My Journey to the Mennonites — Samantha Trenkamp — Ep. 022

Lesson Transcript

Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. Joining me today is Samantha Trenkamp. Samantha is the blog editor for Anabaptist Perspectives. Samantha has agreed to tell us a little bit about her story, about her journey from Roman Catholicism to where she's at today as an Anabaptist. So Samantha, can you tell us a little bit about life before joining the Mennonites? Sure. So my family would be Catholic on both sides, nominally so, and my family would have been as well.

But yeah, that's all we knew. We didn't attend Mass regularly. Very few people in our family did, except for the normal, like your special holidays, Christmas and Easter, and that kind of thing. So we would have been pretty nominal as well. But I remember we were always wanting something more, because even as a little thing we would visit different churches occasionally. But Catholicism was all we knew. It was what we were comfortable with, where our family was, so we just hung out there.

So I attended public school until fourth grade, and then fifth grade mom and dad would have pulled us out, me and my sister, to homeschool, which was a whole different, whole new world. It was really a whole new way of living, just being the typical homesteader, homeschooler. So that was something to adjust to, and missing all your friends and all of that.

And then along with those changes, as even as a young girl I was very intensely involved in ballet classes, and just several times a week, and helping teach, and performing with the Knoxville Ballet. And I had a German choreographer help me out, and I was on my way to New York for some extra training, and then God just kind of threw all of our plans into a mess, and then I actually stopped taking classes. But I mean, that was my trajectory. I was going to be a professional dancer.

So yeah, that was definitely one of those moments I can look back on and say God did a major shift in my life there. So what were some of the contributing factors that convinced you to join the Anabaptist? Well, it was kind of a journey, because after we got into homeschooling we didn't really have a church still, so through another homeschool family we started going to another Catholic church. And we settled there for quite a while.

And when I was 10, along with my siblings, we would have been baptized there, because we weren't baptized as infants since we didn't attend Mass regularly then. So I often found myself as the youngest in a group of people, so I often felt like the outcast and didn't have any friends, and just really missed the reality, wanted the reality of people, and I just didn't have that. And another thing with the Catholic Church, I could really appreciate the traditions and the rituals of Mass, and I did enjoy that.

But at the same time it also felt very empty for me, even though I wasn't a Christian yet. It was never explained to me why we did things or what it all meant. So things like baptism, you just did it because it was part of the process of being in the church. You just did. God was never presented to me as someone, as a God I could have a relationship with. He was a God who did things for me if I did the right things, reciting the rosary and confession to the priest and that kind of thing. So God was very distant.

We were there for several years, but then our priest, who was an older man, he got sick and he had to leave the pulpit. So a younger priest came in, but we just did not appreciate what he brought with him. We didn't feel like we could support him, so we left. And then through another homeschool family, we ended up in a non-denominational charismatic church, which was a total flip, much more dynamic and loud than Mass. But we stayed because they had a lot of young people, and mom and dad really wanted that for us.

So we were able to have friends and interact and do things. And it was just two weeks or three weeks after we started attending, all of the young people went on a youth retreat, and we couldn't go, so the church paid the way for my sister and I to go. So it would have been there that I would have encountered Christ and became a Christian, and my sister as well.

But on returning home, when they did baptisms, believers' baptism for everybody that would have become Christians while they were there, I refused it because I knew that there was a lot of emotionalism and sensationalism and a lot of expectation in that kind of geared-up environment, because it was very much like the worship band and that kind of thing. And everybody going up to the altar just crying and stuff.

And so I know I experienced something, but I didn't know if it was real or not, so I didn't want to commit to it yet. But now looking back, I can say that is where I did become a Christian. It just took time to process through it. So after we attended there for about six months, which wasn't a very long time, but we were pretty heavily involved. But there was a lot of internal turmoil that started to happen between some of the families.

I don't think we were necessarily involved in some of that, but yeah, us and several other families decided it was just time to move on. So we went for several years without a church, and over that time mom just did a lot of research, because she was really searching. She wanted to find somewhere to attend, because we knew we needed that. So she started doing a lot of research, mostly on the web and any book she could find, just on denominations in general.

She was kind of open to any kind of Christian faith at that point. But in the process of searching, she found out about the Anabaptists, and it just really intrigued her. So she started searching around, and there really wasn't hardly anything. But somehow, I'm not sure how, she got in contact with a Mennonite pastor in Indiana. And so he sent us some information and choral tapes and just different kinds of Mennonite elements and exposed us to that.

So we started researching into that some and studying Scripture, the different aspects that make Anabaptists unique. And so we started shifting into trying out the covering, trying the skirts, and continuing to learn and things like that.

And I can remember when mom came in one day and she said, "You know, I'd like to start wearing the covering." And I still, just thinking back on it, I still don't understand it now, but I just remember I went straight to my room and I grabbed the only kerchief I owned and I put it on, and I was just like, "Yep, we're going to do this." And it was fine. Yeah, but skirts were a little harder, because I'd always been a pretty devout tomboy. So skirts were a lot harder.

And I can remember another time I was standing in my closet with a garbage bag, because we were getting ready to kind of cleanse and send stuff to the thrift store. And I just remember sitting there and I really struggled with having to give up my favorite pair of Hunter's Camo Cargo Pants.

I was like, "I don't want to have to give these up." But I think the problem with that, why I struggled with that, is because really, if you think about it, going from, as a woman, going from wearing pants to skirts, it really gives you a whole new identity in society. People treat you differently and they look at you differently, and I had to adjust to that. And then one day, I would think I was about 15 or 16, we were taking a new route home just for the fun of it.

And here's this little bitty Anabaptist church just wedged back in the hills of Tennessee, and we're like, "Wait a minute, where has this been all of our lives?" And it was actually a pretty new church plant. There weren't many families in it. It was pretty small. So we got the number of the pastor, which was Joe Rudolph, and called him up and started going, and pretty much the rest is history after that. So at this point you had already made a lot of changes, especially in dress and lifestyle.

But what were some of the other contributing factors that convinced you that the Anabaptists were a group you wanted to join? Well, there were two big factors, one of them being that the Anabaptist people are just very sincere about following Jesus and following his words and his commands. And I'd never experienced it to that extent before.

The fact that they go counterculturally was a real pull for me, because it seemed like I was seeing so much, I don't want to say hypocritical, but you worship on Sunday and nothing changed the rest of the week. I wasn't seeing a different type of people. That's generalizing, but that was my experience. I wasn't seeing biblical living in people's daily lives. So coming into the Anabaptists, that would have really been a draw, because they were being consistent outside of church.

The second big factor would be not just the sense of community, but the reality of it, because there's always people and you're there for each other. You don't really get that much in our American church and American culture, because it's very much top of the dog pile. I want to get to where I need to go or get my family where I need to go. But then coming into the Anabaptists, it's very much, "I'm there for you," even if you've never met the person before.

Like so many times we've, I mean, you and I have been on trips and it's like, "Oh, we need a place to stay." And you just meet this random Mennonite person and they've got a bed and they say, "Hey, come stay." You know, just that sense of there are people there for you and it's a security and it's an identity. And I just really appreciated that. Well, Samantha, that's a pretty incredible journey.

Thank you for sharing that with us and giving us a window into some of the things you experienced coming from, you know, the Catholic into the Anabaptist. Is there anything else you would like to say before we wrap this up? As I was preparing for this, as I think back over my story, which is really just God's story, I always think of that hymn that says, "The half has never been told." There's just so much more that God has done and is doing, and he's just so good and faithful.

And everything he does is good, and he will shepherd us very wisely and lovingly. Wow. Well, thanks so much for sharing. That's such a powerful testimony, and it has challenged and inspired me many times. Well, that brings us to the end of today's episode. If you liked what you heard, please feel free to drop us a comment below. For more information about Anabaptist Perspectives, you can find us on our website. Thank you for joining us, and we'll see you next time.