Welcoming Seekers Part 1 — Ernest Eby — Ep. 051

Well, hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. I'm here with Ernest Eby. We're in State College, Pennsylvania, and you've been involved with Cam and some other ministries, and I understand you've had a lot of interaction with what we would call seekers, or that's what I think a term you've used. Can you tell us a little bit about what is a seeker, and also what are ways our churches can encourage seekers to become disciples of Jesus? So when I hear the word seeker, I'm generally thinking of people who are leaving one faith tradition or one cultural tradition to become part of a different faith tradition that appears maybe more authentic or more biblical.

Now, the word seeker could also refer to individuals or families who are really wanting to seek first the Kingdom of God. I hope I'm one of those kinds of seekers, but in this particular discussion, when I use the term seeker, I'm thinking of people who are changing from one faith tradition to another. Okay, so someone who's definitely making some changes, having a lot of thoughts about what they believe, particularly in a religious sense. Sure. Yeah. Okay. My parents were probably the first people to involve me in disciple making. My parents often invited seekers to our home for meals, and they would open up the Bible and explain why we believed what we did and practice the things that we did.

So then when I became an adult, I began making some of my own contacts with people, and for the last 15 years or so then, I've interacted with a lot of seekers online. They come to learn more about Anabaptist beliefs, where they might find churches to attend. That's also my work with the Billboard Evangelism. So it seems there's dozens of people at any given time who are going online to learn more about becoming part of a conservative Anabaptist church, and I've also been involved in some seekers' gatherings. We planned one about a year ago to bring some of these people together and make some face-to-face connections. Since moving to State College in 2014, our focus has shifted away from interacting with Christian seekers online, and now we're trying to interact more with seekers right here face-to-face, contacts in our city who have very little church experience.

Many of these people that we interact with don't really know what they should be seeking, so it's a privilege to sit with these people and study the Bible with them. For many of them, it's the first time they were introduced to the Bible. As we read the Bible together, they learn what it is and who it is that they should be seeking, and many of these people are like international students, visiting scholars, and that type of thing. Several years ago, and this is how I first got interested in wanting to interview you, is you presented a sermon called No Greater Burden, and you started that with presenting a problem. Can you describe what that problem is?

So I believe that many conservative Christians, including conservative Anabaptists, have built a subculture around themselves that's hard for people from other cultures to penetrate. Some seekers visit our churches for a while but never join. Others join our churches, but the majority end up leaving. Consequently, the majority of people in our churches then are people from the same ethnic background or relatives. The more monolithic a culture is, the more difficult it's going to be for people of other cultures to join and feel at home. For some reason, conservative Christians can often put cultural burdens on people that Jesus never intended. In another one of your messages, you've listed different factors you think are reasons people are leaving Anabaptist groups, specifically seekers in this case.

Can you go into some of those factors? What are they? Yeah, just dive into that. Yeah, I'm really curious where you're going with this. So there definitely is a very high cost for becoming a faithful Christian, and some people are not willing to pay that price. This is the reason that we like to give for why there's not many seekers joining and staying in our churches, but I've come to believe that this is often just an excuse that we use to help us feel better about the fact that not many seekers want to stay in our churches. Here's some of the reasons that seekers give for why they leave. One is, we'll never belong.

We can never measure up to these people's expectations. The bar is so high that we just can't make it, or they're not our relatives, and so we can never feel at home in this culture. Another thing they'll say is that ethnic Anabaptists will show partiality to their own families and those of their own ethnic background, and they have inconsistencies that they're just not willing to take a deep look at. Ethnic Anabaptists, they say, don't appreciate their spiritual heritage, and they're running away from it. Why would I get to be a part of something that other people are wanting to run away from? It seems like these people, at least some of them, are not on a spiritual quest.

Many Anabaptists, they say, confuse personal preferences with biblical teaching. Then sometimes seekers tell us that they leave the church they were attending because there was simply a lack of love for others in the church, and I think that these are reasons that we should sit up and pay attention. They should catch our attention. It's almost sounding like a lot of this is cultural. You know, that we're doing things so differently that it's just too hard for people to understand where we're coming from, maybe. So I'm really curious, how did you manage to hear these things from those people that have left Anabaptist churches? Well, ever since I can remember, I've been very saddened when people leave the church, and I want to see seekers really thrive.

Often, people will tell you why they left the church if they feel like you're a safe person to talk to. Some are even willing to write about their experiences if they feel like this is a safe person to write to. So as people learn about my interest in seekers and dialoguing with seekers, they'll sometimes refer me to people who have left or are in the process of leaving their Anabaptist churches, and in that way, I get to hear from some of them. Would you have an idea how many people you've heard from directly in your research? That's difficult. Perhaps, I don't know, several dozen, maybe up to a hundred. Oh, okay. Okay. How long have you been pursuing this?

Probably about 15, 20 years. Oh, wow. You've put some time in. Wow. That's amazing. So you're basically suggesting we need to reevaluate or even overhaul our view of ourselves, how our culture is coming across. Explain that. Dive into that a little more. Many conservative Christians like when everybody looks and acts the same way as them, and they feel very uncomfortable when there's too much variety. And this mentality is especially prevalent in a church where most everyone is of the same ethnic background, grew up in the same type of church. Such folks are quite insecure and uncomfortable with the thought of incorporating someone into their lives whose values or relational style is quite different from what they're used to.

Oftentimes, conservative Christians think of themselves, their church, or their broader fellowship as being the flavor of Christianity that God is most happy with. And it's not just Anabaptists that think this way. There's a lot of conservative Christians that think this way. And with this view of themselves, conservative Christians believe that most people would be better off if they'd come join their church or if their church would be like their church. And anytime we have this attitude, it will eventually eke out of our being, and seekers will be turned off, and I think it's very understandable. Maybe viewing ourselves more than we actually are. So when people who are seeking a different type of fellowship show interest in joining a different church, it feels affirming to those who are being sought out.

It makes us feel good. However, if people leave their church or fellowship, conservative Christians will view this as a big mistake and take very little responsibility for it. Their church may be lacking in love and compassion for others, but if the church has the correct set of beliefs and practices, many conservative Christians will still believe their church is the right church, even if there's this lacking love and compassion. And I think there's something wrong with that way of thinking. Another thing that I think needs overhauled is our social world. Many conservative Christians, including Anabaptists, mostly socialize with people like themselves. They spend time with relatives, people of the same ethnic background, people of similar interests, and they find it difficult to include people of other cultures, different income levels, different clothing styles, etc., even within conservative Anabaptism, and they find it difficult to include these people into their social circle.

Jesus taught that the opposite should be true of Christians. He said that if we love those who love us and do good to our own people and wave at our own people, we're no different than any other culture in the world. He says sinners can do that much. And maybe another thing that needs overhauled is that we need to view seekers as having things to teach us, not just having things to teach them, but there's things that we could really benefit from if we would interact with them. Just because they join our fellowship does not mean that they've now arrived and that we have arrived. Perhaps God brought them to demonstrate to us how we should be more like Jesus, and this is key for us to have them in our church.

One of the things you mentioned in your sermon on this topic was it feels like maybe we're tempted to lay too heavy of burdens on people that are coming into our churches, and I think maybe some people might react to that like, "No, like these things really matter." You know, can you just explain a little more what you mean by that? What are some of those things where we maybe are putting too great of a burden on people who want to join our churches? So there's many values that have been nurtured and developed over the centuries in many conservative Anabaptist communities. I'll just mention a few things like cooking from scratch, hosting people in our homes, meeting for worship twice or three times a week, well-mannered children, well-maintained properties, clean homes and attire, maybe homesung clothing, distinctive uniforms.

So it's great when a subculture can teach these skills and values to successive generations, but if these values are subconsciously or consciously expected of newcomers before they can become fully respected in the church or treated as brothers and sisters in the Lord, then they become unnecessary burdens.

So I think placing such burdens as these on people makes Jesus very sad. This is really interesting. That list of cultural things you said was, I guess you could say, pretty on point. But then one of the things, maybe a criticism of this will be, "Yeah, but we don't want to compromise these things that really are really significant to our churches."

Can you explain more into that? How would you respond to those criticisms? Well, I think it would be helpful if we would have a view of the church that is similar to what we see in the New Testament. The New Testament writers talk about the weak and the strong. They talk about those new in the faith and those who've been Christians for a longer period of time. They talk about people who had the oracles of God committed to them versus those who grew up in pagan settings, and they seem to envision a wide range of maturity in the church.

Many conservative Anabaptists are quite uncomfortable with such a wide range of maturity, and they would be uncomfortable with showing forbearance towards those who did not grow up with the same values. And the reasoning goes like this: If we allow the newcomer to do a certain thing, then we're opening up the door for everybody in the church to do this. And my response would be, "Really? Does it have to be this way? Why would we need to throw away wisdom and values we've been taught just because we decided to give some newcomers some room to learn and grow?" Showing forbearance for people with less Christian heritage should not become a license for others in the church to aim for the lowest common denominator.

Hmm, patience, basically. Like, give them time to grow. Yeah, okay. I think we, as churches, must learn how to hold our own children and young people to a high standard, but give those who are new to the church some time to learn and grow. Lots of patience. And I think such a mentality would probably require a metamorphosis for most conservative churches.

More give it time and allow people to develop these convictions on their own instead of just trying to really push them into something that maybe they're not really ready for yet or they're not comfortable with. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So you wrote an article at one point where you argue that the local church should restrict certain choices for its members.

Just can you walk us through what you were describing in that article and how you envision that working out in local churches? So some people spend lots of time defending why we should or why we should not have extra biblical standards, and there's even some disagreement on what the definition of biblical standards are.

And I think while some discussion on these matters can be helpful, I think such discussions often miss the important point. And so the title of the article that I wrote is, "Does a rule of life still work in the 21st century?" And I think the answer is yes.

And my premise in the article is that everyone has a rule of life that they follow, even if they don't know what it is. Some people get up in the morning and they eat breakfast at 8 o'clock, and other people say, "No, we don't think you should have a set time for breakfast. We just think you should come down and eat whenever you like." Well, both of those have a rule of life, even if they aren't aware of it. So my premise is, let's go ahead and build the best rule of life that we can if everybody has one anyhow. Okay, that's interesting. Yeah, I like that. Like, how detailed are you proposing here? Or are we getting into the weeds a little too much for that?

But like, do you feel that the local church really should decide on those things like to a fairly detailed manner? Or yeah, what are you suggesting? I think that it's very good for churches to give encouragements. I would probably differentiate between encouragements and things that we require of people. I think it's good to go ahead and give the encouragements, and some of those might become part of the rule of life that a community operates by, but it might not be made stringent, but more being, "This is how we do it. Come join us," instead of everything that we decide to do or everything we decide to promote is becoming this threshold that everybody needs to cross.

Here's a few key points from the article. First is that a rule of life should be centered around Jesus and flow out of his teachings. If Jesus is not the head, some person or some ideology will become the head, and I believe that the Sermon on the Mount is a good place to start. Secondly, a good rule of life helps a church address the direction a person is headed rather than just being a list of lines in the sand beyond which no person can cross. If we draw many lines in the sand and say, "Nobody can cross these lines," then it's easy for a lot of time and energy to be consumed in policing this line.

Rather, the rule of life should picture the direction that we want to head as a church and should picture the direction that we don't want to head. Christians in former centuries did a lot of this. They didn't have so many lines in the sand, as I understand, and from reading their documents, it was more picturing, "Here's where we want to go. Here's where we don't want to go." They gave examples of proper conduct. They gave examples of improper conduct. And in between those two examples was this unspecified realm that allowed room for people to grow in character, grow in submission to the church, love for the church, those kinds of things. You're almost proposing it's more this is more a journey that the church is on together.

You know, we're all striving together on this journey of trying to grow in Jesus. That's right. Yeah, instead of like, "Okay, here's, you know, these boundaries." Yeah, I like that. So if everybody in the church has this attitude that we need to grow, we need to learn, so we're all part of this direction that we're headed, and if we're all part of this journey, then there's going to be room for character and love to develop. A lot of working together too. This sounds like something we all have to strive together to make this happen, and that forms community. So whenever we draw lines in the sand that the Bible does not draw, it's a seedbed for division and argument.

Those responsible for enforcing the lines have the difficult job of confronting those who are out of bounds, and such confrontations often result in a discussion about the line and whether the line was drawn at the right place. And because the discussion revolves around crossing a line, it's easy for both the one doing the confronting and the one being confronted to miss the conversation of whether the person who crossed the line is really headed the same direction as the church, whether they want to be a part of this group, and those kinds of conversations. And so I think a lot of time gets wasted or not used properly just because of how we draw the lines.