 |
| source |
- early Anabaptist Hans Denck
Most of us Mennonites operate from the conviction that we should do everything possible to pass on the faith to our children, no matter what the cost.
But have we focused too much on financially costly programs and institutions to accomplish this--and too little on things that are more costly in terms of personal sacrifice?
Consider the example of Jesus. His work of nurturing young disciples required almost zero financing, but cost him everything in terms of time, energy and his very life.
Today we tend to outsource many of those efforts to church professionals and parachurch institutions.
EXAMPLE A: Since the mid 20th century we have invested in more and more expensive real estate for our weekly worship services, Sunday school and other programs to nurture people in the faith, all of which tend to utilize a lot of building space (and are used for a very limited periods of time). More recently, it's become more common for congregations to hire paid Christian education persons and part time or full time youth and young adult pastors, all of whom use professionally produced Sunday School, Bible School and other study curricula.
Task A: Figure out how much of your church's budget goes for the above discipling efforts, including cost of building maintenance, curriculum and the amount going for staff salaries and support. Then figure what the approximate monetary cost is per youth and/or young adult benefiting from these programs.
EXAMPLE B: Mennonites appear to have more professionally run church-wide institutions dedicated to educating our young than do most denominations of our size. Among these are state-of-the-art church camps, Christian elementary and high schools, and Christian colleges and seminaries. The unusual numbers of these great programs are partly due to the merger that created MCUSA, and the tendency of institutions, for better or for worse, to make every effort to preserve and perpetuate themselves.
Task B: Check your church's budget to determine your financial investment in para church organizations and institutions focused on nurturing and discipling our young. Compare that to the rate of giving designated for the church's mission beyond itself, and how that compares to past church budgets.
Finally, add up the total numbers and come up with an estimated average cost of raising one Mennonite follower of Jesus from childhood to adulthood in your congregation, including their attendance at Mennonite or other Christian educational institutions.
Next, compare that to the financial cost of discipling one young believer in the first century church, or one Anabaptist believer in the sixteenth century, or one Mennonite World Conference member in the Global South, or a young believer in an Old Order Amish or Mennonite community. *
Note: I'm not saying that spending some or all of this money is necessarily a bad thing, only that we consider how to best use our resources in ways that best demonstrate Jesus' approach to disciple making. The work of making disciples is always costly, and sometimes may indeed involve some substantial financial investment.
But are we overlooking other even more demanding and costly ways of raising Jesus-followers? For example, what impact would it have on our young if they observed us being engaged in some of the following:
- Congregational members demonstrating a radical commitment to reducing personal possessions and making huge investments in worldwide relief and service efforts.
- Paid staff members voluntarily living on lower salaries, and encouraging others to follow their example.
- The church, both locally and as a denomination, placing a moratorium on investing in more real estate or paid positions until the rest of a world in need catches up with our standard of living.
- Having a growing number of members embrace a lifestyle akin to those of people like St. Francis of Assissi or a Mother Teresa--or the lifestyle of Jesus and his apostles, who exhorted his disciples to leave all behind and follow in his steps.
Perhaps there is no more effective way of enlisting and training faithful Jesus followers than by our actually following in his steps, costly as that may be.
Which may make what we are doing now seem really cheap in comparison.
And sadly, too many of our teens and young adults don't seem to be especially impressed by what we're doing now.
* Footnote: The Amish, without any church buildings or paid staff, and with no overt efforts at evangelizing, are growing at a very rapid rate, and according to a recent Mennonite World Review article, will soon have four times as many members as MCUSA. Part of that is due to having larger families, but even more important is their 85% retention rate, well above our own.
7 comments:
Very, Very thought provoking. I want to give this some very serious thought. Something that did come to mind as I was reading--even Jesus' style of making disciples was not immediately "effective" (note the quotes to hedge my comment) in that they ran off when he was arrested. Not until the Holy Spirit came upon them did they have the courage to follow in his steps. I think I would agree with you that this will only come as we make personal relational investments in discipling our children. Not a contradiction to your comments, must thinking out loud.
Regarding the footnote, I'd argue that the reason the Amish have the retention rate they do is because it's incredibly difficult to leave -- not only because of the ban on baptized members who leave, but also because the Amish are great at boundary maintenance in other ways (drastically different lifestyle than surrounding culture, no formal education beyond the eighth grade, speaking a distinctive language at home, close ties to ethnic and familial groups). If you're raised this way, the emotional/social/financial costs of leaving (even if you feel called to) are often much higher than the costs of staying.
MCUSA could emulate the Amish "success" by forbidding birth control, closing our colleges, yanking our kids out of school after eighth grade, and speaking only Esperanto (or some other randomly chosen, unpopular language) at home and in our church services, instituting strict dress codes, and creating Rules & Discipline that outline punishments for everything from listening to the radio to voting in municipal elections.
But there are reasons MCUSA members don't do those things.
Also, keep in mind that the Amish are not a monolithic group, just as the Mennonites aren't. Since MCUSA is only a subgroup of Mennonites, it would be fairer to compare its numbers to a subgroup of Amish, such as the Schwarzentruber or the Beachy.
You make some good points. I grew up in an Amish and Beachy Amish community in Virginia that didn't practice shunning and where the younger generation increasingly used English among themselves. Approximately half remained Amish, Beachy Amish or some brand of more conservative Mennonite. From 1950-1966 the two churches operated a one room "high school" for grades 8-10 as an alternative to their young people having to attend a new consolidated public high school some miles away. 47 attended of the 106 alumni of this only Amish high school ever who are still living (144 were enrolled in all) got together for a reunion last year, where it was reported that of the 73 male students who attended, 22 became ordained ministers, and an overwhelming majority of the total of 144 remained active in some church. To my knowledge, none divorced, and some, like myself, later passed our GED exams and went on to pursue higher education. Pretty much all of us felt good about the quality of community and sense of spiritual commitment we saw demonstrated.
I once did a cursory analysis of what a typical Menno congregation spent on itself - building, pastors, programs, etc., and it was at least 85%, with most of the remainder going to MCC, MDS, and other Menno agencies.
That's interesting! Do you think that lower rate (compared to 85%) is because of the easier time the students would have navigating between cultures? Of course, it sounds like the vast majority remained Christians, even if many left Anabaptist orders. I wonder with MCUSA, if the retention issue is similar—maybe people are migrating to other Christian churches instead of MCUSA, which could be due to a number of reasons, not just disinterest in MCUSA. MCUSA isn't a pervasive church—it's easy to move to places in the US where no MCUSA church is within traveling distance. I joined an American Baptist congregation when I moved to an area without a nearby MCUSA presence.
Actually in this case, almost all remained in "Anabaptist orders" of some kind. At a recent well attended 40 year reunion of the Western Mennonite School classes of 72-74 in Oregon (I was principal there for two of those years) this was not the case. Almost all of the attendees were Christians but no longer Mennonite, often members of independent fundamentalist churches, in spite of their having attended WMS. True, some of that may be because no MCUSA churches were located where they lived.
Post a Comment