 integration into a new community or culture doesn't instantly or magically happen. So what does it take to plant deep roots into a new community or culture? We are honored to have Melvin Lehman back with us for this episode. To start this conversation I'd like to talk about the relationship between strong community identity and openness to others entering our community. Many people with backgrounds other than conservative Mennonite look at our churches and communities and find it appealing. They find aspects of truth that resonate with them, strong communities that resonate with them, sometimes families, and there's a wide variety of reasons that people sometimes find our churches appealing. However, at least for my observation where I've been able to see, while there have been many people who are interested and sometimes spend years in our communities, it's much less frequent that people end up putting deep roots down and staying long-term. So I'm curious how you think about the relatively low rate of seekers who end up staying in our churches. I think any honest Mennonite pastor would have to say it's troubling. It's like, well, yeah, why? How come? Yeah, and so my comments might sound a little defensive in some ways, but I want to be clear. I'm troubled by the phenomena that we're talking about here for sure. I'm also glad to say that I have seen on occasion that in fact a person has come into our particular cultural expression of Christianity and have been able to put down roots and stay. A couple of observations. First, I would note that the problem spoken of here is not just a Mennonite issue. Even pop Christianity's struggle today to keep people, keep young folks, or even get them to come into church, let alone stay there. They're not oriented toward the church, nor toward commitments, nor anything of that nature. The former student of mine did some research here in the town of Meadville, actually, among the evangelical churches, and was astounded to find out that in a church of, say, 700 people, the actual core group that has been with that group from the very beginning has stuck with it over 10, 15, 20 years is really small. It tends to be a game of musical chairs in the Christian community. Here's a church that starts. I went to the first Methodist church over here, but I'm, oh, I like this church over here, so I come over here for a while. But the actual core groups that stay there over the long haul are relatively small. I'm not making an excuse, and I don't want to be overly defensive. I'm just saying that, okay, let's not wear something here that is not a pretty common problem in the Christian community really. My second comment there is the reason people are attracted, initially, a lot of times, and you gave some reasons, they're attracted to community. The Alphacons say that, but they don't know the price of community, and that's, there's the catch. And I'm not sure if we do either. In fact, I mentioned to you in a personal conversation I had with you one time that while I see the rising generation, even among Mennonites, very interested in community. I'm not sure if I really know what the price is to form the kind of communities that give life the way some of our communities at least did over the years. I grew up in a community that nurtured me. I'm the man I am largely because of a Mennonite community that cared and served, and parents that cared and served me well. Naturally, I'm attracted there, not just because I grew up there, but because I saw its value. Okay. So again, now this person who looks in and sees this, he's attracted, but that somebody paid a big price to create the community I grew up in. Okay. What is that price? Well, I mentioned some in a previous episode. So commitment, for example, it's a big one where you're actually staying committed over the long haul. I'm remembering, or I'm thinking of a person that would fit precisely what I'm talking about here. Just I'm going to call him Sam. That's not his real name. So Sam was deeply interested in the Mennonite community. Intrigued by it, had been around to various churches, was very frustrated. And when he walked into a Mennonite church, he said, wow, this would have been looking for. The catch was the veiling. It just was hard for him and his wife to be able to embrace the practice of the ladies wearing veilings as laid out in Corinthians. Now think on this just a little bit. So you can adapt if you want, make some changes in order to accommodate. You can do that. Or you can stick to your concept that this is a Bible teaching. And we as a brotherhood have committed to actually practicing this. We're not going to be judgmental of others who do not and say that they're not Christians. But it is what we've agreed to. And so if you belong to us, we expect you to commit to it. Sam couldn't see past that. And I'm not here to throw stones at him. What I've observed over the years is a tendency is to try to tease something like the veiling, let's say, make it a separate puzzle piece from the entire picture. And just examine it and hammer it to death for, I don't know, for whatever faults it may have. And then say, well, there's no reason to practice this. The Mennonite community in general has at least I think made a credible effort to say, well, if the Bible says so, we're going to try to practice it. And on that second point that I commented on in a previous episode, and that is the idea that I will submit myself to the decisions of the Brotherhood. Those are integral pieces of creating community. It's hard to create community if you do not have a firm commitment, if the Bible says so. We're going to try to live it. We might do it imperfectly, but we're going to try to. Furthermore, if I'm a little confused on the issue, I will submit myself to the Brotherhood's concepts and understanding and the way they're living this out. Those two alone go a long way and actually they're the tools of committing these strong communities that some of us have come to deeply appreciate. And I think people from outsider communities looking in appreciate, but they don't understand that's the issue. Those those two pieces are very important. So for Sam, think what he did. He said this very directly. I heard him say, I have to understand the scriptures way I understand. Well, I understand a certain level of truth to that. It is true that I have to embrace the scripture and know them and imbibe them into my heart and live them. I understand that. I myself, though, will tell you, Chair, and there are some things I don't quite understand from the scriptures, many things. I'm quite willing to come alongside my brothers and hear from them and hear them speak into my life and so forth and try to get to figure out what's the best way to live with the understanding we have. Well, on both of those counts, Sam was not willing to. He wanted to interpret the scriptures the way he wanted to. And he was perfectly unwilling to to commit himself or submit himself to a brotherhood decision. I know that even some of our listeners are going to be a little frustrated with how hard I'm pushing on that point. It is the price of community. And again, I've said previously, I'll say again, I wouldn't want to be misunderstood that I think that piece of community means a non conditional surrender to everything the community says. I think, though, it has to be pretty, pretty far up there on how I'm thinking about belonging to the body of Christ. But make sure you're understanding my my original point is people coming in are attracted, but they don't understand the price to belong even to create a community like we're talking about. Very difficult to do. And I wonder if we ourselves understand what price is there. I think that's part of the reason that people don't integrate. Now, I want to be sure to say, I think we should work hard at finding ways to actually get that question on the floor upfront in appropriate ways without answering all the questions. I also want to say that I'm not a fool. We have some problems that exacerbate the problem. We are very family oriented. And I've heard this repeatedly from people who try to break into our circles. I have the wrong last name. What they mean by that is, well, they just can't integrate into the family structures and become and be and have the same identity that the laymen's, the martens, the millers, or whoever may have, I understand it. And I'm troubled by it. And we need to, I don't know, we need to work hard on that question. So I was a little defensive. I'm also admitting, not only admitting, just simply saying, let's be honest, we have some work here to do. Some churches, Anabaptists and otherwise, have made varying degrees of adjustments to the status quo in the interest of accommodating seekers. Often this might include lessening the requirements for membership in the church community. So I'm curious how you have seen such adaptations functioning in the churches that you've observed and been involved in. And to what extent are you comfortable or uncomfortable with these sorts of adjustments and adaptations? The basis of my answer is on two experiences. The one is on one of three experiences. The one is growing up in a typical conservative Mennonite community. The second one is what I'm currently doing in Europe part of Meadville Mennonite Chapel, which has as one of its ideas is to establish a congregation in town and invite townspeople and others to be a part of this congregation. And a third one was a plan, the attempt to plant a church in Poland in Minsky Mazowiecki. So I've got some foreign mission work. I have a home congregation or my growing up congregation, just as strong and steady as can be. And then, of course, an attempt to, with the core of people, go into Meadville and do some work there and call people into the church. So that's the background here. When we started in Meadville, we tried to actually ask ourselves a question. How can we, like Jesus said, fill up the valleys and like Isaiah said, fill up the valleys and tear down the hills, how can we actually clear the way for people to come into our church? It's a very difficult question because as a pastor, as the lead pastor at that time, I said, well, brothers and sisters, you build bridges like that. You realize the difficulty is most of these bridges are two way. You can go in across them this way and then you have people who want to go out across the bridge the other way in ways that they're uncomfortable. It leads me to say that adaptation, you might say, are lessening standards that clear the way for somebody to make their way into the church is far more possible if you have a congregation of committed brothers and sisters who already have their identity clearly marked out. It's not that we won't change. I mean, I've changed just because of some of the work that I've talked about here in some ways, but not in any substantial way, certainly not on any solid biblical basis. Take the issue of, again, the permanence of marriage and all that. I'm unwilling to make adaptations there because of what I've seen. How much wreckage that's created in 20th century Christianity is like why in the world would you adapt yourself there? But in other ways, of course, I've been able to make some adaptations. But at the same time, I'm wanting to say to my congregation, now look at the bridge building here is not for your pathway, that direction. And unfortunately, this is the troubling thing. But again, hear me right. We should be open to the kind of adaptations and changes that really do fill in the valleys and bring down the hills and and pave the way. And again, I confess, it's not that we've done really well at this. I would mention Poland now because there this was a totally different approach. Why was it a different approach? We sent two families, not a core group of 10 families to Poland and said, OK, plant a church. I myself was surprised beyond measure at how difficult that has been. Remember, community is defined by values, shared values, shared spaces, shared goals, shared commitments. To build that in foreign territory where you don't have you have no none of those really to draw on much. I found very difficult. Again, some of our listeners and maybe you, Sharon, will not agree with me on this. But it's actually convinced me that if you really want to do good, solid, even for missionary work, you better send 10 families. Honestly, the thing we've been talking about in the last number of episodes, community, there's no community there. And what we found is for two families to create that community was unbelievably difficult for values, goals and commitments to actually either remain in a congregation like me, Bill Mennonite Chapel, or be built in a place where they don't exist is a it's a challenge. But it's not a challenge to be run from. I want to be clear about that. I've wanted to believe me. There've been times I want to just forget it. We'll just be our own little selves. Okay, it's not to be run from. But let's not be foolish about the the implications. Unless we've seen, at least from my perspective, seen disaster all over the place where we adapt with this without the other thing, we're going to cross the bridge the wrong way. And we end up just like everybody else. And I'm not okay with that. I'll just say I want to receive the challenge that I hear being spoken of in the in the questions. And I want to honestly say that we failed at plenty of places. The million dollar question is how do you build the bridge without creating adaptations to send people out into a world that has already gone downhill? I don't know if we'll ever solve the problem. Sometimes we think we would if we could just clean up everything we did, it would be so I don't think so. This is always going to be an issue. But we do need to mitigate it, I think. Thank you so much for talking about them with us and thank you as a pastor of a church taking these very these questions very seriously in our context. I really appreciate it. Is there anything else you would like to add before we end this episode? I just want to encourage the younger generation to rise up to the challenge. I hear some really good thinking. I hear some really good things happening. I have some confidence in God will raise is raising up a people among the younger generation who are actually wrestling with these questions. And I have some confidence though they'll do well with them. Their days it feels a little scary, but I'm just saying that I believe the Lord is building this church and he's going to use your generation to take some of these ideas we struggled with not knowing how to implement and perhaps actually get them to work better at least than what we have. Thank you for joining us for this episode and thanks to our donors and partners for making this possible. We publish essays on our website at AnabaptistPerspectives.org. We also release these essays in narrated form as their own podcast called Essays for King Jesus.