Jesus & The Mennonites Hector Troyer

Guide me, O the great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land. Well, good morning and welcome to Hope for Wandering Amish. It's a blessing to have Hector Troyer with us this morning. Hector Troyer recently became the author of a book that he entitled Jesus and the Mennonites. When I first saw that book, I was really intrigued by it, went ahead and ordered it, and I definitely wasn't disappointed. I was really inspired by the book. So after I read the book, I started hearing from a couple of other people that were reading the book and hearing about the book, and I just thought it seemed quite fitting to bring Hector on here this morning. So here we are.

Hector and his family live in State College, Pennsylvania, and we're excited to hear what our brother has to share with us here this morning. So Hector, it's a blessing having you, and we look forward to have a little introduction to who you are. Someone was telling me your dad grew up Amish, so maybe you want to dive into that a bit. Your last name is Troyer, so everybody will assume you are Amish or grew up Amish. But yeah, why don't we have a prayer, and the time will be yours.

Father, we thank you this morning for this time, and thank you for Brother Hector and this opportunity to share together and to hear what you have for us. Bless Brother Hector, give him grace and wisdom as he shares, and we pray for your name to be glorified this morning, and we pray that your labors would be inspired in a further way to build your kingdom. Bless us here today, be with us in the precious name of Jesus. Amen.

All right, Brother Hector, the time is yours. Okay. Am I coming through loud and clear? Yes, you are. All right. So as Brother Elam said, I am Hector Troyer, and I live in State College, and that's Pennsylvania, for those of you that are not familiar with where that's at, Central Pennsylvania.

And I'm not sure what I'm doing here with a bunch of Amish. He thinks I belong here, but I have a deep appreciation for Amish, actually. My dad was born Amish, but shortly after he was born, his church allowed cars, so they were no longer Amish.

Many Amish relatives, my mom was actually born Old Order Mennonite, and her family joined the Horned Mennonite shortly after she was born, sometime when she was young.

So definitely some Old Order background, and my wife was also born Amish.

And so with all these, I don't know that that makes me qualified to write much about the Amish, but I did. And so I wrote this book, and I guess that's why Elam decided I needed to be on here, which is the subtitle of that is A Call to Reclaim the Spirit of Amish Evangelism.

And most people do not believe that those two go in the same sentence.

A lot of people have said, "You know, that's an interesting idea, but how do those go in the same sentence? Amish are considered not to be evangelistic." So I want to talk about the thoughts in the book and the kind of ideas of why I decided to write it. There was a lot of—I really looked around at how we do evangelism.

And I just feel like the Anabaptist churches, especially as we become a little more liberal, we really struggle with who we are and how to find evangelism methods that are effective. So it's really difficult to have effective evangelism. And so I'm just going to flip through. I'm going to be reading occasionally out of the book, and I'll tell you what page number I'm on.

So I'm reading from page 73. Too often, churches take the easy route. They split or divide or merely build another church house in the same area. This is the Achilles heel of Anabaptist churches. For some reason, we have defaulted to this sinful pattern time after time.

Very little has stifled the expansion of the living gospel more than our desire to pile up on the best farmland.

And I think that has been our—that has been our problem. We have either adopted Protestant ideas of evangelism and lost out because we take that route, or we've just given up and went back our long lanes and hidden on our farms, and we've become pretty entrenched.

So I think we're on the edge of a huge landslide in one direction or the other. Either we're headed towards a big apostasy, or we're headed towards a great renewal of the church. And I'm hopeful. I think we have a lot of movement towards a renewal.

And I think we have the tools, and we have the people, but we need to do it. So I want to be talking a little bit about the low-hanging fruit, which I think this is the low-hanging fruit of being able to fulfill the great commission. And when I talk about low-hanging fruit, it's something rather than go to the top of the tree and get the hard-to-pick fruit, pick it from the stuff that we can easily reach. And what I think is easily reachable is our neighbors, our families.

Some of these things that are just right within our grasp. They're right at our fingertips. And sometimes we do have some problems with being culturally relevant and finding maybe people that are interested in the gospel. And a lot of that has to do with our close proximity to other believers.

So I don't know if you ever heard of the bystander effect or not, but it's like when there is a big crowd and something happens, people are less likely to do something for that person. If it was just you and two other people, then you would—and something happened to a person, you would feel responsible for that person. But if there's a thousand people and something happens to a person, you think somebody else will probably do something for that person.

And I think the same thing happens in our church communities when we have communities that are overpopulated with Kingdom Christian Anabaptist people because everyone feels like somebody else should be doing something for these people.

So I think that is one of our big problems. We need to really move—and this is where the Amish come in at. They have an ability to move quickly, and they keep spreading out. The Amish communities are popping up all over the US just really, really quickly. And with their lack of—what you might call their lack of evangelism or their lack of actually drawing people into their churches, that's not doing a whole lot of good. They are putting a witness out there, but they're not really allowing a place for people to come in. And so I see this as if we could do that, if the rest of us would do that, those of us who have the desire to have people come into our churches, if we could put this out there, we would have so much potential.

I'm going to read from page 21 a little bit.

I have a dream. What if we stopped fantasizing about short-term missions and began relentlessly placing churches in strategic locations? And I'm not talking about perfect neighborhood assault plans. Instead, place plain communities where there are not already plain communities. This super simple strategy alone could have an Anabaptist church on the doorstep of almost the entire United States population in a few short years. We have the resources to put a living gospel witness in front of most Americans very quickly, but we lack the will.

There are enough of us that I did just a little bit of calculation, and we could very easily leave no gaps across the US. And if you look at—there's a new resource that's really good. I think it's called Church Finders.

It just came out in the last couple of months. And if you look at that map, you will see areas of the US that are just really, really well covered. But then there are other areas that are pretty blank, and especially cities that are places that there is no one, there are no Anabaptist churches close.

And often around there, especially in Pennsylvania, you'll see there's no lack of churches whatsoever in Pennsylvania, but they are not well distributed. They can be pretty clumped up.

So I would love to see—I'm going to read from the introduction just a little bit.

How could church division be a blessing to the world instead of being a way to further our own selfish agendas? Think about the end. Your church dividing over some petty issue and building another flavor in the same neighborhood would look quite different than your church sending six families to an unchurched area. Think about the end. What if your church was able to send out six families repeatedly? Think about the potential.

What if every Anabaptist church in your area followed this model? What if they repeated it over and over again?

And I'm not saying that this has to be only US, but it's just the low-hanging fruit. That is the easy stuff to pick. You don't need to learn a foreign language. You don't need a passport. You have everything that you need right now.

There's nothing else that you need. So that's where I see this as the low-hanging fruit. We can just reach right up there and pick it.

There's almost no barriers except one big one, and I think that is—let me read a little bit from page 35. The easiest and hardest way to present the gospel to people is to go live with them. And I think that is just where it's at. It is so hard, and it's also the easiest.

And as we go live with people, they're not going to be people that we always like the best. Sometimes we have a culture that is very comfortable, and we like it, and we like to hang out with people that we enjoy, with our relatives, with our friends, and people we feel safe with. And many times, these people are not the kind of people that you're going to feel safe with. They're not going to be comfortable. But we need to get comfortable being uncomfortable. I think that is another problem that we, as plain people, have is our comfort levels are way beyond what the rich man and Lazarus, as you think about the rich man in Jesus' time, our comfort levels, even for the least prosperous of us, our comfort levels are way beyond theirs.

And we have extended family. We have comfortable church houses. We have all this stuff that we just really—we have farms. There's so much stuff that we just really cannot hardly give up.

So I want to talk a little bit about what makes the—about how the Amish are being able to move and maintain. So 27, page 27.

The Amish have a clear identity, and I want to say that this varies across the board, some, but as a rule, they do not confuse themselves with Protestants or Catholics. They have a clear choice between being Amish or worldly. As a culture becomes less clear about who they are and who they are not, it becomes much easier to assimilate into a surrounding culture. When anyone who names the name of Christ becomes our inner circle, we lose our identity.

And this becomes increasingly true as we begin to adopt worldly Christianity's definition of salvation and methods of evangelism.

So here we have, I think with the Amish knowing who they are, I think that's something that we really need to pay attention to, that we need to know who we are. Our children need to know who they are.

We need to have some clear definition of who we want to be and who we associate with and who we are. Because making that line fuzzy may seem is often the easiest thing to do. It's a nice way to not be condemning, but we want to feel good about everyone. But because people quickly pick you out as being judgmental or—I mean, even if you say nothing, even if you say nothing, even just by not affirming someone, you make them feel like you don't approve of their lives, and they feel condemned, and then they will judge you for that. But I think we need to man up and just be willing to take some of that, be willing to just draw some lines.

So we need to be clear about who we are. And that is one of the—that is one of the lessons the Amish have that I think that we should really be thinking about. And page 46.

I was talking to a former Amish man the other day, and he said that we were talking about how the difference between Amish and Mennonites or other people, the way they work. So the Amish attitude is that we need to do something, we just do it. We figure out how—we figure it out and we get it done.

A Mennonite man, we need to plan and ask permission, and it's going to take more of a process. Amish just do it. And I think that is a—I think that is a very strong point that is really in favor of Amish. Now, sometimes it can get us in trouble, but it also gives us the ability to move quickly and not be bogged down by unnecessary details.

If the Amish want to start a new church, they move to a new locality. It is uncommon for Amish to start a new church brand in the same area. Gradually, over many years, new Amish brands have developed, but nowhere near the level of their centralized building-based Anabaptist counterparts. Part of the reason is that Amish tend to see the local church as geographically united.

If a church gets too large, they divide along geographic lines, creating a new district. If a brother wants to move to a new area, he is free to do so. If other families join him, it becomes a new district.

This method is a drastic simplification of church expansion. That makes it really simple. Amish districts are popping up all over rural America. And one of the reasons that they're able to do this is because they don't need to build a church house.

And I think that is one of the things that we should be embracing is—I'm not saying we shouldn't have churches, church houses, but we need to really move away from the church house need.

We can have church without a church house. And I think that frees us up to being tied down to this little—to a location. And I think it also helps free up the gospel a little bit, brings us away from the idea that this is the house of God.

Because churches should be people, not buildings. And there's a lot of money that gets sunk into church houses, and it also makes it very convenient. It brings another level of comfort. So when you have a church division or you ask—let's say you want to start a new church, and a lot of times the first thing that comes up is like, "Well, what to do about the church house?"

So church houses are good. I'm not saying they're a bad thing entirely, but I think they really are an anchor and a weight to the spread of the gospel. They keep us from moving at the speed that we could. And I think that's something that the Amish have in favor of their mobility is that they don't have church houses.

They can move quickly, and just their church is in the group. It's not in the building.

And another thing that I think we can learn from the Amish is on page 27, again.

And that is family size. And about every time that this comes up, people talk about—I say something about Amish evangelism, they're like, "Well, okay. So the only reason the Amish are expanding so quickly is because they have big families."

So I repeatedly hear the argument. The Amish growth is only through procreation. But honestly, I am rather tired of that argument. It just points to their incredibly successful teaching program. A Christian culture that cares for their elderly, their children, their young mothers, and their sick is nothing to be snuffed at. Plus, they honor the sanctity of marriage, make provisions for their youth to acquire life partners, structure their social lives around childcare and family life, provide business opportunities for young men, and teach gender-appropriate work skills to children. Contrast this to a worldly Christian society that promotes child-free marriages, delayed marriages, nursing homes for the elderly, confusion of gender roles, detachment from business under the guise of being free for the Lord's work.

So I think the Amish have a lot to offer in their culture, in their life. I was listening to earlier, just getting ready for this talk, I was listening to an earlier talk on this hope for wandering Amish about the Amish lifestyle. And that really resonates with me. I just see so much good that we leave on the table when we just walk away and say, "That was all bad, and we're going to go be." And then we tend to make this fast movement towards the hyper-spiritual side. We spiritualize everything, and we leave our culture out and go down the tubes.

And I think that is just—we really need to keep—we really need to not throw everything away. We need to keep the good and improve upon it rather than throw everything away and try to start over again because there is so much good there. And if you compare it, if you just take a little bit of time to look around and see what else there is to offer, the world offers nothing.

Worldly Christianity has offered us a—they've offered us a relationship with Jesus in exchange for our culture, and they've given us neither.

We have many of these people that have tried to exchange their culture for a relationship with Jesus have ended up with a lot of heartbreak and a lot of nothing, just complete empty hands.

So I'm going to read from page 48 a little bit.

God is calling us back to mobility and a reliance on Him. He wants us to leave all and follow His lead. It will never be comfortable. This mobile dependence upon God is key to kingdom expansion.

I'll read a quote on page 88 also.

At some point, we can no longer prepare. We must go. We no longer lack vision. We lack the will to execute. Go spread your trophies at His feet.

And I want to leave that challenge to y'all that there's much to do, and we have the resources. There's no way I could cover everything in the book in this short time, but I just want to say the Amish background brothers have much to bring to the table, much to bring. You have culture that is Christian. It's not an ungodly culture. It's a Christian culture. And it is very, very valuable. And I see so much being lost in Mennonite communities everywhere when we throw away everything, all the good things, and trade them for something that we thought was better. And I think many people are coming to the sad realization that it's not better.

And I feel like the way to do that, as I said earlier, is to move to different areas, maintain close small communities, and continue moving to different areas instead of—as opposed to the idea of being able to just go out and race out and evangelize and then come back into our little places, liberalize in front of men.

And as a—I'm going to wrap this up. I'm going to read a little bit about my journey and why I'm here and how I got here. So my parents moved away from the community that I grew up in when I was 21. I stayed mostly because I was interested in a girl. My friends never expected me to stay at this community after I got married, and I didn't really expect to stay either. But getting married ended up being more complicated and taking more time than I expected.

By the time I got married at the age of 26, I had grown to love our community and was ready to settle down. Over the years, my old friends were always asking me when I was going to leave.

But my wife and I loved our church community, and although we had a few minor concerns, we had no big conflict with our church. One of the things that we didn't like is what we felt like was constant drift, very small but steady movement away from our conservative values. I considered starting a more conservative movement. Over a 10-year period, I discussed this idea with several different friends. We all wanted more, but we couldn't really come up with any solution that looked like it would be worth the risk. In fact, as I looked around at other Mennonite churches, they all began to look very much the same.

Outwardly, they had different sets of rules, but overall, they all shared the same set of the problems. Then we went to a boy's ranch to serve as administrators for two years. One of my responsibilities as administrator was to teach Bible studies. I taught one study on the book of Revelation with the help of Ted Byler's book, Seeing Jesus in the Book of Revelation. This book sharpened my vision for the passion that Jesus has for His bride, the church.

I also got to spend two years talking to young men, parents, and church leaders. And I began to realize that not only were all Anabaptist churches similar, I was becoming alarmed at the widespread cynicism among the younger generation.

These were very good young people, but overall, they were not very hopeful about the future of their churches. And during this time that we were at the boy's ranch, problems began to surface in our home church. When our term was over at the boy's ranch, we moved back to our home church, hoping to settle back into regular church life and concentrate on raising our growing little family.

But things were not as we left them. We could sense a deep unrest in the community. I was alarmed and began to seriously revisit the question, "Should we move? But where and why? And was there any hope of finding something better?" We had visited with some brethren that were starting a new church in Ripley, West Virginia, but they were not taking any new members for five years, and we weren't quite ready to move. I didn't want to move. We had a very comfortable life laid out for ourselves. I hate change, but as I began to feel more and more like God was asking us to move, I decided to lay out a fleece, actually three fleeces.

The first was if my in-laws moved. The second was if a young minister from our congregation moved. And the third was if our place sold. Then a friend stopped by and randomly offered that I read his book, King Jesus Claims His Church. This book helped me switch from a mostly defensive outlook to a mostly offensive outlook on church life. I began to think about how the church could look if it was really built on Jesus Christ. What if we stopped only concentrating on preservation and started looking at ways to bring life to the church?

I began to dream what it would look like to start churches in unchurched places. As I looked at Cam's list for places that didn't have churches, I noticed Hawaii on that list. Although it looked like the last place any self-respecting Mennonite would go to start a church, I was interested.

I was talking to a non-Mennonite friend about my interest in Hawaii, and he recommended that I read Any Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day. This book also helped me see the value of stretching our faith. Now I was looking for a church that would support my vision of starting an Anabaptist church in Hawaii.

And within six months, my in-laws announced that they intended to move. Shortly after, the young minister announced his intention to leave. I knew it was probably inevitable that our place would soon sell. And sure enough, within a few months, our place sold. The fleeces were turned.

Since we didn't have internet at that time, I called my mom to ask her to check into buying me a ticket to Boston. I planned to visit Followers of the Way in Boston to see if they were a fit for us. But as I was talking with my mom, she invited me to consider visiting the new church that they were a part of in State College. So instead of visiting Boston, we visited State College. And several months later, we moved to State College and joined the Followers of Jesus congregation.

My primary intention was to find a church that would support my vision to start a church in Hawaii. But we stumbled upon a lot more. We found a group of brothers and sisters that were serious about following Jesus. We also had the opportunity to work closely with several brothers with an interest in church planting.

I had intended to spend two years assembling a group of at least three families interested in moving to Hawaii. Instead, we have been at State College for almost seven years with only one family ever showing more than a casual interest.

So as we look for others to join us in this work, I am doing everything that I can to assist others in starting new churches in places that do not have an Anabaptist witness. And my hope for the future of the church has returned. I am beyond excited about what God is doing and what He is going to do in the future.

Any questions? Well, Hector, thank you so much. It was a blessing to hear you share here this morning. And I'm inspired to hear, yeah, I can tell you're inspired and encouraged in the Lord, and that's a real blessing.

Yeah, thanks a lot. Maybe I'll just make a comment here. You'd mentioned about, well, you called it church finders. I think you're referring to Church Index. Strength of Strength just recently had someone talking about Church Index. And I checked it out a bit, and I noticed there were some churches I'm familiar with that aren't on the list. So yeah, if anyone on the call here is familiar with Church Index, maybe they can share a bit about it. But yeah, if you go to Strength of Strength, you'll find a talk on that. Yeah, thanks a lot. And yeah, who are we and all that?

I've been interested, even though I grew up Amish, I've been out of it long enough that I'm finding them interesting again.

But yeah, their retainage rate is pretty high. And I think a big part is that as the children grow up, they know where they belong, they know who they are. The Amish have their own culture and all that. And yeah, and most Amish want to stay Amish is what I say. So thank you for sharing and all that. It's a real blessing. And we have a good many people on this morning, and it's good to have you. We're always excited to hear from our audience. You should be able to unmute yourself. And then we have some people that are calling in also. And we've had some issues with that as far as people calling in, and they don't know how to mute themselves.

It seems like it works a little different than somebody Zooming in. But I'll go ahead and unmute the people that are calling in by telephone. But if there's too much background noise, I'll have to go ahead and mute you. But yeah, well, let's hear from our audience. If anyone has any questions for Hector, please bring it on.

Hector, I want to thank you for sharing with us this morning. I have read your book. I'd like to read it again. I find the ideas very stimulating.

Question for you. With the Amish and their clear identity and distinct lifestyle, distinct appearance, distinct mode of travel, it makes for a—I think it boosts their clear sense of belonging and who they are. And it also definitely raises the interest level of the public.

My question is, how can we duplicate some of that in a healthy way? And have you seen it done?

So I don't know that I have good answers for any of that. But one of the things that I think—one of the very powerful things that I see is family size.

Just even if you look around us and you see families that have a lot of children, they stand out, really stand out. And they're pretty uncommon. If you see a Christian family with a lot of children, it changes the way you live drastically. And it also changes people's perception of you. People see you differently when you have—they see you as oddballs, as people that are weird, because that's not accepted. And that's in our society. Now, there's probably societies, Muslim societies, where that is probably completely normal. But in our American society, that is definitely one way that we can really—that we do really stand out and we can stand out.

And I only have six children, and people think I have a large family.

And that is probably the—that is probably the biggest thing that we have noticed, especially living here. We live in town, and people just—I get more comments about our family than anything else. That's the biggest thing that I get—that I actually—that people actually engage with us on.

Yeah, well, thank you for that.

The idea of being out there in small groups, interacting with your neighbors, that seems very scriptural. That's how salt should work, being spread out and bringing its influence. I really appreciate the challenge there. R. Kent Hughes, in his book, Disciplines of a Godly Man, talks about a study that's been done with folks that came into first-generation Christians, folks that didn't grow up as believers and were exposed to the gospel and ended up accepting it and joining a church somewhere, coming into a church.

And the studies show that the percentages that came in as a result of programs versus as a result of bumping elbows with a believer, just interacting on a day-to-day level, whether it was at work or neighbors or whatever.

And maybe sometimes that would go on for years, and eventually they would come to Christ through that. The percentages were pretty astounding. Those that came through some kind of well-organized program were just astonishingly low, while the each-one-win-one model of bumping elbows and interacting over the years, those that were won through that kind of thing, that percentage was way up there. And that grabbed my attention where there's something here that we got to look at. Yeah, that's exactly right.

That was the early church model. And I think that is by far the best model is to put everybody to work a little bit at a time. No big numbers. But that's actually how I came to this. As I started looking around from a pragmatic point of view, I started just reverse engineering this. I said, "Well, okay, let's look at everybody in our churches that is from non-Mennonite background and let's see how they got here."

And that's the only way they got here that I came across. Now, somebody else may have something different, but just about every time that I looked at somebody that had come into one of our churches from a non-Mennonite background was because that they had rubbed shoulders with, met someone, talked with someone. And just about never was that as an intentional evangelistic method. Now, that differs in foreign countries. Now, we have missions in other countries where there are missionaries that are actually employed as missionaries, and that's different. But in the US, that's pretty much the way I see it.

Yeah, very interesting. Yeah, wow. Quite an inspiring conversation. Is there anyone else that would like to share something? Ask Hector a question.

Yeah, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you, Chris. I appreciate your talk. I think it was very interesting. And I'm curious if you're bumping elbows with the Amish in Belleville because this is where I grew up in. And it's kind of interesting that you grew up in State College.

I thought that was interesting. And you had earlier mentioned about—well, you didn't say mission work, but I'm trying to figure out how you could reach them or—I left the Amish, and for them, it's very hard to accept anything from someone that has left them. So I'm trying to figure out if you have a good suggestion for that.

Well, I've only been here in State College for the last six and a half years. The year before that, we lived in Belleville. And we lived right between Jonas—I forget what his last name was—and then the other side, the lady's name was Nancy. I can't remember what the—I'm kind of losing exactly. Anyway, one was a—they were both black toppers, but they went to different districts somehow.

I think it's the way it was. But so the one on the one side was a very godly man, and the one on the other side was not so much.

So I kind of—and most of the Amish that I interact with, I've spent the last several years buying produce from various Amish people. And for the most part, I find them to be godly and trustworthy and good people, but there are definitely exceptions to that. So I was talking to Steve Fisher about this problem, that the Amish as a whole I see as a godly culture, but they definitely have—inside this godly culture, they have definitely allowed a lot of ungodliness.

And so we were talking about the difference between the culture being godly and the individual being ungodly. So I think there are so many different ways to think about and look at this that I hardly know where to start.

I think you brothers that have Amish background like you do are probably better equipped to actually know how the inner workings of that are. From the outside, I can only judge people by their fruits.

And if I see good fruits, I can't—that's where I'm at.

I'm not inviting anyone to leave the Amish. I've actually—several people have—I've had some Amish brothers that have expressed some interest in other things. And I've mostly been cautious about it because I feel like there could be some—I feel like you can be saved and be Amish.

I don't think those two have to be—are necessarily have to be two different things.

And so I see so many Amish people that leave the Amish, and they become saved, but then they've just become worldly, and they don't have any fruits of the gospel. So that's not salvation. So I'm looking for—I guess I just want to say I have a lot of caution about—and I was talking with Steve Fisher about this too.

How can we help people that are going to leave the Amish, which they are going to leave the Amish? How can we inspire those people that are leaving to not throw everything away, but instead transform this into a—kind of help walk them through being able to live this out in front of people, but not as an Amish person necessarily, but as a Christian person, and realize that a lot of their Amish culture is Christian culture, but not just because it's Amish?

And I'm not talking about things like—I mean, yes, plain dress, but not necessarily—it doesn't have to be Amish dress. But we see so many people that say, "Okay, well, the plain dress is wrong because it's just this—everybody has to wear the same thing. That's got to be—there's something wrong with that." And then they throw that away in favor of shorts and tank tops, and then they are just worldly and immodest, and there's nothing left.

So I think we just have to be really careful with that. Sorry, I can't really answer your question. No, that's okay. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Yeah, a lot of wisdom there, Hector. I really appreciate that. Yeah, those are some of the same questions I've asked many times.

All right. Anyone else?

This is a good—Hey, good morning. Hey, good morning, Samuel. So, very interesting to read your book, Brother Hector, and this talk has been interesting as well.

Yeah, I have a few comments, questions maybe.

Sometimes I'm a picker at terminology, but just I put this out there for you. I would suggest that you use the term multiply instead of divide when you're talking about a church planting in other districts or becoming two districts.

I don't know. Many of us, when we hear divide, church division, we're thinking of something bad. I just tend to prefer using the term multiply. Yeah, makes sense.

So, yeah. As far as encouraging Amish to stay Amish, I would actually do the same. However, I would encourage them to take a really serious search about the things that they—the beliefs that they endorse, the practices that they are, I think I could say forced to endorse at least twice a year in order to partake of communion.

One practice that very commonly causes people trouble in their conscience is needing to endorse folks that they've come to know, and they see that they actually have some light, and then they have to—they're forced to endorse their excommunication, which includes the quoting of 1 Corinthians 5:5, handing them over to Satan.

And many times, they actually are true believers. Even the ones who often make worldly choices after that do leave for the right reasons. Not all. Obviously, some leave because they want more worldly things.

Some get sidetracked later too.

Sometimes the excommunication and the subsequent shunning actually drives them out. So, yeah, I mean, if you discern that their motives at the time were not necessarily evil—I mean, this was our experience. This is the experience of many that I've talked to—is that starts to trouble your conscience, the fact that you endorse them. Sometimes you convince yourself that it could change the wording a little and all that. You can slip through, but for some reason, there's an awful lot of pressure on just making that verbal endorsement. And once you refuse to do that, that's taking the hard way out. It really is.

Witnessing to truth, staying there. And in some settings, they get away with that at least for a while. There's many Amish bishops and ministers who are sympathetic to these folks, and they'll bend over backwards to try to keep them there. But in the end, you have to endorse that in order to stay, usually.

So the folks who go through that process, I feel like it's valuable. Even if the end result is the same, they come out. It's a valuable experience. Sure was for us.

Yeah, I definitely have a lot of—yeah, I feel I've experienced a little bit of the same. Not quite to the same level, but definitely have experienced some of the same guilt about endorsing excommunication that I didn't feel like was completely right.

And I understand that side. That is a valid reason to leave. I mean, I think it is. What else can you do? You can't—at some point, you may be forced out, but I think that it shouldn't be just a casual thing either.

It should be definitely something that you have some—and I don't feel like most people casually leave the Amish. I mean, there are probably plenty that do, but the people that we're seeing are not casually leaving.

I agree. But then there can be a lot of bitterness about that. And then everything is bad because that one aspect is bad.

When we left, we fully expected the shunning, or I should say when we got squeezed out, we were intentional about not just leaving.

And I was actually tired of the suspense and was ready to have it over with. But once the shunning thing became official, I mean, how bad that actually hurt, it almost swept us off our feet. That was painful. And it still is.

I mean, the healing starts to happen, and then another incident. Just this fall, for the first time since we left, we weren't invited to the family Christmas dinner.

It hurt like crazy.

So yeah, bitterness is poison, and these things, they often sweep people off their feet when they come out. Yeah. But yeah, you really do need to walk alongside these folks and support them and be there for them and help them to forgive, help them to love.

We had some of that kind of support, and I honestly don't know where we'd be if we hadn't. It's a big deal. Some of this shunning happens in any culture, I'm starting to see, even if it's not official.

The official thing behind the Amish culture does seem to make it worse, the official requirements behind the shunning, because you end up getting shunned by folks who really don't have any problem or issue with you, but they feel like they have to.

So yeah, it's a big deal. And it's wonderful to be able to overcome that and something we can help our Amish friends do.

One other thing I'd kind of like you to comment on, Hector. We see folks sometimes, so we want to reach a certain town or city. So we buy or rent a building in that city, and then we travel into that city to meet on Sunday mornings and maybe do missions or whatever.

Great way to reach a city, huh?

Wow. So no. I mean, because I want to leave room for any—I mean, I feel like mission, there are good and bad ways to do mission. And I think that is definitely not on the good side. It can help some people ease their conscience, and there are times it has worked to some degree.

But I feel like maybe I shouldn't call it good and bad. There's just better and worse ways to do it. And I feel like we leave the best on the table when we refuse to go live among people.

So the best is to be able to live among people. Now, if we cannot do that, then of course, we have to take second best, and that is to go in and do some sort of ministry. But I feel like if we could just—if we could just bypass all those—I mean, if we would quit using those excuses and go live there, it would force us to just kind of—let's just get that thing out of our tool chest.

Let's put that one away. And let's force ourselves to use communities as the vehicle for the gospel. If you go on the Strength to Strength website and look at the reviews for my book, a brother, Billy North from Alabama, wrote a review on there that is just about as good as the book, maybe better.

So definitely jump on there and read that review if you get a chance, and hopefully get to meet him sometime.

On the Strength to Strength website? Yeah, it's on the Strength to Strength book. They have a website, and then they have each book has its own little page. So if you go on the page of my book, there'll be a little review thing there, and if you click that review box, you can see the reviews. And yeah, Billy North, he wrote a very good review on there.

All right, Hector. We really appreciate you coming on. This was a real inspiration. I appreciate your zeal. It's contagious. And I hope and pray that laborers out there can be inspired and encouraged and further equipped to build God's kingdom. It's a worthy cause. So Hector, would you like to close us for prayer?

Sure. Absolutely. Thank you, Father, for this time we've had here this morning. And I just pray that you would bless each one that listens to this and that hears this, that you would unite us around your kingdom, around your cross, around your throne, that we would be able to go show the world what kingdom Christian communities should look like, and that we would be willing to sacrifice our comforts and our conveniences and our lifestyles and all these wonderful things that we have, that we'd be willing to put those on the altar and go out and live our lives before men.

And I just pray that you would give each one strength and grace. I pray especially for the brothers that either have left or are thinking about leaving the Amish and that have so much pain and hurt from this shunning and from having to break off from their culture and what I pray that you would pour healing into their wounds and that you would repair these broken relationships. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.