Growing up, my family and I attended several nondenominational churches(read: pentecostals/fundamentalists who don't want to be accountable to any other churches), but when I was 12, we started going to a Mennonite church. I'm still there, 11 years later. I think you and I have talked before about who the Mennonites are, kp, but for those who don't know, Mennonite does not = Amish.<br><br><br><br>
For that matter, New Order and Beachy Amish do not = Old Order Amish. The Old Order is the strictest group, the ones who drive buggies and wear bonnets, don't use electricity except in the barn, and on it goes. New Order and Beachy Amish are often confused with conservative Mennonites because though they wear plain clothes, they are not as "painfully" plain as the OO's. New Order and Beachy Amish drive cars and participate in society much more than OOs do.<br><br><br><br>
But, most Mennonites aren't that conservative. You'd never know it because we tend to blend in with everybody else clothes-wise, we drive cars, use electricity, turn off our cell phones and pagers before the sermon starts, work in any number of professions aside from farming, etc. Mennonites, Amish, Hutterites (a very small group) and the Church of the Brethren make up the Anabaptist movement. The Anabaptist movement began about the same time as the Protestant Reformation (Martin Luther, et al) but most Protestants did not consider Anabaptists to be part of them because of the Anabaptists' practice of rebaptizing adult believers, pacifism and dedication to service.<br><br><br><br>
Those three characteristics are still true today in the Mennonite church. We practice infant dedication, and if you want to be baptized, that's your choice as a teen/adult. While pacifism is the official church theology, it's probably half-and-half in my congregation. More people in my parents' generation are pacifists than those in mine, in my experience with this denomination. But, I'm one of the 20-something pacifists. <img alt="" class="inlineimg" src="/images/smilies/smiley.gif" style="border:0px solid;" title="
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Service is <i>huge</i>, and this part I know you'll like, kp. This weekend is the annual Ohio Mennonite Relief Sale, a two-day wood and quilt auction to raise money for Mennonite Central Committee's worldwide efforts to improve living conditions for the poor. It's the sixth year of Penny Power, in which people donate their spare change to put water filtration systems in orphanages in Third-World countries. Ohio alone collected $22,000 this way last year.<br><br><br><br>
I have been on so many service trips with my church I cannot remember them all off the top of my head. And, reportedly, the Mennonites were sending service workers around the world long before it became fashionable to do so in other denominations. I'm not saying all of their methods were stellar, but they tried.<br><br><br><br>
I'm not impressed with the Mennonite church's stance on homosexuality. While insults and bodily harm are absolutely not tolerated, the official theology is homosexuality is a sin. I haven't believed homosexuality is a sin for some years, and it's been a source of disagreement with the movers-and-shakers in my church. But, each congregation will deal with that in different ways, so it could very well be that your local Mennonites in Indiana, kp, are quite gay-friendly.<br><br><br><br>
As far as demographics, Mennonite churches tend not to grow larger than 150-200. We're big into community, and that's best done with a relatively small group. After 200, most Mennonite churches will pare off and plant a second church somewhere else. If you like architecture, Mennonites are not for you. Generally, we build structures that are functional and practical, not designed to draw attention.
