Road Trip Review

I mentioned on Friday that we were going to Ohio on Saturday to visit a family I have been in touch with. I wanted to give you an update because it was a great time for us. We had a wonderful visit with Michael and Wanda Harris on Saturday. The Harris family are Hutterites and their style of life is simultaneously both fairly typical and very much not. Like my wife, Wanda is a keeper of the home and they homeschool their children. Michael works a “regular” job. Because they are not living in a traditional Hutterite colony, their lives are not quite the same as that of the colony they are affiliated with (Elmendorf Christian Community in Minnesota, which in turn is a little different in doctrine and practice from some of the older colonies further West). With farm prices through the roof thanks to dramatically higher commodity prices, creating a new and self-sufficient colony is an expensive proposition. So for now, the Harris family lives in a more or less traditional way but they way they view church and community is radically different from the norm.

If I can speak for them, it is clear that community is not a passing thing in the church for the Harris family. It is the thing. It is what unites us, gives us a witness to the unbelieving world and it is what God intends for us, both by human nature and in Scriptural example.

What I found enchanting and refreshing was that their children don’t have iPods or video games or even a TV. Yet they play with and find joy in simple play with blocks, something kids all used to be able to entertain themselves with until we decided as parents and as a society that kids needed every possible indulgence. We dutifully watch commercials and like sheep we shuffle off to the store to buy the latest, greatest toy for our kids on command. Even in my lifetime, when I was growing up we had pretty minimal exposure to television because as a child we lived before the advent of cable. So I spent a lot of time reading, playing outside, playing with friends. If I were growing up now, I would spend 100% of my free time in front of a computer and never step foot outside. When I remarked that we don’t sing together as a family, Michael asked what we do together as a family. The answer unfortunately is “not much”. We have plenty of ways to entertain ourselves individually, so it is easier for us all to “do our own thing” than to do things together as a family.

They had the biggest dining room table I have ever seen. Imagine a table with four adults, two on each end and fifteen children ages 16 and under around it! I was at one end of the table and Michael was at the other and it was a little hard to hear one another because we were so far away. It is a table that is designed for fellowship, in a home that welcomes people. You don’t need to “go to church” to have fellowship when you open your home to any and all.

I found it fascinating that for Michael, the way that the evangelical church lives is almost incomprehensible and unrecognizable. What we take for granted as “normal” is anything but for Hutterites. From our unquestioning support of war to the minimalist version of community we pass of as “church”, it is hard to imagine a model that is less recognizable for the more conservative Anabaptist groups. When we spoke about how we gather, even in a Plymouth Brethren assembly which is in and of itself pretty different from a traditional evangelical church, it doesn’t sound recognizable from the Scriptures to Hutterites.

So what does that mean for us as a family? Well, I am not sure yet. I know that it reinforced for us that we are missing out on both the loving witness to those outside of the church and the support that a Christian community provides to those in the church. That sort of community cannot be found in church membership or regular Sunday attendance. It can only be achieved by lives lived together, in a commitment to one another. Something Michael said really struck me. In a community like the Hutterites, people get mad at one another but because you are in community, you don’t stomp off and leave. You are committed to one another as a living community for the long haul and that means you don’t just go from Baptist church A to Baptist church B because you are in a snit about something. The solution to church hopping is not “church membership”, it is a committed community. I would have some concerns/questions about some matters of doctrine and I am not sold on some distinctives (like the manner of dress). I also know that the perfect community in perfect fellowship doesn’t exist on this side of the judgment. So we can either sit around and wait to die, slogging along in the morass of evangelicalism, or we can seek to do God’s will no matter how uncomfortable it makes us or what sacrifices it requires of us.

We are looking forward to spending more time with the Harris family and with others who seek a community with other believers beyond Sunday morning and see where God leads us.