the women would be helping the men would be setting up the benches and then they would usually call us boys because we were always the hungriest and we sat in a table the the ministers the preachers sat in a table and there's usually a couple tables for the women and we would eat and usually it would take two rounds of tables to feed everybody but yeah we would just sit in a row and be sitting there with all the pickles and the beets and the peanut butter spread which is so good and the breads and and and a glass of water and no plates just uh knives and uh and forks knives and forks i think and when we sit there waiting and then when the tables were full the bishop would make his call he would say when the dish it falls in villa still hold it and everybody would go quiet in prayer and we would pray and then as soon as the bishop would shuffle his feet or clear his throat or something we knew the prayer was over and we would start eating that is that is a kind of a that's common thing common way to pray in the amish community even if you're out eating dinner or something you will just bow your heads and you will pray silently nobody actually says a prayer although my grandpa did i wonder if i wonder why that went to the wayside but he used to pray out loud for everybody which was good um so yeah we would eat we would eat meats and pickles and and uh um bread we would just take the bread and we'd put this peanut butter spread on there it's it's peanut butter marshmallow cream and some other ingredients it's so good so sweet so good and then then the ladies who are helping serve would uh pass plates of sliced cheese colby jack cheddar whatever down to us and you know we would take a slice or two and we'd be eating for a while the men would get their coffees the women would serve them coffee unless they just had caught no they had coffee sitting on the table and when we were done we would pray again and we would escape less boys would run out and play but one thing i always remember sitting in a row you have this canvas tablecloth and it hangs over the edge a little bit so we would poke the guy next to us on either side of us and we would curl that tablecloth up and make a rain gutter and then we would take a glass of water and we would dump it in there and and we could depending on how long the gutter is we could shoot that water down the table because this was like 14 16 foot long tables right so we'd shoot that water down to an unsuspecting person who would then end up with a bunch of water in his lap just a little prank we played yeah after we were done we would escape we would go play uh the women would clear the table and set it up again for the next batch of people and oh yeah cookies they always sent cookies at the end delicious cookies homemade cookies it was really good um the rest of the adults they're married they just kind of usually some of them went home after lunch some of them mingled and just chatted fellowshipped about two three o'clock popcorn would be brought out i hope that kind of gets you gives you a glimpse into an amish church service now peter graber joseph graber joseph greer i don't know i can't want to call him peter joseph graber did a video series six part series called breaking the silence my amish story uh you guys need to go watch it if you haven't seen it he does a fantastic job he was raised amish is now a filmmaker and he actually got i think in his first part in the part one of six he actually got a bunch of old order amish people um or ex-amish people together to grow out beards and and dress amish to reenact a church service so it's on youtube it's on amazon breaking the silence my amish story go watch that you'll kind of then you can get a visual of what it kind of looked like i don't have any footage of anything like that nobody will ever or shouldn't ever be filming inside an actual church service so that is that film is the best way to get a glimpse of that and and see what it's actually kind of like one of my next videos will be about what the preachers taught in on sundays and what how they preach what their sermons were kind of like and uh so if you guys are interested in watching that make sure you subscribe and hit that bell icon so that it notifies you of my future videos coming up hit the like button subscribe share this video i appreciate you guys taking the time watching them um just uh keep us in your prayers and we will see you next time wow [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] me [Music]

Channel: the amish potato

Views: 78,134

Rating: 4.9181819 out of 5

Keywords: amish, church, German, duetsch, sermon, pulpit, bench, song, worship, preach, mennonite, Hutterite, mormon, Jehovah witness, brethren

Id: NojNltNue3I

Length: 27min 13sec (1633 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 23 2021