Why I am a Conservative Mennonite — Merle Burkholder — Ep. 032

Welcome, everyone, to another episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. We're here with Merle Burkholder. So thanks for joining us again, Merle. You're welcome. This is the fourth of a four-part series on Why I Believe. Merle, in the previous episode, you talked about why you were a Mennonite. And while many in our audience could identify and would agree with the things that you said drew you to the Mennonite Church and what you believed, for some of them, at least, it might not be a natural end result that you would be a conservative Mennonite. So why are you a part of the conservative Mennonite Church? When I was in high school, I attended Lancaster Mennonite High School, and many of my classmates—I was one of the most conservative students at the school, and many of my fellow students were not from conservative Mennonite churches.

And so I went—in high school, I went through a time of evaluation of where do I fit into the Mennonite Church and the spectrum of Mennonite churches. And while I appreciated my classmates and their passion for Christ and the world, I also recognized that the church, the part of the Mennonite Church that I came from, had a commitment to biblicism and a commitment to living out our faith on a daily basis in practical applications, and where we looked at biblical principles and then we said, you know, this is how we're going to express that, and this is how that's going to be lived out in our lives. And I felt like there was value in that.

You know, as we talked about in the last session, the four points of Anabaptism, biblicism, simple and literal interpretation of Scripture, and discipleship as the essence of Christianity, and the church being a disciplined group of believers who are—it's a voluntary membership—and then peace and nonviolence in human relationships, those things, I feel like the conservative Mennonite Church makes an honest effort to put those things into practice on a daily basis. Now, we don't do it perfectly. I think we make an honest effort to apply what we see in Scripture to our everyday lives. And so that is one of the reasons why I have invested my life in the conservative Mennonite Church, because I see that commitment to applying Scripture in our daily lives.

And it's more than just a statement of commitment to Christ, but our understanding of the Church, where we're accountable to one another and we agree together, this is how we're going to live out our faith, and this is how we're going to express this thing that Scripture asks us to do. And so we look at Scripture and we look at what does God want us to do, what will please Him? And sometimes people look at us and they say, well, you're legalistic, like you're making rules and you're just, you know, you're just following a code and you're—so it becomes legalism. And there is that tendency, but there's that tendency in any system. When you have anything, any system, there's a tendency toward, well, you just check off the boxes and it's not really heartfelt, so that's not unique to us.

But I think we make an effort to make those applications. And there's thinking, and especially in North American society, there's some thinking in regards to the Church. There's two things that affect us. And one is our North American focus on individualism, and it's just about me. And I'm going to do what I want to do and what works for me. I don't—nobody else should really have anything to say about my life. Like I'm going to make my choices and live my life and, you know, you do yours, and I don't want to worry about you. You don't worry about me. And our concept of the Church is, no, we do care for each other and we do—we want to all please God.

And so together we look at how this is what Scripture asks us to do. How do we live that out? How do we apply that in our lives? And then we say, okay, let's all do that. Sometimes people will say to us, well, does your church allow you to do whatever? And you know right away there's a person who doesn't understand how it works because we're not—there isn't somebody at the top of the hierarchy saying, okay, everybody's going to do this, and then we all just say, yeah, okay, we'll do that. But together as a body, we're deciding how we're going to live out our faith and how we're going to apply principles of Scripture.

So it's not individualistic, it's a group decision, and we're making our decisions based on what do we think is really going to please God and what do we think is going to help us to be closer to Christ. And when we look at things that come up in society and we look at things and we say, well, is this going to help me to be closer to Christ and help me to grow and enrich my Christian experience, or is it going to be a deterrent? And based on those things is how we make our decisions and what we do, what we don't do. So it's not individualistic. It's a group project to let's work together to be all that God wants us to be.

And people—there are people today who just say, well, let's just forget all the—like let's just reduce it down to the salvation issues. Let's not have any rules that aren't salvation issues. What do I have to do to be saved? And I want to go to heaven, so tell me what I need to do to be saved. And everything else can be just whatever people decide to do. But if it's not a salvation issue, let's just discard it. But the problem with that is that it misunderstands our love relationship with God. Very much. With the Lord Jesus Christ. So it would be kind of like if I would say to my wife, I want to be married to you.

I don't want you to divorce me, but I don't want to do anything extra. So everything she would ask me to do, I would say to her, is this a divorce issue? Like she might say, you know, would you wash the dishes? And I'll say, well, is it a divorce issue? If it's a divorce issue, you're going to divorce me if I don't wash them. Yes, I'll wash them. But if it's not a divorce issue, then no, I don't want to wash dishes. But I don't take that approach to my marriage. I want my marriage and my relationship with my wife because I love her. I don't see the things that please her as a chore or as a burden.

It's like, well, yeah, I'll do that for you. And because we have this marriage and I want it to grow and be rich. And if I reduce my marriage down to I just want to do the stuff that isn't divorce issues, my marriage wouldn't be very rich. If I would do that approach with my employer and say, I want a job, I want to be hired, I only want to do the things that I have to do so you won't fire me. Like I don't want to do any extra here, so I don't want to get fired. Don't make me do anything that I don't have to do. It just wouldn't work. And it doesn't work in our relationship with God.

And I think we make an honest effort to please God and to be what God wants us to be. And sometimes people look at the things we do and they look at us and they say, well, you know, it's all about the externals. It's all about, you know, not doing this and that. And, you know, it's really about the heart. And I just think that's misguided. I heard a message one time by a non-Mennonite pastor about where he was going through 1 Corinthians 11, and he's preaching about the veiling. He went through it. He preached it pretty much the way I would. And he explained that, you know, it's not talking about the hair being a covering.

It's talking about a separate veil. And it's talking about why he went through all the reasons why and did a very good job of doing an exegesis of 1 Corinthians chapter 11. And I told my wife, I'm really interested in this because I know he's not going to end the message by saying, so we should all practice this. So how can he go through a passage like that, exegete it the way he does, and then wind up saying, but we don't have to do it? And basically what he did is he came down to the end and said, some people will say, well, you should—women should wear a veiling or a hat for church. And he was saying, and I've been in churches where there are ladies who look at this passage and they think, I should wear a hat for church.

And so they wear a hat for church. But he said, you know, most of those ladies, when I meet them, they're the ones who are the most disrespectful to leadership and their husbands. And, you know, they're not—so they're not obeying the principle of the passage at all. But they wear the hat. So he said, so what does God want? Does he want the heart attitude or does he want the hat? He said, obviously he wants the heart attitude. So let's go, we'll have the heart attitude and God doesn't really care about the hat. But it's not a binary choice. It's not a—either you can have the hat or you can have the heart attitude. It's like, what if you have both?

Like, how phenomenal is that? Like, what if you have the application, you have the veiling, but you also have the heart attitude? Then the veiling just really demonstrates that when people see that heart attitude and they see the veiling, and the two work together in a very powerful way. And so I think that for the conservative Mennonite Church, we work on the heart attitude and we work on the applications. And when they—when they're together, it just really exemplifies what the principles of Scripture are. And so I'm part of the conservative Mennonite Church because while we don't do it perfectly, we make an honest effort to apply Scripture and actually live it out. So once again, you're not so much about the label as I'm hearing you talk.

Your passion is to follow Christ and to follow him in obedience. And it's within this conservative Mennonite Church that you found the ability to do that and to serve him wholeheartedly. So what advice would you give to someone who wasn't born? Maybe they don't even know that much about a conservative Mennonite Church and they're considering the possibility of joining one. What would you say to them? I think the biggest adjustment for people coming into conservative Anabaptist or Mennonite churches from other theological perspectives is our understanding of the Church as a brotherhood and that this is a group of people who are accountable to one another and where you can't come into it with an individualistic or a minimalistic mindset.

Like you have to be all in. You have to lay aside some of the individualism of our society and be willing to function as part of a brotherhood. There are people who come into the conservative Mennonite Church and they may have—there may be one piece of it that they really like, but then there's other pieces they don't like. And there—or they may have an extra—another piece that they would like to bring.

But you have to understand that as a brotherhood, we're not going to—we're not going to adopt every preference of every person who's part of the group. Like some things you really have a preference for, a strong preference for, not everyone else is going to practice those things. And you might be able to do it and be okay, but you're becoming part of a group. And there are things that the group agrees we're—this is what we're all going to do. And you can look at lifestyle issues and applications of Scripture, but I really think that those are secondary to just understanding the theology of the Church. It is a brotherhood and there is accountability within the brotherhood.

Sure. And so when someone's coming into the conservative Mennonite circles, they would find, depending on what church they're at, there would be different applications and understandings because of what you just described, that it is a group. The local fellowship does decide, this is how we're going to follow Christ. Right. It's how we're going to live out. My family and I lived in the country of Haiti for a year. And I had the Haitian pastor as a coach and as a person who helped me to understand all the cultural issues and everything that was going on. There were times I had no clue, why did that person do that? And I'd have to ask him, like, what was that about?

And he would kind of explain it to me. And sometimes—so in any group of people, in any close-knit group, there are unwritten expectations that they haven't thought about because they all know them and they all understand them. And one time the Haitian pastor said to me, you know, Pastor Merle, every Haitian needs an American, but every American needs a Haitian. And if you're coming into the conservative Mennonite Church from some other theological background, some other denomination, it's really good to have somebody in the Church who understands your situation and is able that you can have as kind of an advisor and a confidant that you can say, they did this and I didn't—I didn't have any clue what was going on.

Like, can you explain it to me? And somebody who's willing to do that is very, very helpful. You mentioned earlier that we do—we seek to follow Christ, but we do it imperfectly. Could you maybe address some of the disappointment that someone might find when they come to what looks like a really good group and all of a sudden, oh, they find out where we do have our faults? I was at a Baptist camp for a meeting one time, and the camp director there was complaining about his staff and how much conflict there was between his staff at the camp. And he was saying to me, but now you people are Mennonites. Like you have a peace position, so your staff never fight, right?

Like they always get along and you just resolve everything. And I just laughed. I told him, no, like we're not allowed to fight with outsiders. So all that energy gets turned into our energy. Oh no. We fight with each other. So yeah, there are—like it—so we have this peace position, but then there are internal conflicts in the group and there are things that that don't get resolved as they ought to. And I think for a person coming in, they might expect that, oh, these people believe in peace and non-violence, and so they're going to treat each other with respect. And yet, as a person, when you're in the group, you may find that there's some pretty—some pretty disrespectful and vicious conflicts that happen within the group.

So, and I agree with that, that those things are present. But at the same time, we would come back and say, while we fail, we still seek to honor Christ. While we may miss the mark, we do want to be peaceable within our interactions. We do want to follow Christ more than the things of this world. And that's where I think there's value in the stated commitment to do those things. While we don't do them perfectly, there's an effort there to do it. Well, thank you all for joining us for this fourth part of the series on why I believe. And thank you, Merle, for joining us. You're welcome. We invite your comments, and we invite you to come back the next time for another episode with Anabaptist Perspectives.