Leaving Amish Matters Elam Peachey

Guide me, O the great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land. Good morning, everyone. It's really good to be on this morning. As people come on from the waiting room, wherever you are, join us this morning. We want to welcome you, and we're excited about this talk. Brother Elam Peachy will be on this morning, sharing insights on how to successfully serve King Jesus.

And specifically, we're desiring to do this as a help for Amish that have been searching and are leaving or have left, how to be faithful. Because there's a lot of stumbling blocks that come our way when we leave the Amish communities.

Some of the things that Brother Elam wants to encourage us this morning are a life of prayer, a life of forgiveness, and looking into developing a new culture, a healthy culture. Every church has its own culture, just like every family, every community has its own culture. And we need to be intentional about developing healthy church cultures.

So we're going to look at some different models of churches and see what we can learn this morning. I've known Brother Elam for a good many years. I appreciated him a lot. Good friend of mine. He's one that he both talks the walk and walks the talk, and I appreciate that.

So let's have a prayer here. And Brother Elam, the time will be yours. O Lord God, thank you again for this time this morning. Thank you for this time of sharing that Brother Elam has prepared for. Just fill him with your Spirit. Guide his thoughts and his words.

May there be wisdom. May there be light and truth from your Word illuminated on our paths and all that will listen to this talk later on. Just have your way in Jesus' name. Amen.

Well, good morning, everyone. I'm blessed to share this morning.

So I have a number of slides I want to show as I share this morning. The title of this talk is Leaving Amish Matters. I had someone present the idea to me of changing that title because that title could be misunderstood. And I want to make it clear upfront that the title does not have anything to do with whether you leave the Amish or not. It's speaking into matters that would center around someone that would leave the Amish or has left the Amish. So I'm sharing these things from my perspective and from my own experience since I grew up Amish myself.

Is my perspective always accurate? I'm going to say no. So that's why I want to always, yeah, be open for corrections. I've noticed that, yeah, the stories from Amish leaving varies. But there's usually a common thing that I have seen in people leaving the Amish and same with myself, pain. So many times that pain can be from being excommunicated, being cut off from friends and family.

But also that pain can stem back to childhood or it can be anything from A to Z, really. So I hope to give some helpful tips to those that are leaving the Amish. So I'll go to my next slide. This slide has two stories. The first one is Levi and Susie leave the Amish. Yeah, their story.

Levi and Susie were a very nice Amish family, the type of Amish family that you would think would always stay Amish. But over a period of, I'm going to say, a handful of years, there was a handful of Amish that left Levi's community and got excommunicated. And as Levi watched this, this whole thing, he was thinking, "Wow, there's not any scriptural reason for excommunicating these families. They're just leaving the Amish church, going to a different church. So why would we excommunicate them just for that?"

Well, eventually, there was a nice family in Levi's own congregation that was on their way out of the Amish, and the decision was made to excommunicate them also. But Levi disagreed with that, and that caused him to be silenced, which is a form of church discipline. It is church discipline, really. An Amish church discipline. Silencing Levi would mean that his vote or his voice in a traditional sense wouldn't count anymore, or he couldn't take part of the communion. There may be some more things in there. I'm not sure that silencing an Amish would entail. I'm not sure. But so the idea was to discipline Levi, and he would have to confess or maybe repent of his stand, and he could be taken back in.

But Levi didn't change. He continued saying, "We shouldn't be excommunicating people just for going to a different church." Eventually, Levi and Susie got excommunicated, which was a painful process by then. Levi and Susie's oldest child was already married and had their own family. The second one was preparing for a marriage and ended up still living at home, but ended up leaving home and moving in with the married child and their family. And not only did Levi and Susie get excommunicated and shunned from their Amish community, their relatives, and their friends, but also now from their two oldest children, which was very painful.

And it was, yeah, something difficult to work through. But in the meantime, the people that were reaching out to Levi and Susie were part of a church. I'm going to say a church that was getting quite worldly and assimilating into culture around them. But that's who was reaching out to them. They had some relatives there, and they ended up attending that church. And over a period of time, the dust kind of settled, and they were kind of looking at where they're headed. And Levi and Susie became a bit alarmed. They were saying, "Wow, this church is going very worldly, and this is not what they want for their family." But by then, their children had developed some deep friendships in that church.

And as they thought about it and counted the cost, they said, "Wow, this is too much. If we leave this church now and go to a more conservative type of church, we'll lose some more of our children. They won't come with us because of their deep friendships they have in that church." Not that they would shun them or anything like that. It was more like their family would be further torn apart. So the decision was made just to stay there. Now, the other story is about Kendall Lucy. Kendall Lucy, they grew up conservative Mennonite, a rather old-order type of Mennonite. And Kendall had some painful experiences growing up in his childhood, things with his father and a couple of things that happened that created some, yeah, some deep pain that caused him, yeah, to feel rather bitter at the Mennonites.

And then he got married, had children, and he always openly voiced his disappointments with the Mennonites and criticized them and stuff like that. Well, eventually, they moved from more of the old-order type of Mennonite to more, I'm going to say, a middle-of-the-road Mennonite. And he continued to voice his complaints and things with the Mennonites. And eventually, his children grew into adulthood, started leaving home. But not only did they leave home, but they also altogether left the Mennonite culture and church and sort of drifted into society and the culture around them.

I feel like these two stories I just shared represent many, many, many, many families that leave their older settings. And what are some of the things we can—I would say one thing that I would really like to learn from these two stories is don't let the pain from the past—let's not let the pain from the past blur our vision for the future, for ourselves, for our families. We need to really have a vision of where we want to go as individuals, as families, yeah, and all that.

So I would say these two stories that I shared are things that I've watched and observed over the years, and it's sort of the birth of what I want to share here this morning, our division, yeah, the birth of—yeah, how can I say it? Sure. So here's another slide, a quote that I've thought of many times. As I've seen this quote, as I've heard this quote shared, many times my thoughts would go to my Amish friends.

The quote is, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." So again, yeah, as I've watched these Amish or older kind of people, it's almost like you see a trend, and it's like the trend just always leads one direction. It's almost like you can prophesy what's going to happen unless there's some kind of intervention of the Lord or something to change that. And it's really sad.

So I'll go to my next—the next couple of slides are some scripture I'd like to share that I feel like are foundational scripture, things that, yeah, are foundational to our Christian walk.

So the first one here is in John 3:3, Jesus speaking, "Most surely, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." And the next one is John 3:5, Jesus talking to the communist again. Jesus answered, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God." So we see this thing of seeing the kingdom of God and entering the kingdom of God. So that's something—that's a place where we need to go. If we're a Christian people, if we're going to walk, have that relationship with Christ, we need to see and enter the kingdom. We need the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

The next verse ties right into that is, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God." So the idea is that unless the Holy Spirit works in our lives, we're going to be a people that are attracted to the world. We're going to become conformed to the world. But as the Holy Spirit, we allow the Holy Spirit to work in our lives. And that work of redemption of Christ working in us, we're able to be transformed and become a changed people that pursue eternal things and heavenly things. And that's where we want to go as God's people.

So my next one here, as we kind of did the more beginning things, I grew up around a river brethren, and they always would use rather saying John got born again or something like that. They would say, "John made a beginning." And so we kind of had our beginning things. And then there's these other essential things to Christian life for us to grow and mature and develop. And that is prayer matters and fasting matters.

The first verse there is Luke 6:12. "Now it came to pass in those days that he went out to the mountain to pray and continued all night in prayer to God." So that was Jesus. We could look at many verses where he needed time, quiet time with his father, and spent time in prayer. And that's one where we see him doing it by himself. Now, there's another verse in Acts 13:2 that I've always liked. And this is a collective group of people together. As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, "Now separate to me Paul, sorry, separate to me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them."

So there you see a collective group of people together. What were they doing? Ministering to the Lord. I always pictured them praying and reading the Word and probably singing hymns together and things like that. I would say that's really essential for us personally to have a prayer life and being in the Word, and then also collectively as God's people.

I'd like to share a little story, something that happened years ago. I was going through a very, very difficult time. And one evening, I got a call from a brother. He said, "Hey, would you like to get together for a time of prayer?" And I said, "Sure, I'd love that." And I was really blessed by that. And someone actually thought about you, actually called you. And so that evening, we got together. We met in a wooded area, built a fire. And he read the Bible to me. We sang songs together. We prayed together. He ministered and encouraged me greatly. We stayed together till probably, I'm going to say, probably about 2 o'clock in the morning.

And then we headed back home to get a night of rest. But I'll never forget that. That was really transforming. That really helped me get my eyes off my difficult situation, get my eyes fixed upon the Lord, and give me fresh courage and fresh strength to face the difficulty.

So prayer matters and fasting matters. Those are two important ingredients in our Christian life. And then I'll move on to forgiveness matters. So we established the thing of being born again, of having the Spirit of Christ in us, and praying and fasting and moving on. So we're growing on faith here.

So forgiveness can be a huge thing. Let me just read a verse here, Matthew 6:15. "For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your heavenly Father forgive you your trespasses." So forgiveness is not just a good idea.

Forgiveness is essential in our Christian life. If we're going to grow, if we're going to have forgiveness from our Father in heaven, we need to forgive others. And with this harsh excommunication, harsh shunning from our family, perhaps even on top of other, maybe even abusive situations that we faced, forgiveness can be very hard. But that's a place where we need to come to for us to grow spiritually, for us to find liberty in our walk with Christ. We need for us to go free, really. We need to forgive. If we don't forgive, many times that can be rooted with bitterness towards God. That can be rooted in that can be rooted in holding others responsible for our problems.

But we need to take responsibility for our own problems and so on. Now I'm going to move to the next slide. Right living matters and the way you live matters. It's really saying the same thing. Then the verse underneath that is Matthew 5:20. "For I say to you that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven." So that's all tied in with forgiveness, forgiving people. And righteousness put in shoe leather is right living. And those things matter.

When people profess Christ, but they're not living right, they're living a bitter life, unforgiving life, whatever the case may be, allowing sin in their life and thinking it's okay. Those people are really hurting their own testimony. But not only are they hurting their own testimony, they're hurting the Christian community's testimony, the whole church's testimony. So right living matters. Forgiving matters. All those things really matter.

Now my next slide is good culture matters. So it's kind of the idea as we're growing in the Lord, I'm moving more into our church community or church culture. Here's a quote. I guess it's from Melvin Lehman, from my understanding. "The effective way to win a cultural war is to create a culture, not to fight against the surrounding culture."

So a good culture matters. Our church culture can be a culture. It could be negative things like a church culture of gossip, of covetousness, loving money, yeah, treating each other unkindly, stuff like that. But it doesn't have to be that. If we're a redeemed people, a born-again people, a redeemed people, walking with Christ, obeying Christ, understanding the way we live matters. All those things, we're a people that fast and pray and seek God. We can create a very, very good culture that would be very, very attractive. Now, I would say the Amish, in many ways, have created their own culture and also the Mennonites.

If you look at the Amish, they're growing in number. Most of the people that are Amish want to stay Amish. And they start a new church community roughly every three and a half to four weeks. So they're rapidly growing in number. And if we can look at where we come from without prejudice thoughts or blurred vision, and we can learn the good things from where we come from, we're able to build on something. And like for the Amish, for an example, their community, they've created their own culture. Is it perfect? Of course not.

But apparently, most Amish that are Amish want to stay Amish. But again, I would say creating a culture is something we can do, and we can have a very, very good culture. The type of people we are is really the culture we create. We all have a culture. And again, it can be a negative culture, or it can have negative things in it. But as we're being redeemed, we can have a beautiful culture. All right. So the next slide here is a Bible verse, Philippians 4:8. And here's some very, very good nuggets that we can apply to our church culture. Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there's any virtue, if there's anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things.

And I would just like to think of this as, wow, as we build on our culture, we add these true, noble, just, pure, lovely, good report, virtue, praiseworthy things into our church culture and have them as important ingredients in our church culture. Wow, we can really have a beautiful church culture.

Then the next one is another Bible verse, Galatians 5:22 and 23. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law." And just thinking about applying these characteristics into our church culture can be very, very beautiful.

As we have these in our relationships and so on, these have the potential of creating deep and trusted and lasting relationships in our church communities. And I'm going to move to the next slide. Scriptural application matters. True faith is never alone. True faith, it always produces faithfulness. If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar. "For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?" 1 John 4:20.

Some around us teach the idea that, hey, we just teach scriptural principles and let every individual just make the application. And I would say that's not a sustainable church community. Many times when plain people leave their heritage and try to recreate church community, things don't always go so well. And you have to wonder why.

Well, I think the fact is the idea we need application of scripture in our church communities. I'm going to move. There's a lot of background noise coming in. Atley, can you mute everyone? I keep hearing background noises.

So my next slide here, sorry, let me see here.

Oh, sorry. It's the rule of life matters and cultural norms matter. Our Anabaptist communities are held together through a corporate rule of life that's passed from generation to generation.

So again, the Anabaptist communities have that corporate rule of life. And I'm going to say that's application of scripture that has held them together. To create a good culture and a sustainable church community, I think that's what we need to do.

Sorry, I'm kind of getting my slides mixed up here a little bit. So I'll move on to I'm going to move on to my next slide here.

So this slide has three different models of church. Now, I realize it's only three models. There's a lot of stuff that blends between these three models, and then there's a whole bunch of other models we could look at. But the reason I'm looking at these three models is because I feel like it applies to what we're talking about. So the one on the left, I called the law church. And when I think of a law church, I think of I'm thinking of more of an old-order, traditional old-order type of Amish church. So the first one under law church is detailed rules. And then the next one is rules enforced with no exceptions. And the next paragraph is public confessions and communication for not obeying rules.

The next paragraph is sustainable. Now, this is a positive one. I shared maybe rather negative ones. Now, here's a positive one. Sustainable with growing numbers. We see that in Amish and older type of people. Then the last one is traditionally tradition-focused.

So a lot of us have grown up in those more law, very old-order tradition kind of church. And what happens many times is when somebody leaves that, it seems like they're almost spring-loaded in a way where they kind of tend to jump from one extreme to the next, and they land the whole way over to the far right. And what I have on the far right is free thinkers. And maybe some of us tend to be a little bit of free thinkers. I'm not sure on this call this morning. But the free thinkers, what I have underneath the free thinkers is the first paragraph is very outspoken against any kind of rules.

The second paragraph is, and I know I'm contradicting myself when I share the next one. The first one is very outspoken against any kind of rules. Second one is unspoken rules that are not communicated to its members. And you might think, "Wow, what are you saying here?" And I've seen free thinker kind of churches contradict themselves many times with this very thing. And I could tell you a little story. And this is a true story that happened. I actually wrote a little story about this happening. I called him Brother Bob. Brother Bob and his family moved from Pennsylvania to an Anabaptist free thinker kind of church.

And that church said they didn't have any rules at all. But Brother Bob, he liked his TV. And once in a while, he didn't watch TV a lot, but he would like to watch the news once in a while and see what's going on in the world he lives in. So when he moved to Pennsylvania and set up house, he put his TV sort of back in a corner and put a blanket over it. So maybe a couple of times a week, he would put a blanket back and watch the news, see what's going on. But that created quite a problem in the church community he was joining.

And yeah, there's maybe a few other things. But eventually, he got pushed out because, yeah, he had his TV. And rather than explain to him that they have their conscience or their community rule of life, they don't want members to have TVs. Instead, they start saying, "Oh, Bob, Brother Bob has a bad heart or he has a bad spirit or whatever." I forget what all they were saying about Brother Bob. And it became a very, very bitter experience for Brother Bob and his family. And they end up leaving them.

So that's why I'm saying, yeah, very outspoken against any kind of rules. And then unspoken rules that are not communicated to its members. Then the next paragraph is individuals are judged and treated unkindly for not meeting the expectations. And that's what happened to Brother Bob and his family. They were judged very harshly. They said they didn't have any rules, but they did, and they didn't communicate it. And then the family got Brother Bob's family got treated harshly. Then the next one is influx of people and not very sustainable. And that's kind of, and again, I don't want to come across at all in any kind of judging way.

Under free thinkers, there's a whole variation of churches, and I'm aware of that. But many times, these churches have an influx of people, and then they just move on and go elsewhere. And over a period of number of years, it's kind of like the crowd changes. It's not the same people that were there 10 or 20 years ago. And then the last one is losing more than they are gaining. And I'm not saying everyone's in a free thinker church is losing more than they're gaining. But many times, that's what happens. They leave one setting, they gain some things, but over a period of time, they're actually losing more than they're gaining by making that switch, jumping from the law church to the free thinker church.

And then the center one, I called brotherhood. And of course, I'm sharing from my perspective again. I would say the brotherhood model is a better, is a more balanced model from my perspective. And I would like to invite the free thinkers to kind of move more towards the brotherhood model is my goal.

So the top one there is an outline of Bible application, which I shared earlier that I believe we need applications of these Bible principles. We need to apply them to our life. And then the second one is community rule of life, voluntarily followed. And I think as far as the community rule of life voluntarily followed, I think that's something most churches would want if there's some kind of rule they have or community rule of life or brotherly agreement.

It's much easier if everybody voluntarily follows it. And that's the goal probably for, I'm going to say, for every church. But yeah, that's something that I think is important. Then the next one is one-on-one crucial conversation and discipling and mentoring. And that's something I feel like I've seen growing in our generation is rather than if something is, there's a crucial conversation that should happen rather than kicking under the rug, we need to open it up and discuss it and work through it. And I've been seeing that growing in churches, and I really like that. And then the part of discipling each other, mentoring each other. And that's what happened when that brother called me up that evening and took we went out to the woods and had a, I don't know, five hours together of praying, of singing, sharing scripture, talking.

He was mentoring me. He was discipling me. And that was very, very beautiful. And it really pulled me through that difficult time. Then the next paragraph under brotherhood is growing and seeking for more of a vibrant and transparent church. And that would tie in with the previous one of crucial conversations and discipling and mentoring each other. Then the bottom one is appreciate heritage, reexamine traditions.

And so I would say I see that mostly in the brotherhood model is you appreciate your heritage, whoever you come from, Amish, Mennonite, whatever, appreciating your heritage, appreciating what you got. And then, of course, from evangelical backgrounds, there's things there to be appreciated also. But then the idea of reexamining traditions. And I could give one example of a couple that I know. They grew up evangelical, and they adapted to more kingdom principles and values. And she started wearing a nice big veiling.

And they were kind of visiting around different churches. And they were visiting a conservative Mennonite church, well, rather conservative, traditional. And he actually liked that church a lot. And he would have been willing to join it. But his wife had a much harder time making that change. And the thing that he shared with me was if they would have joined that church, she would have had to take off her big veil that she wore and put on a small net covering that you can see through, and it covers a lot less hair. So I would say reexamining and appreciating our heritage, but also reexamining and being honest with what's there.

So I'll move on to my next slide here. Oops. I'm stuck here for some reason.

Oh, there we go. All right. So as I think about church life, I see the need of having our churches that our churches have, our people in our church, they're a society of the redeemed. They've been born again, regenerated, and a redeemed people living a humble life where we can actually talk to each other, share together. We do away with pride and all those kind of things and live this humble, transparent life. That's what I picture when I think of a society of the redeemed. We're pursuing heavenly things. We're not caught up in the things of this world and earthly things. We're not caught up in seeing how fast we can make the next dollar.

We're content with less than the best as far as these temporal things go on earth here. And yeah, the thought of humility and hearing each other and submitting to one another and all that is all tied in with humility. Humility is a beautiful thing. It's a needed ingredient in our church community. So the society of the redeemed, I love that term.

Matthew 5:14, "You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden." So the idea that our church communities, they're a shining light. The world looks on, and there's something that's appealing there. If the world looks on our church communities and they see us working together in a harmonious way and a humble way, that'll be very attractive. And then the next verse is Matthew 5:16, "Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven." Again, a beautiful verse as we live out the gospel principles and are an example to this world.

Most of us are probably aware of that there's a huge decline in church attendance. It's a rapid decline here in the United States. And if you study of why that is, it usually comes down to hypocrisy and people being mistreated and stuff like that. People saying one thing and living another thing.

I haven't come across it where people are like, "Oh, yeah, you're living too righteous of a life." It's more like people are living too unrighteous of a life. So there seems to be a push and a pressure, the idea to think, a thought pattern that if you want to live an obedient life, you're living some kind of legalistic life or you're trying to earn your salvation or something like that. That needs to go in a trash can.

Us living an upright life, a righteous life doesn't militate against faith or salvation in any way. It actually connects perfectly together. It's not separate. You can't separate the two in any way. Yeah. So my last slide now is a recap of kind of going over what I shared. We looked at being born of the water and the Spirit and not being conformed to this world.

We looked at the two stories of Levi and Susie, Kendall and Lucy, and not to let the pain from the past blur our vision for the future. We looked at the essential importance of fasting and praying and followed by forgiveness and the ability to create a good culture.

Kind of repeat there. Create a good culture, applying scripture, and being that city that's set on a hill, be that society of the redeemed. So very good. Hopefully, this can be a help to someone out there. And again, I'm open for corrections if there's somebody that has something to say that they would feel would be helpful in correcting something or whatever the case may be. I appreciate you all coming on, and I'll turn the time back to Brother Ephraim.

All right. Thank you so much, Brother Elam. I really, really enjoyed and appreciated the things that you've been sharing here.

And I'm going to open it up right shortly here for anyone that's on this morning that would like to comment or have any questions for Elam, have anything you want to add to it, or if you disagree with something, we're open for that to discuss those things.

I really appreciated, well, a number of things here, but the reality that when we come from a certain background and change our church or whatever, faith tradition, the reality is we all tend to either retain or react. And it can be maybe we retain a certain amount of things and react to a certain amount of other things. And the problem is we usually don't see it ourselves the way that others might see it. And that's why we need others to speak into our lives. That's why we need brothers around us that we're open with and willing to talk about things. And also, it's very helpful to have brothers that are from different backgrounds.

And of course, different brothers just see things differently and have different giftings, different insights. That's why, as a church, we really need each other. So one thing that I would really like to put a plug in for here is that if you leave the church, and we're not on here endorsing leaving, we want to encourage people to grow in the Lord Jesus and follow him and go wherever he leads.

But if someone moves away from a church, changes whatever, leaves the church, it is so intentional or so important, excuse me, to find a good biblical church and be a committed member and experience these things so that we can be delivered from bondage that we're retaining unintentionally or unhealthy reactions.

The brotherhood model there in the middle, talking about things, crucial conversations, the growing and seeking for a more vibrant and transparent church. When we think we've arrived, when we think we've found it, now this is it, we're in trouble. We always have to remember that we are on a journey. And as it says in 1 Peter, "To grow in grace and in knowledge of the Lord Jesus," we always have so much room to grow.

And in my experience, there's just always plenty of sin to go around. And we just need to be humble and acknowledge that we need to grow. We need to be becoming more healthy. We haven't arrived yet. That makes for a healthy church where we desire to grow and realize that we're not there yet.

Yeah, what you said about rules, Brother Elam, of some being, yeah, just the different levels there, different ways of approaching it. And the reality is a lot of these churches that say they don't, they still do. And if they don't, then they're not going to be standing for anything that's worth standing for generally, at least not for long.

Yeah. Thank you, brother. I'm going to open it up. We'd like to hear from you. Don't be bashful. Just speak out whatever you have to say here. Yeah. Thanks, Brother Ephraim. Maybe I'll just say one more thing I forgot to mention at the end there that I use some terms and, yeah, some terminology in my talk here this morning that I should probably give credit to two brothers.

And the one is Ernest Eby. He wrote an article about, "Does the rule of life work in the 21st century?" Thanks to Atley. He's been working on a website for Hope for Wondering Amish. And I asked him if we're able to put that. It's like a PDF, put it under resources page. And the other one, I use some terms from John D. Martin that I appreciate, like the society of the redeemed, things like that. He wrote a little booklet, "Plain or Not Plain." And I think Atley's going to put both that PDF that you can download and print out from Ernest Eby and then also a link to Sermon on the Mount Publishing for John D. Martin's little booklet, "Plain or Not Plain."

So whether you'd agree with everything in the little booklet, that's besides the point. There's a lot of really valuable things in there that I think all of us need to consider. So God bless.

Yeah. Thank you for adding that on. Go ahead. Yeah. Can you guys hear me? Yes. Yeah. So I think there might be a little bit of a glitch in this Zoom thing this morning. I was doing things as it's supposed to, and it looks like the phone lines unmuted by themselves. So hopefully, everybody can do that. I know my talk right here can be taken out of the recording then, but I just want to make sure everybody can unmute themselves and everything's okay.

Anybody else want to try?

All right. Thank you for that. Anybody else? You should be unmuted.

Looks like there's a lot of mute on yet, but I'm not sure if somebody— But the thing is, if you give them the ability to unmute themselves, they'll do it themselves on their end. Can you hear me? We can hear you.

I think you can hear me. Well, good morning. It's been a blessing to be on here. And I was inspired on a couple of things on what you were saying about what our vision is and what our focus is on where we're headed. That was one thing that really scared me for a long time. So I would look at things in our culture that were not scriptural, but then I would look at the other side. And I'd look at these people, and I would be told by our people in our church that, "Well, look at what happened to this family or look at what happened to this family." So your illustration, Brother Elam, that you gave about those two families was a lot of what we had heard.

And so that was very real and very scary to me. So I was like, "What do we do or where do we go?" So I found peace in knowing that trusting and having faith in the word of God and also that there are brothers out here that truly do care and want to follow what scripture actually teaches us and what actually is true and good and righteous.

And that's been a blessing to my life. And then what you shared, Brother Ephraim, about needing to grow, I agree. We listened to a sermon at Allen County Christian Fellowship, was it, I think, two weeks ago, and they had an evening service.

And then the guy that had the evening service said he had that. He said, "When we are born again, is that where we park it?" He said, "It seems there's so many people that become born again, but then they park it right there." And that's a concern that I have. Are we really on fire when we see the truth? But then that's kind of where we have now found we have now found the truth. We are now the righteous people, and that's as far as it goes.

And so I found that. And I had a sister that shared with me on that point. She said, "Actually, when a person becomes born again is when we actually first enter the battlefield. And we are in a great spiritual war. And we always have to be vigilant. We always have to be seeking, searching, and continuing and growing. We can never rest that we think we have now found the resting place. We have not entered that place of eternal rest yet. We're still on the journey, right?" So those things I've found very inspiring and helpful. And God bless you all.

Yeah. Thank you for adding that here, Michael. I appreciate that, brother. Anyone else?

Good morning. It's Samuel Ash. Good morning. That was a blessing to be on this morning. Brother Elam, there in the middle of your—I think that was your last slide there in the brotherhood column—you have about having those hard conversations and discipling.

I think a lot of that would be called shepherding.

Maybe that's in the center for a reason. I think that's probably one of the most important aspects of a biblical church structure: true shepherding, true discipling.

I mean, there in John 10, you see the analogy of the sheep out in wolf territory. And the only thing that keeps them safe is their relationship and their trust and their shepherd.

Is that applicable to how we do church? I think it may be. But yeah, just one question. And I guess it's a hypothetical question. I mean, some of these questions we can bat around. And the truth is we don't know how they would be handled until we're there.

But say Brother Bob reads the rule of life that says that we don't do TVs, but he also reads the fact that this is a voluntary thing. And so he excuses it on that basis and decides that he still wants his TV. How is that handled in that structure?

Yeah. Well, thank you, Brother Samuel, for asking hard questions, right? That's fine. I guess the world we live in, there's never a perfect scenario. But I guess one of my responses would be like I shared at the end about humility.

Humility is a beautiful thing. And being that city that's set on a hill, add that all together and our crucial conversations that we have, add everything together, I think we can do something that's or work through these things in a way that's beautiful. Like if Brother Bob is humble, we're all humble. We walk in humility kind of thing. For the good of the whole, I think Brother Bob should—is it sin to get rid of a TV? Of course not. Is that a good idea, getting rid of a TV? I would say yes.

So yeah, I don't know if I have a perfect answer on that subject, but we need to honor each other, respect each other, and love each other. I'm not a church elder or anything, so. So the rule of life can be used for guidance, but not for enforcement, or?

Yeah. I don't think the rule of life should ever be enforced on anyone kind of thing. Brother Ephraim's a deacon. Maybe he can speak in. But it needs to be voluntary. If we're a humble people, I don't think it would be right at all for me to go and want to join a church and then kind of keep picking and challenging at their rule of life that they have. I think if I go join a church, I should totally be willing to lay down all my preferences in a very humble way and submit myself to the rest of the brothers. And that's the only way church community can work. And that's the only way we can be that city that's set on a hill if we submit to one another and live a life that's.

They said Brother Bob refuses to put his TV away, and now we're coming and saying that Brother Bob is not humble. So we're back at the same page, brother. Thank you for your challenge. That's all right.

I mean, if that's truly the case, if Brother Bob is truly being stubborn, then that's where the conversation needs to. Yeah. We do need our motives of our hearts revealed to us and for someone to know as well. Yes.

Totally. Totally. Truly is humble. And the rest of the brothers have a problem with the TV, but they have a problem with saying that they have a problem with the TV.

If Brother Bob is humble and they don't have a rule against the TV, then it's okay for Brother Bob to have a TV. And they should be okay with it too, seriously.

Yeah. You mentioned earlier about. Yeah. There's some really, really—yeah, that's a really bad scenario, the way you described that there. And it was very poorly handled. I mean, they have to recognize that if they don't have a rule against the TV, then there may be folks that have a TV. And it's just ridiculous for them to assume that the Holy Spirit will convict everybody of the same.

So yeah, maybe the rule of life there would have been helpful. But yeah, I have a hard time believing that some sort of written standard is going to take care of all these situations.

Voluntary.

Well, like I said, there's not a—but it kind of seems like things get—maybe we're going to need shepherding and discipling either way.

So the rule of life, if it's a supplement to true shepherding, true discipling, then it could possibly be helpful.

Can it be? And if it's a replacement for true shepherding and true discipling, it's probably going to be a disaster one way or another. Either that or it's just going to get trampled underfoot. We see that every time. Communities have a good rule of life. It gets ignored. And sooner or later, you kind of have to accept that because it's voluntary.

And if half of the membership isn't doing what the rule states, what can you do? Yeah. I think Jerry may have something to say. There's more people on this call. We should probably give time for the others to talk here.

Yeah. Apparently, you can hear me. Yeah. Good morning, everybody.

This gets close to my thoughts and heart.

I don't know that I don't have a lot of experience, but my own thought is many times, or at least these are my observations, it feels to me like