Joining a Mennonite (Anabaptist) Church 👉🏻 What You Should Know

testing testing one two three can you hear me no one is upstairs getting ready we've been trying forever to get our schedule together so we can both sit down to do this video but hopefully tonight we'll get it accomplished so we actually get quite a few emails about people asking us if it's an option for them to join the mennonites kind of questions about how that all works the process where can they find a mennonite church it's just a very popular question that we get asked and so we wanted to make a video in depth we want to cover things like just a quick brief run of theology some of the things that we differ in from a lot of mainstream christians just so you kind of had an understanding of the differences in that area and then we also want to cover a little bit the ups and the downs about being part of a mennonite community we want to do our best to kind of give a step back and try to get an outside look from possibly your perspective even from an insider's perspective what we would feel are definitely some of the pros and cons so to speak or the ups and the downs of being a part of the mennonite community after that we'll share some resources some places where you can go to try to help find a church in your area and then we also want to cover some cultural things that you might find interesting i've heard different people that join that we're not raised mennonite there's so many cultural things we have that we don't often realize and people coming in have quite the shock i don't know if we'll get them all covered because i don't always think about them but we'll try to cover as much as we can so as soon as my husband is ready and it's down here we want to dive into this together also if you're new here my name is janine this is my kind of mom family channel we do anything from lifestyle to some faith videos like this one and i usually like to grab my husband for the theological stuff because he's much better of a thinker than i am so [Applause] now this video is obviously extremely long but we wanted to take our time so that we could share this with people that are truly interested in that we cover all the bases or at least try to so if you go down in the timeline there will be time stamps to all the different topics if you want to scroll ahead and skip some parts so yeah thanks for being here and i hope you enjoy so this is my better half nolan in case you've never met him before um the other half i'm not sure about the better one but i'm a little bit uh hesitant to to know exactly how to go about a subject like this because there's obviously people come from all different kinds of viewpoints and they have different questions so the purpose basically of of this is give you all a little bit of an idea of the mennonite anabaptist background at least as far as as we know it and hopefully answer a few of your questions and not not just the background like the whole culture the culture yeah part of it or the fake part of it and everything right you know i know that if you've watched i hate to say our videos because they're very much her videos but um you know we live this way we're very happy to live this way but when jesus calls us to follow him and the gospel message is something that's greater than what we'll be talking about tonight so i don't want anybody listening to this to think that oh you know we're we are giving uh you know how to be saved and how to follow jesus this is a little more you know what it means to be a meta knight so that's kind of where we're going with this yeah should we swap out your chair because yours is a squeaky one that's better i know that if we go through the video that's gonna annoy me just like if you were talking about this country or anything most people would start with the history so a little bit of mennonite history just write down his his line history well yeah now this history has it hasn't been my interest as much maybe as other history yeah maybe it has more to do with uh being a little bit fed it back in the day but school mentality you didn't want to learn it yeah anyway the anabaptist movement would have started 1500 sometime and the mennonite group was sort of an offshoot of that there was a guy named meno simons catholic priest catholic priest that felt that the catholic structure wasn't you know had some some holes or whatever so that's where the name mennonite comes from from him the first anabaptist movement i think happened in was it geneva switzerland technically that was the first time when people re-baptized that's what anabaptists would mean would be re-baptizer because they felt to be baptized as an infant was not something you chose to do and therefore it was not really a valid baptism i i personally sometimes am a little bit uncomfortable with the fact that mennonite goes to back to a certain man and we we take his namesake but um you know some of that just tends to happen regardless and so yeah so then from there they would have been persecuted was all part of was it the reformation yeah this was all happening during the reformation and there was obviously persecution from the catholics and then um quite a bit of persecution from some of the protestant groups from from lutherans and a guy named zwingli his group did not care for the anabaptists either and through that as you know during that time the the new world was discovered a lot of mennonites emigrated to the new world to escape persecution so that's some of the history um yeah hopefully we didn't bore you too much with it but so some of the theology now obviously like i said in the beginning this is not necessarily uh how to follow jesus whatever what some of the things we'd be going over is what would differentiate mennonite anabaptists from from other protestant groups um some of the things we would do or not do or etc so probably one of the biggest things is non-resistance non-violence if there's a war meta knights generally are conscientious objectors they you know would believe that that to going to war is wrong um but it goes more than that like not everyday life living it out everyday life which is difficult right there are hard things with that you know and i admit i don't have that all figured out in my mind what that means but that is a very core mennonite belief you know when jesus said resist not evil that that's something he literally meant that and turning the other cheek and going the extra mile and right and then there's the age-old debate of where the line is on that like love is you know if your family's getting attacked you know do you use force to you know of course some people believe of course you would others would say no you don't yeah i i think it's important to you know jesus gave the two greatest commandments and they are to love god with everything you have and to love people as you love yourself and i think go ahead yeah we can sometimes make non-resistance the the end in itself rather than loving people and loving people is a messy thing sometimes and it's you know if you're helping somebody say who's a drug addict there's times you're probably going to have to be forceful with them so you know i think it's important to keep those those ideas in perspective that non-resistance is is a beautiful teaching i believe but it's not it's not an end in itself and that turns your phone off who is it i don't know oh that's annoying so another thing that would be different and this isn't this isn't all other protestant groups not at all but mennonites very much believe that salvation is it's not just something that you well you you know you you've heard the quote you pray the sinner's prayer and and while that is a part of the salvation experience it it goes more it goes beyond that you know to continue right to repent i think sometimes we have this idea that you know when you hear of somebody repenting you have this image of them you know on their knees saying they're sorry and that's very much part of it but it actually means to change so this one is a little bit more i can't say that oh you know we are we believe in salvation like this and our focus isn't so much just trying to get someone to make to say the sinner's prayer like some churches would be it's just right do you believe that's kind of the focus and then you're saved and you're pretty much good to go right and i guess another thing along with that is we would very much want to make sure someone is old enough to make that decision on their own somebody who's very young who wouldn't really understand moral concepts or whatever we would yeah we'd be a little hesitant to try to get them to you know be saved and whatever all um and i don't have all the answers as to when somebody is old enough to understand things and when they are that obviously varies a lot with people the next one one that's a big one is separation obviously and there's definitely a lot of differences in churches as far as how we appear outwardly but when mennonites talk about separation they often also talk about your outward appearance and that can really vary and so yeah go ahead you have a better way of explaining things the idea there's there's a verse in in the bible that says come out from among them and be separate that's the king james or whatever mennonites anabaptists take that in a very literal sense and somewhat some would view this pretty casually too like as far as it's not it's much more of living your life separately like that's the teaching behind it right but then some churches are are so wrapped up in their culture or culture and tradition has almost trumped jesus work in our life and so separation to them has become an outward thing whereas i would feel like we are in our church it's just kind of tradition mixed along with you know a kind of set of guidelines that obviously we do believe in modesty and unity and in some ways that's expressed in how we dress but i think the core teaching of that verse isn't really saying that we have to come out and dress differently to be different right and i do think that that is a fault with mennonites it is it's while i feel being different whatever different ways of say dressing than what everybody else does it can be beneficial in a lot of ways i think it can help us to make the real separation and obviously what those verses the separation come out from among them and be separate is talking about something on a much deeper level than what we wear and how we you know what we do and don't do in a physical sense whatever so i think i think having some guidelines in place for the the outside can be very helpful but at the same time there is no doubt that it it can be very harmful too or it can be very misused maybe it's a better way of putting it um just as in anything in life if you have one extreme and you have another extreme then it's good to try to bring the two together and try to find your way in the middle there's another verse too that um says and this is often often separation is talked about as separation or non-conformity which is yeah rather big vague word but based on the verse that be not conformed to this world and i think that you know one of the problems that we can have is that's where we stop you know be not conformed to the world and the rest of the verse says be transformed by the renewing of your mind which says nothing about what you wear or what you drive or um so it's it's very important that we keep that as our focus to be yeah to allow christ to transform us another thing along with this i think another reason that mennonites tend to have more of a dress code sometimes it's just the thing of trying to avoid all the fads and fashions that are just constantly it's just another thing that kind of goes with this non-conformity not that fads and fashions are so wrong but you can become easily consumed with them i know for myself i personally prefer this it makes your life much easier and simpler to just have a simple wardrobe and constantly be worrying about what's in and what's not and of course there are fads and fashions among the mennonites and it does kind of trend a little bit with what's going on in society so you know we buy our sweaters and buy different things clothes so of course trends change but i still say we have a fairly simple wardrobe and what i find fascinating is i love watching like successful people and kind of what makes them tech and so many people that are quite successful in life actually one of their tips is that they try to reserve all their decisions to make them to a minimum so that they can put all their energy into whatever they're they're trying to achieve and so some people will have the exact same color of a t-shirt exact same jeans and just like five or six different pairs so every morning they get up they don't have to take one extra just my new piece of energy to try to decide what to wear and i feel like that's kind of a blessing in our culture in a sense where it's not just this huge headache all the time but it can be it there still is is a lot of room you know at least in the church we go there's a lot of room for different yes clothes and yeah i would want somebody to feel like i mean there's people there are people out there that yeah can get up in the morning and put the same clothes on day after day after day and you know to me i'm not really a close guy and yet you know that would look about as boring as getting up in the morning and eating the same breakfast every morning no i agree i was just referring to like our style is very like we have a lot of different personality and different people wear different things and different styles kind of within our churches too it's not so like everyone looks the same or whatever it's just like with with fads like especially with like major fads like they come and go within like a couple months they say it's one of the worst things for the global what's the word like there's so much trash like the whole oh oh like the supply chain yeah they're constantly making new clothes and they just get pitched and dumped and it's so wasteful and it's just harming the planet and if you want to go down that route but yeah like it's true like people are you buy something and three months later it's out of style especially some of these styles that but anyway we're going off topic right and yeah i mean just one other thing too if you're interested in mennonites this issue here this separation this is you know there are there is a lot of variation among mennonite anabaptist groups yeah we're going to touch more on that a little bit later too try to so another thing that's different is the mennonite belief on divorce and remarriage we believe that marriage is for life the bible does give room for if your spouse is abusive yeah it says god is not the author of confusion but of peace but we would believe that does not give you the right to disallow your marriage and be go be married to somebody else in other words your first marriage is the one that in god's eyes that is who you're married to until either one of you would pass away right it makes it kind of difficult because there's a lot of very hurting situations very hurting people and even people that have been in a really terrible marriage and got remarried to someone and they're in a very good marriage and there's been situations like that um where people have wanted to join and it makes it very difficult because it's a very yeah it's a very staunch thing in our groups which i love because it makes for really strong families um now obviously there's it's not foolproof there are families that are dysfunctional and aren't getting along and that type of thing and sometimes separation is what needs to happen but we yeah remarriage is never really an option the last thing we have maybe we've missed some but i think we've gotten pretty much everything is obviously the head covering women head cover this varies a lot to different styles depending what church you're talking about but we're not going to talk about it here i actually made an entire video it's a pretty long one describing the verses the different viewpoints different people have on first corinthians 11 so i'll have that down in the description also up here if you want to go check it out so we're not going to spend a lot of time on that but obviously that is one of the main things also that separates meta knights from a lot of other christian groups another another difference i feel kind of goes along with the head covering is like the headship order that has to do kind of with different roles for men for women for children and i talk about that in the video as well is that it for theology pretty much yeah like he said we're just covering kind of the differences not obviously our entire theology yeah we're kind of assuming that we're sort of answering questions from people that i assume have a christian understanding and background and they're interested in mennonites and they have questions about what would make us obviously we look different then right then some people and they wonder you know what is different about a mennonite church versus uh you know another protestant church or whatever you know if you have a chance to dive into like mennonite anabaptist history there's some wonderful books out there i can't think of any off the top of my head but yeah we'll try to have some websites linked below too with different resources i guess i'll try to find some all right we're going to move on to i have pros and cons but that's not really a good title kind of ups and the downs like we want to be as transparent as we can because we've kind of seen people come in with certain expectations and maybe they were let down and so we'd like to be upfront that obviously i i think sometimes people look at the mennonite culture and kind of it depends depends not always obviously but they kind of look at our culture as sort of this christian utopia like this somehow this perfection that if they'd live this lifestyle sometimes somehow they'd be closer to god so that's one thing we definitely wanted to clear up that we are just as human as anyone else and a lot of the things that anybody struggles with we have these issues in our churches as well so if you come and join it's not this perfect christian group where no one fails and no one hurts each other and no one gets a yeah because we have we have hurting people we have broken people we have people in our churches that might be hiding behind the facade of our mennonite culture and they're not really born again they're not walking with christ so their lives are actually quite sinful but you might not be able to really notice it just by seeing them and it's this type of thing that causes problems within the church and also christians i mean we're all human we all have our things we face so if you're expecting perfection then it's definitely not the place for you anything else you wanted to add no i think you covered it really well yeah it's we are really truly as human sometimes i think we're even a little bit worse yeah there's been some incredibly ugly situations in meta knight churches and that's true that's happened other places but it it just it's sad but that that that's the truth these types of sins that come up or these whatever you want to call it it makes it even uglier because it's it's in a setting that it shouldn't be happening and just like you hear and it's not just mennonite churches it's all churches you know you hear pastors i think i saw on the news that were part of a sex trafficking ring yeah it's just terrible and all under the guise of religion and it's just it's so sad that these types of things happen and the name of jesus is marred like that and of course that type of thing really draws out headlines and people love to jump on that type of thing so things like that do happen in our churches just wanted to make sure i mean not sex trafficking anyway you know what i'm getting at shall we just go over the negative stuff first or shall we try to balance it and we should go over the cons first and finish on that on a positive positive note yeah so just saying like for a personal journey you know my teenage life we first got married both of us you know questioning a lot of things we've been taught questioning some of the negatives that we'll cover that are part of the church and whether or not we want to stay a part of it um so there was a point in our life that where we were close to or thinking about walking out so we chose to stay we're very glad we did we're kind of going to go over that just kind of our thought process and i know other people within the church battle with some of these things as well so it's kind of like we wanted to to talk about this in case you're thinking of joining up that way you kind of understand a little bit more some of the things that you'll be facing that aren't so great or aren't great at all um are kind of negatives that come with the culture and whether or not it's something that you feel is worth it with the things that you gain because i think there's a lot of values here but there's also some negatives so you just kind of have to weigh the two and say is the positives worth dealing with some of the baggage if you can call it baggage yeah yeah a lot of it is i mean a lot of the cons isn't so much things that are so different from other groups i mean i feel like every church would have right probably have problems similar to this what i think you know we talked about people that that that come in and the mennonite track record for non-mennonite people who join and then and stay is not good like a lot of times within a couple years they realize that we are as human as everyone else and they become disillusioned and leave and yeah i'm almost bitter in some ways right and sometimes for good reason right um and i've also seen people that join and i think it's also this expectation that somehow our outward appearance is part of our salvation when it's not and so when they when they come to a group they become extremely conservative um almost even more so within that group and they stick around for about a year or so and soon they're off trying to find another church that's even more conservative and it takes about it's almost always within like two years three years they keep going from one church to the next each one seems to be a little more conservative as if they're trying to find whatever that was they were looking that answer that is actually not within the meta knights no and so that's kind of why we're making this we're hoping you can understand that so and then usually they end up leaving all mennonites and maybe sometimes even faith and that's really sad so we talked a little bit about legalism things can be a principle can be lost i mean something like we talked about clothes so something like modesty which i believe the bible very much teaches the principle of modesty but that principle can actually be lost sometimes and be replaced by actual rules about the inches of how long a dress should be or you know how loose your pants should be or yeah things that and i'm not saying that as soon as you put a number to a rule or whatever then immediately or legalistic or whatever but it has bothered me how it seems like you know sometimes somebody can i i like what that one lady said about modesty that it you know it's 90 your heart and 10 your clothes and how somebody can be very immature and you could say very kind of maybe immodest in the way they interact with people but if they have the right clothes on then nobody will really uh say hey look do you think you know the way you're acting or living is really good you know the flip side of that is somebody can be very mature and modest in their interactions with people and yet maybe there's you know they have their own color shoes or something and um you know yeah yeah if you get my drift it can be that way and one thing i'll quick interject you have to understand the mennonite spread spectrum is absolutely huge like you have extremely conservative mennonites that drive horse and buggy um they wear bonnets they they drop they ride bikes they don't have cars um that type of thing very i'd say on that spectrum you tend to have more legalism and then you have the other spectrum that isn't nearly as much so um and when we're talking about mennonites by the way we didn't clarify this we're talking about conservative mennonite groups there are mennonite churches within the us that look nothing like us um they just dress like society so the mennonites we're talking about are mennonite groups or conservative mennonite groups that that dress with usually with dresses or skirt and blouse and wear a head covering as far as the women yeah and then on the other spectrum you often have people that yeah they buy more of their clothes like where's usually they store they wear skirts um skirts and blouse but they wouldn't have nearly all the technicalities so when we're talking about these cons they often tend to lean towards this side of the spectrum towards the really conservative middle conservative groups and it all depends on the church you go to that's not to say that being legalistic is only a problem i mean i would guess that some of you all could relate to legalism in non-mennonite churches right it's a human problem and i don't think that just because we aren't super conservative that we can say well we don't have quite as much of a problem with it as yeah i mean it can be a lot of people would still look at us as pretty conservative though well yeah within the metadata spectrum we're not as much though but we still are and that this whole legalism thing is probably what has caused the most bitterness and hurt it has people i just i will say that i think this is the biggest the biggest con of of the meta knight structure is it opens the door maybe a little wider to legalism than some other protestant groups and the problem with it i mean it is a really hard line to walk because we do have a culture that they're trying to keep and so there has to be some kind of structure there because if there's no like for instance for for our church it's um the women wear dresses that we make ourselves um more of a cape style there's like an extra piece of cloth on top for modesty um and that's just kind of part of the guideline so i would not go to church wearing a skirt and a blouse and it's just kind of part of i just know that i don't wear that normally in public and that type of thing um so it is one of those things if someone were to do that they should it should be addressed by someone you know obviously we can't just go everyone do what they want or suddenly we're no longer part of our culture and so it's what makes us who we are and how we live our lives so there has to be some kind of like because there's always someone that wants to do something different and they have to ultimately decide well do they want to be a part of this group and support it or leave and so there is support that you need to give to your church and agree with whatever guidelines are in place which with wherever you chose to go but we're just saying that there has been times where and we're talking about technicalities that would uh probably blow a lot of non-mennonites away right i'm like talking i don't know shall we dive into things here i mean if people are trying to yeah i mean you know people sometimes come into the mennonite church and they're like wow this is you have all these people that you know they they just yeah they look so unified they look so unified they look so not all this variation and yeah and then they realize that in order for that to happen people have you know people have been dealt with as far as maybe that's how to talk to whatever for something as simple as you know socks not quite being the right color or something like that you know and that shoes that's there again that depends a lot on your on the mennonite church or group or whatever um you know that is the more conservative groups would have more rules you would have rules on what types of shoes you can wear socks you can wear in some places yeah it can get very technical and it can kind of get ugly it's something to keep in mind if you see a group of everybody looks the same maybe they're all you know dressed in black dark colors dark colors or whatever that the ugly side of that is there was people who had a slightly lighter shade maybe and they they were told that they need to put a darker shade back and maybe it was an honest mistake on their part and you know hopefully they were able to you know not become bitter about it but far too many people have been really you know really hurt you know accused maybe even falsely of doing something that they weren't and that is very much the i guess you could say the ugly side of having a distinctly almost a dress code sometimes that that right at least sometimes we would have or some churches among us would have more so right than others and there's also there's also a difference in leadership as well just as with anyone some people are gifted in relationships and others not so much and so whoever's job it is to make sure that the guidelines are kept if they're very bad with interpersonal relationships it's often these types of people that cause all the you know the bitterness and the you know there's i've been in in settings where you know the leadership was very understanding very caring maybe they would listen to you understand where you're coming from um but they still had to follow through because they were part like a lot of these these churches might be part of a really large conference or like a large group not all and so even sometimes the leadership might not actually be in full agreement with what they're doing but because they're part of a bigger thing they don't really have the personal like they have to do kind of what the structure says to do and so there may be a lot of people that would agree with you but that was the other con that we had here is it's very hard for something to change within these large structures so even if a lot of the people within that group i guess it's the same as a country you know there's laws in place and to change a law it has so many politics to go through right and it's very similar and so if there's been a tradition that's been going for 50 years some of the older people might not want to see it go and a lot of the younger ones are saying look this does not apply to our era it usually takes years and years and years of work and talk and whatever to get that changed and that can be very frustrating and i i will say too with this legalistic thing it's easy sometimes to pin the blame on yeah if i say have a shirt on that's not within a church's rules say and so somebody would you know say a church pastor would come talk to me about it you know it may be kind of a very impersonal way or whatever it would make me angry and it's easy to pin legalism on him but if i'm letting a shirt stand between me and a relationship and loving you know my felt the people i go to church with then i'm as guilty of being legalistic as as he might be for making a huge issue over it so right oh it's it's something it cuts both ways and i think sometimes men and i youth forget that you know you know they can be as legalistic as the people that that are maybe being legalistic to them so that's our biggest one we're going to talk about and it's it's not one that's fun to talk about but it's definitely if you're going to join up on it with a church it's something you need to be aware of because if the church you're part of has nothing of this it's going to be like a major shock wave when you join and by joining we mean become members like churches everywhere will welcome anyone in their doors to come you know sit in church and worship it's just when you want to become a part of the group become a member that's what we call a member of the church anyway so it definitely can be a real shock if suddenly someone is saying depending which church you end up going to and that's the big thing if suddenly you're used to wearing sandals everywhere you go and that particular church wants you to wear shoes and socks it's little things like that that can quickly become a thorn in the side if you weren't aware of it before so we will talk later about churches we recommend kind of i'll have it in a blog we might not necessarily stay on here but there's hundreds of thousands of churches especially in the united states that you could join and they vary so much so if your first experience visiting a church isn't the best or is it what you were expecting just remember that they vary about as much as yeah we talked about legalism being the biggest problem and it is because i mean it is in some ways and yet um it's probably the most rampant or the most in your face yeah most common there have been churches that have had and i suppose this is true for other churches other non-mennonite churches there's been some some serious problems with i mean there's been abuse there's been sex abuse there's been there's been different abuses that have happened in the mennonite church um not that they knew that it was ongoing but that they found out about right and i would assume that everyone would would realize that these kinds of things you know no human group out there is you can't go anywhere and say all right well now we are this will never ever happen here people are people um but it's still you know i i don't want anyone to think that mennonite churches are free of this kind of thing like at this point wasn't that this really happens a lot we hope it doesn't no but the point is sometimes churches and i think this happens it's kind of a thing with churches not just mennonites is where they try to take care of that person within their group and maybe christians have as a whole tend to believe that because you're supposed to forgive that person it automatically means trusting them again and those two things should not be i think no together i mean you can give them some little trucks but if a person was abusing a child they should be reported to the state and dealt with on a state level as well because they need to be we need to protect our children obviously and so there have been possibly some incidences where maybe it's child abuse or some other type of abuse where the perpetrator was you know dealt with maybe counseled within the church and they thought he was ready to go or be forgiven and then they just kind of let him go again and then it happens again and it's it's not protecting right i mean in the church we go to takes a very hard stance on um you know any of that kind of stuff would be reported to the law and a lot of mennonite churches that that i would know would be the same way they would they would very much not try to cover things up but it has happened the whole cover-up thing that that is something that i think in the past was done more in not just meta knight churches but you know across the board people didn't even know how to deal with some some of the abuses and it was just easier to ignore them and pretend they never happened right and that kind of thing has happened in the mennonite church too right and i i feel like there's a there's much more of an awareness now among mennonite groups i feel like things are i think they're headed in the right direction right that there's there's an improvement but yeah i i would just would just hold that out you know once again we are as human as anyone else so and these things that happen some of these ugly ugly things about being human they're a part of us too so any other cons you can think of this is kind of a pro and a con but you know we talked about this different times but there is a huge difference people that you meet that say they're mennonite i mean there is a vast difference in their lifestyles yeah it can be very culturally different between groups as well just speaking culturally one thing though i would say the majority of mennonite groups are very similar in theology at least the conservative groups and so and by conservative i mean like head covering dress wearing yeah the differences would be more you know the more conservative ones would say they might even restrict you to a certain color of car to drive you know certain very your though your clothes are very much spelled out which you can and cannot wear whereas the more non-conservative non-conservative people would would be more general yeah but you're right the theology between the two groups would be similar and not to not to be negative but another con is that there has been a fair amount of disagreement disagreement i hate to use the term infighting but it almost does apply among mennonite groups and churches some have a vision this way some have a vision this way right and that's probably i mean i don't know if you look in the bible you know paul and barnabas had a disagreement about whether or not to take john mark with them and yeah you know some of that is human and i don't think that just because you know two groups of christian people disagree on something that that automatically means that you know they're both in the wrong and whatever all i mean yeah people are people and god calls people to different walks of life but i have seen so much in the meta knight church that i cannot say is of god i mean it's been the work of the devil to drive people apart and maybe that i think it's very awesome yeah it's just the fact that we're all human i don't think i don't think you'll get away from that no matter where you go yeah but there's definitely groups we've been a part of that are very unified and groups not so much so and we've been to yeah yeah we've traveled a fair amount and gone to different bible schools and different churches and taught in different places and gotten to see a fair amount so is that it yeah all right i think now move on to the little happier side yeah you probably are wondering at this point why are you guys right exactly so we're gonna move this was obviously i would say this what we covered is the biggest reason a lot of people leave right i would say so or that there's bitterness and hurt and things caused is what we covered so it's not that we're trying to like be negative but it's good if you're because there's i just can't believe how many people email us and want to join or very curious about our culture and want to know where our church is close to them so it's the whole point of this video not to try to convince you to become like us or to join us but to help those that actually do want to decide if it's for them and then yeah and that's why this video is going to be forever long too is we want to try to cover everything so the pros and for me personally the upside of the mennonite group um is why we chose to stay and we also see i believe we see a revival happening among the young there's a real movement among the mennonites especially like i would say a lot of the mennonite groups actually um where i'd say there's maybe an awakening a revival especially among middle-aged young folks where a lot of the stuff that we addressed you know they're they're wanting to improve on it to still keep the traditions that matter but throw out the baggage so to speak and so i think us seeing that and seeing the heart of that we wanted to choose to stay and be a part of that movement and see if we can help improve some of these negative things plus all the benefits that do come with our culture and we're gonna talk about that so yeah being a meta knight is obviously more of a simple life there again it's it depends i mean the more conservative groups obviously the ones that say would drive a horse and buggy would live a much simpler life there's a lot of variation among those groups too but when your horse is your means of transportation that yeah limits you to a very small area right and that kind of ties into the next point which is strong community being a meta knight is very much about community right not just you know you go to church and sit on a bench sunday morning like maybe this is another difference that we didn't talk about but in in a lot of mennonite churches everybody would take a part in teaching you take apart cleaning the church whatever all and there's something to me that's kind of awesome about that like rather than having you know somebody that does this job for life and that job like you know where if everybody pitches in and helps we have church work days we have cleaning days where we all go clean the church twice a year right we have right now we are on as like youth sponsors to kind of help the youth with activities and whatever and that was for two years we go off this year so that's been fun we've really enjoyed that you get to know the youth better and yeah it's just there's so many different jobs and everyone not for pastors obviously and then there's often like we have family nights we have events where the picnics and stuff where the church gets together and yeah that's to me is a strong strong plus is the huge community if someone is sick the women are very quick to there's someone in charge in the women's side to like be in charge of setting up meal schedules um so someone is really sick the ladies volunteer you would take meals to people if someone had a baby they get meals for like two to three weeks every other day or something like that so that they can just rest and recuperate you know if there's a big medical need people pitch in offerings and depending what church group you're a part of if it's a huge group like um would you call it a conference where churches nationwide will pitch in to help with a certain need right so there's like a huge support system and that's that's really comforting to be a part of you feel you feel needed and wanted and yeah i would say with this i mean i know we aren't unique in having a church that's more than just a place to go worship sunday morning right there's people have a lot yeah but that is something that i would say is across the board in in the meta knight structure that is usually a pro usually there's a strong sense of community among among mennonite people and and thinking of that often like mega churches would be more you just go to church and i just thought of it now often within mennonite churches if a church starts getting too large um they will start what they call an outreach where they start another church either in another state or a few hours away where there's not a church and then people either volunteer or they all agree that they're going to either do they vote sometimes it it depends it depends on the fruit yeah but if you're willing you can be possibly chosen to go be a part of that new church and so it kind of helps keep churches somewhat smaller some churches are still quite large like 2 300 people but we're partial to smaller churches under 100 is nice but well one you know another one of the pros in my opinion is the bible is viewed as you know as something that we don't get to pick and choose what you know what's going to be right crucial or critical obviously there's things in the bible that are the new testament has a message that's maybe more special than the old and yet i don't feel like we can understand the new very well without the old right um we try not to twist scripture so that we can be accepted by society and as society changes i mean you just look over the past hundred years and so many things have changed and i feel like we've helped on to some of those values um and haven't changed with society in that like believing marriage is between a husband and a wife sex before marriage is out um and that is something that we strongly believe and i think that has kind of been lost in some christian circles not neces i mean i read a lot of purity books definitely not nearly all but there's definitely some groups that that's just kind of as long as you're faithful to that person you know it's kind of okay right so within our groups we're very very um it happens obviously sex before marriage but um if it's known about it it's not i guess you can't really be a part of a mennonite group and do something and live together or right that's not to say that if if it happens say that you know we shut it down or yeah they would be ostracized or whatever but yeah we would not you wouldn't be able to be a member of a mennonite church and live with your boyfriend girlfriend and so people can look at us and say oh well you just nitpick on this or that but it's like we do the whole picture you know it's abstain from sex before marriage marriage is for life marriage is between a husband and a wife we try not to let society dictate on what we know the bible to say so the next point right along with that that is a huge is probably one of the one of the largest factors right along with strong community for me is that marriage for life is is to to be divorced is really not an option and we grow up with this mentality and and to separate isn't even something that really comes to our minds it's ingrained in us so mary just taken very seriously uh we don't jump into it without much prayer and if you've all seen the struggle i went through with one of my other videos that i shared we shared our love story it wasn't easy but we yeah i can't still can't believe i landed him sometimes but i got him when people separate it just tears families apart and you see what it does to children it just there's just so much pain that comes from separation and divorce and that type of thing and that affects children for life you know i have pretty much any time you go into any type of counseling or psychological things that people talk about they often reference to a point in their childhood when their parents broke up like it's just something that just affects a child so deeply and i know that bad marriages obviously affect a child too and we're not immune to that there's people that christ is not the center they're really struggling to get along and sometimes you think it would be best if they just separated you for the children's sake it's very it's very shattering to a child to to have to suddenly make sense of their parents not living together and they live with the one and then you live with the other and yeah you know if that was your life story growing up i'm not yeah we do not mean to shame you at all for that right it just and it is kind of hard to talk about some of this because i do know there's a lot of viewers on here that have went through that or maybe they're the parents of children maybe you deal with guilt and we're not trying at all to shame or make you feel guilty or less of a parent or like you're or what should i be saying no i i think i think so too it's you know we're explaining what we think is the pros of the mennonite structure um i i feel like the bible does give us direction on on marriage and how we are to live our lives you know my growing up years i mean my friends yeah their parents were were just all together you know and i i didn't realize then it was only when i was older that i realized how you know in the grand scope of things yeah to a lot of people growing up that is just not the way it is for them you know a lot of their friends i mean if yeah if more than 50 of marriages end in divorce then that means that you know your normal public schools i mean over 50 of the kids are in that kind of situation and right yeah i just i can't imagine the dynamic of that you know growing up it's so foreign to us and that's that's a huge blessing that i feel from living in this in this culture and man and i had a baptist faith or whatever and along with that is children had the security of parents staying together i feel like this is huge because like he said all their friends as parents are together for the most part it's not always you have all these families that where they believe marriage is a commitment no matter what bad things come your way no matter what happens you're committed and that foundation of commitment anyway makes for a strong community even outside your family and in your church and that to me that is what marriage is it's vows it's not only if we still love each other right and so i mean there's often been times that we've struggled but it's not an option to separate and we work through things and then you come through it stronger she throws a dish at me take that back no she's never turned dishes that way and even in a marriage like i'm never worried about when i'm in a really bad mood or really struggling personally with things i'm going through in my life where i'm just not being so kind to him when i should be and just really working through things i don't have to worry in the back of my mind that oh he's going to leave me now for someone else it happens but i trust because of just how we've been raised if that won't happen and i just fully trust him that he stays with me and that foundation of trust within a marriage i think helps it blossom and grow much more than if it was always something i was worried about him leaving because of my performance well and i i want to say too that we talked a little about a bit about there are bad marriages in in the mennonite church and sometimes they're bad marriages and because the culture doesn't really allow anyone you know obviously divorce is frowned on so i guess what i just want to say is i think that marriage is if if she's afraid or she's not afraid that i won't that i'll leave her or vice versa simply because we live in a culture that that's not done and that's that's the extent of things right maybe i'm being confusing i guess what i just i mean a real godly christian marriage has to go so much deeper than simply living in it going to a church and being part of a group that like the mennonites where marriage is is a commitment for life and that's what is is done like you know so i i just you know i i want to say that that is a pro of the mennonite church because you know that is the vast majority of mennonite marriages stay together for life but it doesn't make them immune to bad marriage right right yeah i'm not trying to it's just it's just one of them the main pros i think about our culture because it's so rare in society today um so another point would be we have and there is there's some homeschooling that that some mennonites would do um fair amount yeah um but there is a lot of our own private schools too we would vary very few mennonites there would be some that would use the public school system but they would they'd be a rarity most mennonites would either home school or send them to like a private school that's like a church ran school or whatever yeah and that's what i went to school and that's when she went to school and and maybe i'd be a much much smarter person if i had went to like a public school system but not to be pessimistic but what i see the public school system cranking out sometimes i don't feel like i missed out missed out on that much and what's nice is our schools are much smaller too and so teachers have a lot more interaction with each personal student and if there's a struggling student they can kind of help them through a little easier the other nice thing is you know that you're sending them to a school with the same values that you have so you're not worried about things being taught to them that you do not agree with at all like we see going on with a lot of parents today right yeah sending their kids to public school and all the things that are going on another big one at least for me especially that i love is it goes along with community and that is the global connection you have so if you're traveling or somewhere and you happen to meet another mennonite i mean we can pick each other out like obviously um there's an immediate connection even if you don't know them so often especially if you're in an area where there's not lots of mennonites if you're out somewhere in an area where there's like just one church or something and suddenly you're the newcomer it's very prone that you'll talk and you'll immediately have a connection like your family even though you're complete strangers and that i really like um and that's within many churches i mean it doesn't really matter if you're conservative or not i mean some churches maybe not so much but there's definitely a real connection there there's also like right along with that there's a lot of opportunities for for young people and even for middle-aged older people whatever to you know to go to other countries and serve that the mennonites have a fairly broad mission spectrum a lot of a lot of mennonite missions and things like that in other countries i know other churches do as well there's obviously lots of missions in other churches it's more because we're kind of this big global family so to speak if you want to call it that i mean obviously there's discord and things that happen that people aren't getting along like they should but for the most part um you have all these different groups all over and young people get to connect with other christian mennonite anabaptist young people through bible schools there's just a plethora of bible schools where young people go for three weeks six weeks and just study um things overseas missions and it's a great opportunity for them i liked quite a few when i was young i loved it yeah and then you just have a broad scope of friends and you kind of keep up friendships and it's just yeah and i think that's another thing that i've noticed with i have non-mennonite friends and i've noticed that among the mennonite groups young people tend to have a lot of connections and a lot of friends all over the states and they travel a lot like they fly all over meeting people that's definitely really changed in the past well and once again where there's obviously some men and young people that are more than happy just to stay at home or you know if some of the more conservative mennonite churches there'd be a lot less of you know attraction overseas yeah whatever but yeah i think it's it's wonderful that young people have an opportunity to yeah go serve in another country even for a couple weeks or whatever right it's pretty beneficial another thing when we had spoken before about we don't believe in and going to war and that type of thing so there's actually a lot of programs set up within the mennonite churches where young people go serve their country in other ways you can go work in hospitals there's a lot of relief work like after these hurricanes and floods and doesn't that kind of get recorded well there's something they call it a cast program it's basically it's set up so that if there would be another draft then um conscientious objectors would have work projects set up for they could go and serve in a non-combat way or whatever right yeah and then i would say another pro is mennonites are generally very hard working yeah that doesn't mean that non-meta knights aren't there's some lazy ones like me mennonites and maybe it goes back to our german roots or whatever i'm not sure but hard work ethics almost to a fault sometimes i mean it can be a con where and frugal there's yeah there's workaholic mennonites who don't have the kind of time they should have for their family or their church and people and it's it's all about work that could be another a little bit of a fault because you'll see a lot of mennonites tend to be business people like you'll see a lot of mennonite businessmen and it's a good thing but i think because of hard work ethics they're taught to save not spend money and the other thing is we tend to not and that's changing some but you know we don't tend to just spend our money on tons of amusement things and parties and we don't go drinking and all the types of things where money tends to be blown at and so money is saved more in that way so you tend to have some people that are quite wealthy if their hearts not maybe quite where it should be and maybe it's a little more earthly minded than it should be that's another kind of downside sometimes in meta knight since they're so work oriented that they can almost become materialistic if they're not careful well i do i do love the hard work ethics because you can just yeah often when you hire someone among our community you can just count on them to be a good worker for the most part not always not always no i mean and being hard-working is yeah i know i heard one pastor say he thinks god can use a lazy person but he's not quite sure how and it's probably better to be i guess i would consider being hard having hard work ethics as being more of a pro than a con that's pretty much everything we have there's obviously things i'm sure we've missed so um next up would be a lot of people ask how to find a church i'm going to recommend some websites i'm going to have them on my blog so go down to the blog post in the description and then i'll have links to those websites and then underneath that so the one website um is a moderately conservative church website but it's very good lots of good materials on it you can listen to sermons to music and then they have a little section called church finder and it's all over the world where they have um churches from pretty conservative to not quite um you're not super conservative spectrum i don't yeah some of them they don't have on there so underneath that website i think we'll maybe have some recommendations of church groups that we might recommend um to look at because you don't want to just go on that map and just think that every church might fit your need we'll have a few links and we'll have writing around it to kind of recommend which ones and then some of you have been contacting us from around the world and other countries there's definitely outreaches and we have churches in various countries but is it dni would be a good one there's destinations international we'll have links to them as well it's it's a group that sends out a few families like our church has a family in new york city or if you're in an area and you would like to see an anabaptist in a night church you could request that and if there's people willing to come different churches will spawn sponsor a few families to come to your area so that's another good one to reach out to we'll have that one there last of all we wanted to talk about a few cultural shocks or changes or things you might expect especially like say when visiting a church um often you'll find non-instrumental music right a cappella singing four-part harmony kind of an old traditional not all but a lot a lot of times too and this isn't all mennonite churches but a lot of mennonite churches do segregated seating the men sit on one side the ladies sit on the other i'm not sure yeah that's not that's not across the board there's some family family seating in some churches but and if you go to one of those churches and you want to sit as a family feel free um i know most churches won't judge you for it another thing is most churches will kneel to pray that's a big culture shock for some if you call it culture shock they're used to standing at our church we stand because our benches are so tight together but a lot will actually kneel down um and if you can't a lot of people won't like if you have health issues or if you don't want to you just stay sitting it doesn't matter but it's just kind of something if they say okay let's pray and suddenly there's just this wave of people kneeling down and if you're not used to it you're suddenly like a deer in the headlights so we kind of like to let you know ahead of time that if they say let's pray sometimes they don't actually say let's kneel to pray and many churches will actually turn around some churches will kneel forward but many actually turn around and kneel backwards i think it was it was sort of like i guess the way in some catholic churches they kneel forward towards a saint a statue of a saint or whatever right this was sort of yeah that's what i heard but there again my mennonite history isn't very good any other things you can think of they could expect when visiting and you're welcome to pop into any church at any time just letting you know maybe how long the services are they're usually about two hours on average the majority of people they have sort of an introduction to song and devotions in the first 15 minutes 20 minutes and then there's sunday school for half hour or so and then there's usually a sermon message for an hour or something like that so it can get a little long for some people but i don't really have anything written down there's obviously quite a few cultural things you'll encounter that we don't even think about just in our lifestyle what was it that christy had said about cleaning our plates one of our friends that joined anyway she said one of her culture shocks was that it's polite to leave a little bit on your plate to show the host or the hostess that you had enough and in the mennonite culture you clean your plate because you don't waste any food and that's a sign that you know you're hungry and the food was good and you do not leave it's like a slam against the cook to eat food so to her that was a big culture shock so there's different like yeah little mannerisms and stuff like that is a little more old school like i don't know yeah yeah so there's lots of little things like that you might run into but that's all this is gonna be a long one huh yeah i'm getting really tired anyway i hope this was helpful if we left anything out my fellow mennonites you're welcome to comment below to help so yeah feel free to go check out my blog links below if i if we miss anything i'll have it in there but i'll just mostly have like where to find church the websites maybe some other things that you can go check out and recommendations for us it's one of those things if you are looking for a church you might not find the right fit for you on the first try and for sure if you go somewhere and you feel like it's just after one visit it is the place for you you'll probably find out that may i warn you that people there are as human as anywhere else and and i want to you know if if that's where you feel god's calling you to yeah i feel like sometimes we're too negative about the meta knights and yeah i think it's a wonderful culture and i think we have yeah i'm not saying this in an arrogant way i think we do have something to offer you know america and the world and stuff it's better yeah especially as rapidly as times have been changing and stuff i it seems to be lately especially after 2020 and everything has been happening since that we've noticed more and more emails where people are just craving about like simple values community and if that's really what you're craving then it might be the place for you because i think that's the core of who we are if you can put up with some of this other negatives that we talked about and just say you know what i'm willing to accept that and try to be a part of the movement that hopefully gets some of the worst things out and keeps improving as time goes on but as far as the right church when you're searching obviously like we said there's such a huge spectrum so the mennonite churches that might be near you might not be what you're looking for so just keep that in mind okay whoo that was long we'll see ya thanks for watching bye you know what i bet i could hang this off the light we're doing redneck setup you look beautiful thank you i thought that was a very very good song if you want to sit down sit down mike yeah hello testing one two three right there here can you tape it this way babe listen it has to be pointed it's a directional like you can't just point at any witch harry there we go just say something hello this is nolan and janine we are talking about ministers

Channel: The Mennonite Mom

Views: 95,046

Keywords: the mennonite mom, mennonite mom, mennonite, mennonite blogger, mennonite vlogger, mennonite youtuber, mennonite youtubers, mennonite church, mennonite community, joining mennonites, joining amish, about mennonites, pros and cons, christian church, anabaptist, joining anabaptist church, mennonite theology, mennonite history, anabaptist history, anabaptist theology, all about mennonites

Id: yvM-2FKu6Ug

Length: 71min 51sec (4311 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 12 2021