Our Message to the Mennonites

John Hoppers Testimony...
A rebuke to the Mennonites

Introduction

We posted this letter on mennodiscuss in the wake of situation in Peru which involved a certain "conservative" Mennonite group turning away certain "little ones" interested in learning The Gospel

This letter is not a backlash of bitterness as if we have been personally hurt by the Mennonite denominations. If we were to be bitter towards the Mennonite Churches than we would be guilty of not going our way and reconciling first, and then offering our gift of the Gospel.

Our concerns are not tainted with an "anti Mennonite" spirit. The term anti Mennonite spirit has become a cliché term used to ignore anyone who voices a concern toward you're Church(es). We very deeply respect Anabaptism in it's grass-roots. Sadly what we have found in Anabaptism is nothing more than a skeletal frame of what it used to be, dead and without life. A never moving frame grounded in tradition and held up by suspenders.

Anabaptist identity won’t save you

You ought to remember what Jesus said: "think not to say that you have Abraham as you're father because God is able to raise up children of Abraham from the rocks". You (Mennonites) ought not think to yourselves that you have Yoder as your father.

You ought to remember that Anabaptism is the result of the Waldenese taking up arms and apostatizing from The Faith. You ought to consider that the Church is not static. You ought to consider that that God has and will raise up another Church willing to follow Christ if the former falls away.

You ought to remember what the Lord said in Romans, that those who are Jews are not Jews according to the flesh, but rather according to the spirit. You ought consider that you are not Anabaptists according to suspenders or heritage, but according to zeal for the truth and zeal for the Gospel.

You ought to consider that Christ rebuked the accepted hyper religious structure of His day. You ought to consider that the True Church is a small unaccepted and rejected little flock of Israelites as Anaken told her child in the Martyrs Mirror.

You ought to consider Grebel and Blaurock who were willing to storm the pulpits of the Catholic Churches in order to condemn them. You ought to consider that these men condemned the hyper religious structure of their time by coming out from among the enemies of the Gospel and being separate.

You ought to consider that Blaurock and Grebel were not content with conventional life, they were willing to lose their lives for The Truth. These men were not content to build pole-barns and eat shoe fly pie in a tucked away little farm house with a F-350 parked outside.

You ought consider that Grebel was in poverty and debt, his relationship with his wife was less than ideal, his health was poor, and yet he chose to venture all around the German countryside preaching The Truth which resulted in death from poor health.

You ought to remember that Grebel and Blaurock did not try to reform the broken religion of their day by attempting to reform. Rather they chose a Cross, an option that most people will never consider. They chose to go outside the camp and suffer reproach and rejection by teaching The Truth when no one else was willing to.

You ought to consider it when someone tells you that you're organization is guilty of turning little ones away from the truth. You ought to consider that when we begin to turn people away from the truth we are Christ's enemies and not His servants.

You ought to consider what Jesus said: "If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth".

I fear that you are so blind you cannot even discern what Jesus meant in this scripture.

Mennonite quotes from MennoDiscuss

"One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said...

Poll: Does the Mennonite church reach out enough? I'm gonna put a poll on this, but give your comments! Do we often become to much of a "tight knit" group and not reach out to our neighbours and those we come in contact with? Sure we go on mission trips and we send missionaries, but how about in our own communities? - Raun

That is one thing that majorly bugs me about our churches. We hear these great messages about reaching out and being witnesses to those around us, but do we do anything?????? Nope. We sit there and talk about what we could do. No that's not always true- many churches have great ministries like kid's clubs and summer bible school- but I really think we could do a whole lot more!! -happygolucky

I couldn't agree more!!! We spend so much time quarreling and preaching at each other and no time working on saving those around us. I heard once that the only way a church will grow (as proven by history) is to be on fire and reach out, or to be persecuted... - Raun

Mennonites and Amish have had isolationist and separatist ideas for years and years, why should we be surprised at the fruit? -peacefulady

Have you heard Chester Weaver's message at the Minister's Meetings on anabaptists? Currently, the Ab/menn are thought of as nice people who work hard, make good food, and nice quilts. The early anabaptists were thought of as people who disturbed the peace because of their radical beliefs. How do we get that back? -happygolucky

I don't think that the Conservative Mennonite church as a whole does enough of this. We just talked about this last Sunday in Sunday School. Why don't we do enough of this?

...Well, would you want to join a group that fights amongst itself all the time... -HooverRated

I suspect that we fight each other because we don't have the message. -Raun

When the majority of churches get started out of splits...when the church's patterns of growth correlate with our birth rates, we are in the maintenance mode instead of focusing on reaching out. -JLapp

I do agree with jlapp that we as a people have lost vision. Sure, we do a lot of good, I'm not against any of it, I'm just saying that we seem to be too content with living undisturbed lives and not willing to break out of our comfort zones to show Christ's love if it means an economic sacrifice. Sadly, I put myself at the top of the list for this shortcoming. -ewknice

I had the opportunity, no, the privilege to work with a non-mennonite christian in a incarcerated(both of us) environment for about two months. One day, this after many days of discussions involving our faith and lifestyles, he looked at me with genuine tears in his eyes and asked, why couldn't I have been influenced by your people years ago already? His impression of menno's had been that we are closed to the outside, unattainable. -vegehtz

I think we give the impression to lots of people that we're closed to non-mennonites. We hear folks ask sometimes if you can be a mennonite if you're not born a mennonite and we're like, "Of course." But to tel you the truth, I can easily see why they get that impression. I mean, how many times in a year do we have non-mennonites into our homes? For one, I don't have them very often, specially not for meals. I go visit sick people in my community, call them onthe phone and of course, witness every now and then, but to really lay down my life, befriend them on a day to day basis, and especially invite them to church, I'm not doing that. And I feel like I need to. Jesus gave so much of His time, His resources and everything He had for us. Then why am i not laying down my life in the same way? -mississippigurl

John Hoppers Personal testimony
A Rebuke to the Mennonites…

...This witness is true. Wherefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith; Not giving heed to Jewish fables, and commandments of men, that turn from the truth".

It seems ironic that this forum is dedicated to Mennonites for the purpose of arguing The Faith rather than helping those outside to understand the The Faith.

In regard to what we have stated previously we want to make it known that we are not bitter, we are angry. We are not personally hurt, we are trying to make it known that your organizations are guilty of turning little ones away from the faith.

I personally attest to this. Four years ago I was converted through the efforts of an Evangelist named David Keeling. Previously to our meeting David had been a member of The Fellowshippers in Fairview Missori. While David was with this congregation David would go street preaching on Friday and Saturday nights on a particular intersection in Springfield Missouri, this location is known for it's bar scene. Often David would preach until late in the evening to the bar crowd, it is known that these crowds do not frequent this area until 9 or 10 pm and it isn't uncommon to see people into the late hours of the night.

While David was with this group he and several other brothers preached at this particular venue using signboards, preaching to the professing "Christian" college students out getting drunk. The Mennonite church sharply disagreed with this form of evangelism. The church voiced its concern by imposing a 10 o’clock curfew on David and the other Brothers. As stated before this venue is not active until 9 pm, David explained this to the ministry, they wouldn't budge. In effect they attempted to bring an end to the street preaching.

This venue was 1 hour away from David's home. The curfew would effectively require David to leave the venue a 9pm to be home by 10pm. This would not allow any time to talk to anyone. David did not comply with the ministries curfew (I owe m soul to this decision). Eventually the ministry moved to excomunicate David, not everyone in the church agreed with this action to excomunicate this man of God. Never the less the ministry moved to excommunicate David because he was unwilling to "submit" to them.

There were 3 other men that I am aware who did not cast a vote in the excomunicating. All of them were put on proving, 2 of them were later excomunicated and 1 was forced to change fellowships. After the excommunicating David continued to street preach choosing rather to obey God rather than men, it was because of this decision that I am talking to you now.

It was 4 years ago that I was getting ready to go to a party with my friends, I had just visited the bar where my girlfriend worked when I walked out on the street and saw a man holding a sign that read "The Party Ends in Hell!" if my memory serves me right.

This man I met was David Keeling, we spoke and he shared things with me from the Word of God that I had never heard before in the evangelical denominations. He shared what the Kingdom of God was, what it meant to follow Jesus and bear The Cross, and what it meant to find you're life and lose it and how we are to lose our life to find it. Praise the Lord I never heard anything like that before! I asked David if he had a church, he responded "yes, there are just a few of us however". It was a Saturday night in July.

My girlfriend and I attended the next morning where we saw coverings and very modest dresses, men who were full of the Word of God and ready to share it Word with us. My girlfriend and I continued to attend, she quit her job at the bar, took her lip ring, tongue ring, nose ring and ear rings out, put a dress and a covering on. At that time I was working in a bar as a “rodie”.

Mennonites and Pilgrims Progress

This reminds me of the pilgrims progress, where pilgrim comes to a bridge with a monster preventing him from crossing. While he is asking how to fight the monster he sees two guys get in an argument about how to fight the monster or something like that, instead of fighting the monster they end up fight each other.

The point is, there is a big monster with suspenders on, who has grown fat from eating cakes and pies, rumbling around in an f-350 and waiting for the next David Keeling to kill.

You guys are completely missing it, go fight the monster not me! I'm just trying to tell you:

"hey we tried crossing the gospel bridge in Peru and we met a big ol' Mennonite monster, we think it's the same one that almost killed David keeling!"

Problem is this monster is big, and he is hard to discern. Sometimes he hangs out on the gospel bridge looking like a pilgrim. When you try to have fellowship with what you think is a fellow pilgrim and all he does is talk about f- 350's, pole barns, moustaches or no moustaches. When you try to rebuke him for this he turns back into a monster and tries to kill you!

Sometimes he appears as pilgrim wanting to talk about the Gospel but when you speak to him all he wants to do is argue. Some people fall for his tactic and get in duelling matches with him. The people that fall for this are normally those who like to show off they’re sword fighting skills instead of using them on the monster.

I guess the problem isn't a group of blind pilgrims like I thought it was. If blindness were the problem we could have gotten some salve for it. I guess the problem is you are guys are actually the Mennonite monster ready to devour preachers. As a matter of fact when I tried to talk to what I thought was a blurred eyed pilgrim needing some salve he told me...

"from your responses above, you seem to be indicating that you are more interested in a congregation to preach to here on MD than brothers to dialog with. I regret that"

Did you hear that? He regretted that! He didn't want the eye salve! This must be a Menno monster, I'm going to pull my hand back from your face before you try to gobble up my hand.

Anyway, I'm going to go pass out tracts or work on our website or something worthwhile.