In the third talk of his series, Ephraim Renno reflects on life after leaving the Amish—rich but painful—and turns to the subject of excommunication and shunning. He shares the hard providences that followed their move to Ephrata (selling their Amish-built house at a loss, the death of baby Paul with no family present, Saloma’s accident while he was in Haiti, and attending a shunned grandfather’s funeral), alongside the deep support of their new church even amid its own painful split. Strikingly, Ephraim says he believes in the biblical teaching of the ban and shunning, reading Dordrecht Confession articles 16 and 17, and only objects to its being used against those who leave for a faithful church. His central appeal, grounded in Luke 6, is that excommunicated ex-Amish refuse bitterness, return good for evil, and live such a testimony that Amish and other faithful believers might one day be drawn together.
Key Points:
– After leaving, Ephraim initially struggled to accept assurance of salvation, but came to a settled joy that Jesus died for him and that he could simply believe.
– The family walked through severe trials—an at-a-loss house sale, the death of three-day-old baby Paul with no family attending, Saloma’s serious accident, and a grandfather’s funeral they were "not supposed" to attend.
– Their new church at Ephrata gave abundant love and solid Bible teaching, even as it endured its own painful split with a third of the church leaving.
– Ephraim affirms the Dordrecht Confession’s teaching on the ban and shunning (articles 16-17) as biblical, objecting only to its use against those who leave to follow Christ faithfully.
– Drawing on Luke 6, he pleads with ex-Amish to reject bitterness, return good for evil, and keep their baptismal vow of faithfulness to Jesus and his church.
– His vision is a generation of faithful, non-reactionary ex-Amish whose testimony could help blend Amish strengths with other faithful churches; he previews seven bullet points for the next talk.
Scripture References: Romans 9:3; Hebrews 12 (chastening); Luke 6:22-36; Romans 12:20 (coals of fire)
Guide me, O the great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land. Hello, thank you for joining us here at Hope For Wondering Amish. This talk is the third of Ephraim Renno’s series. The title is "Amish Outcasts, Shunned for Life." I do have an apology to make about this recording. When we had our meeting Saturday morning on Zoom, I forgot to click the record button. But rest assured, you didn’t miss a lot. It was my introduction and just a little bit from Ephraim Renno, a little bit at the beginning. Other than that, you’ll get the entire message. Again, thank you for joining us, and God bless.
In spite of the struggles of, you know, losing family, losing friends, and all that went with excommunication, there were definitely difficulties with that. But God was so good. He was faithful. Our Sundays were very rich, very meaningful. The preaching was solid, right out of the Bible. And we would have fellowship all afternoon and evening, getting home late at night. Very rich, full, meaningful Sundays there.
Church, like I said, strong doctrinal teaching. I want to give credit to being able to find my way in the Christian church because of godly men that really gave a lot of good, solid doctrinal teaching early in my Christian life. Here we had a multicultural church. We had people from Amish, Mennonite, Brethren, Hutterite, Baptist, Catholic, and other backgrounds. We had a strong mission emphasis. I truly thought we had found it all. I thought this was it. This was just great and wonderful.
It wasn’t long until we found out that in spite of such a bright new church experience, not all was well. And I was having my own struggles in some ways. And one would have been, you know, having heard all my life that you really can’t know if you’re saved. You do what you can. You try your best. Do what the church says. And in the end, hope you make it. And it was hard to work through that. It was hard to really believe that Jesus died for me, and that I could believe — and that’s all it took, just believing in the Lord Jesus. The enemy kept trying to convince me that I wasn’t real. Somehow I wasn’t real.
And I thought I was. I tried to be. I would go back over my life and try to figure out, where am I not real, and what have I done that I can’t seem to get that assurance of salvation? It took some time. I would say after a couple of years, I really did get there, and it’s been a joy. I had a lot of insecurities, especially when meeting with my old Amish friends. If I would see them at an auction or pass them on the road, things like that, I would feel very insecure and very nervous. I’ve been able to get past that too. Praise the Lord.
Our Amish people — the shunning was certainly taken to a pretty strong degree there, more so than we anticipated. We thought that, okay, probably it wouldn’t be very harsh. We could still get together some. And over time, it wouldn’t really mean that much. We found out differently.
We decided to sell our house and move closer to church, move into Ephrata. And how are we going to sell our house? We had just built it a couple years before that. It had no indoor hot water plumbing. It had no bathtubs or showers. It had no electric wiring. It was specifically built for that Amish community. And now we wanted to sell it. And we were these bad people that they would not buy a house from. And that’s okay. But it was interesting. We decided to make an auction. And I wouldn’t be at the auction. And there would be a middleman there. They would be paying the auctioneer. And the auctioneer would pay me. But that really didn’t help. So we ended up taking a big hit in selling our house.
I don’t say these things out of any kind of resentment. I just want to share these things to give you a perspective of how things were. So in August of 2010, we sold our house, moved to Ephrata. In December of 2010, our fifth child was born, baby Paul, and had some complications. He only lived three days and passed away.
During this time, we had no family, either on my side or on her side, that showed up for the viewing or funeral. It was specifically church people that were there. And we had lots of beautiful, wonderful, very thorough support by our church people. But not a single person as far as family and Amish friends that attended.
In April of 2011, I took a mission trip to Haiti with several brothers from our church. It was a great experience, seeing a lot of new sites and getting my worldview expanded. While I was there, Saloma got into an accident. It was pretty bad. She wasn’t hurt. Our children weren’t hurt. But the other party, both of them were hurt pretty badly. It was very traumatic. Very hard for Saloma, especially with me being out of the country. And I was not able to return for a number of days after. We didn’t know if we would be in deep trouble through this. It was very difficult.
And we soon found out that our Amish people saw this as God continuing to punish us, to bring us back to them. And at the same time, our people there at Ephrata just, again, really, really supported us. They were there showing lots of love and helping us through that time. One sister in specific, I remember, just threw her arms around Saloma and said, God must really love you. So, in Hebrews 12, it speaks of God chastening those that he loves. So she was using that to assure us that God really loves us. And that was very meaningful.
At about the same time, in early of the year 2011, Saloma’s grandfather passed away. And we were not supposed to find out. They didn’t want us at the funeral. They didn’t want us to know. And he didn’t feel like that was right. So he called me and let me know about it anyway. And we went to the funeral. Brother Elam and his wife went with us to kind of give us support and be there at our side. We were glad we went. It was a big step of faith to go anyway, knowing that we were not supposed to be there. They were very kind. They made a special place for us in the corner somewhere and allowed us to be there.
In all of these things, the Amish were very kind in a certain way, in a limited way, sure, but they did mean things well, I believe. I do not believe that they hated us. As the church, they had to treat us this way, so I don’t say these things with any kind of resentment at all.
In our new church, I came with a lot of really high ideals and thought that I had really found the greatest church that there could be, that everything was just great. Not all was well. There were different viewpoints, different ways of looking at some very key things. And in that first year of being there, the lead elder announced at a brothers’ meeting that he was leaving. It was a huge shock to everyone. About a third of the church walked out soon after. And this was followed by several years of repercussions from that split, where it just seemed like continually two, three, four families would rise up and leave. There were different issues. It was a very hard time in that way. The church experience was so very rich and yet so painful. And there were many times where I just wanted to say, folks, stop.
I realized what you have. But the struggle went on. Now, things that helped through that time: the teachings continued to be tremendous. Every Sunday we would have really, really good messages right out of the Bible, very clear and profound, life-changing, directional messages. That was very helpful. The difficulties the church was going through drew many of us together. And I marvel at that looking back sometimes, how that could have been that way. But it was. We had very rich fellowship. Sundays often were packed full with being together all day long. That was very helpful. And the newfound freedoms that I had in Christ — life had opened up in ways that I couldn’t have imagined. And truly, we were very blessed in spite of all the difficulties.
I want to talk a bit about excommunication and shunning. I might surprise you by saying that I believe in it. I believe in the teaching. And I don’t really blame the Amish for excommunicating me. In some ways, I feel bad for them. Especially our parents. It’s been hard to see the pain that we have caused them. I believe that the day will come where we can understand each other better and enjoy being together again. The Amish believe that the gap between what they believe and what I believe is very huge — so much so that they would say I have a strange faith, a strange religion, one that’s quite different and opposite from what they have. I don’t really believe that so much. I feel like most of what they believe, I believe also. But there’s a few very key things that create huge differences.
I can relate to Paul in Romans 9, verse 3, where I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh. Now, if the Amish could just be right and I’d be wrong, wouldn’t that be so much better? Where all these dear people could be right?
I believe in shunning as taught by the source which the Amish use. Shunning has been dramatized by the world, and by so much of the Christian church today, church discipline has largely fallen out of favor. Now, I have seen it used in the right way in the church where we currently are at. I’ve seen it used in ways that turned out good, by those that truly had fallen away and were later restored. I’d like to take the time to read out of the Dordrecht Confession of Faith, which the Amish use very consistently. They consistently teach their young, those that are getting baptismal classes; they will go through the Dordrecht Confession of Faith. This is a confession that was written up in Dordrecht, Holland, in 1632 — 18 articles. And I want to read articles number 16 and 17. So if you could just listen in here and hear what the Amish teach their people. And again, I agree with these teachings, but I don’t agree with the way they practice them.
Article number 16, of the ban, or separation from the church: "We also believe in and confess a ban, separation, and Christian correction in the church, for amendment, and not for destruction, in order to distinguish that which is pure from the impure: namely, when anyone, after he is enlightened, has accepted the knowledge of the truth, and been incorporated into the communion of the saints, sins again unto death, either through willfulness, or through presumption against God, or through some other cause, and falls into the unfruitful works of darkness, thereby becoming separated from God, and forfeiting the kingdom of God — that such a one, after the deed is manifest and sufficiently known to the church, may not remain in the congregation of the righteous, but as an offensive member and open sinner shall and must be separated, put away, reproved before all, and purged out as leaven; and this for his amendment, as an example that others may fear, and to keep the church pure, by cleansing her from such spots; lest, in default of this, the name of the Lord be blasphemed, the church dishonored, and offense given to them that are without; and finally, that the sinner may not be condemned with the world, but become convinced in his mind, and be moved to sorrow, repentance, and reformation.
"Further, concerning brotherly reproof or admonition, as also the instruction of the erring, it is necessary to exercise all diligence and care to watch over them, and to admonish them with all meekness, that they may be bettered, and to reprove, according as is proper, the stubborn who remain obdurate. In short, the church must put away from her the wicked, either in doctrine or life, and no other." That’s Article 16, on excommunication.
Article 17, on shunning, goes like this: "Concerning the withdrawing from, or shunning, the separated, we believe and confess, that if anyone, either through his wicked life or perverted doctrine, has so far fallen that he is separated from God, and consequently also separated and punished by the church, the same must, according to the doctrine of Christ and his apostles, be shunned, without distinction, by all the fellow members of the church, especially those to whom it is known, in eating, drinking, and other similar interactions, and no company be had with him; that they may not become contaminated by interactions with him, nor made partakers of his sins; but that the sinner may be made ashamed, pricked in his heart, and convicted in his conscience unto his reformation.
"But in shunning as well as in reproving, such moderation and Christian discretion must be used, that it may conduce, not to the destruction, but to the reformation of the sinner. For if he is needy, hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, or in any other distress, we are in duty bound, necessity requiring it, according to love and the doctrine of Christ and his apostles, to render him aid and assistance; otherwise the shunning might tend to his ruin, instead of to his reformation. Therefore, we must not count them as enemies, but admonish them as brethren, that thereby they may be brought to a knowledge of, and to repentance and sorrow for, their sins, so that they may become reconciled to God, and consequently be received again into the church, and that love may continue with them, according as is proper." So there you have it. I agree with these articles as taught by the Amish.
But what I don’t agree with is using excommunication and shunning for those that just go to a different church and are faithful to the Lord. I will also say this, that for the most part, they have used it kindly. When we do see each other, oftentimes they will gently admonish me to mend my ways, to come back and, you know, take up the truth as I was taught. Now, there are very legitimate reasons why I can’t do that. And the baptismal vows that I made to the Amish when I was 18 — to be faithful to the Lord Jesus and to his church unto death — I intend to keep that. I have been keeping that. And I take that seriously. The Amish understand that vow as being vowing to be faithful to the Amish church, rather than Jesus and his church.
I will say this also, that if I was in the wrong, and the Amish were in the right, and they would shun me in this way, it would be very powerful. It would probably do a lot to bring me back to them. But very clearly, I have found truths and rejoice in that. And life has been very rich and meaningful in the very things that I was looking for when I was in the Amish — in being in a church where fellowship is around Jesus, and where his word is freely discussed, and practical manners of life are based off of scripture, and where we can have interaction with like-minded believers throughout the world. And yes, many of them may not do things just the way we do. And that’s all right. People can apply scripture in different ways. And we can have fellowship, even if that faithfulness looks different perhaps than our own practical applications. So it’s been a real joy to get to know so many believers all over the world and have a kindred spirit — have the witness of the Spirit when we get together in fellowship. That’s been a tremendous joy. And it just keeps going. It’s wonderful.
Very pertinent scripture for the subject that we’re talking about — Luke chapter 6. And I’m reading in Luke chapter 6, verse 22, 23, and then 26 on down a little ways. Jesus’ words here. Now, this is fairly strong language here, but I think it does apply a lot to my situation — to take these words seriously, to understand that there’s a blessing in this, and to rejoice, realizing that my reward, if I handle it rightly — and, you know, there’s many ways to take it wrong, but if I take it rightly, there’s a reward in heaven for that.
I am troubled many times when I hear ex-Amish people that are being banned in ways that they believe are wrong, where it seems like there’s bitterness there. And then I read this portion of scripture, and there’s just no room for bitterness. Instead, Jesus says there’s a blessing. And there’s reason for rejoicing. I want to read in verse 26 and on down a ways. "Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets. But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you. And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other;
"and him that taketh away thy cloak forbid not to take thy coat also. Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again. And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise. For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them. And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same.
"And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil. Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful." You hear the heart of Jesus in all of that? Is there any room for bitterness? Is there not rather room for rejoicing?
That we know the Son of God, the Lord Jesus, and have life in him. And that the difficulties that we experience are for our good, in chastening and refining us and helping us to higher ground, and to experience just a little bit of suffering — a little bit in comparison to what Jesus suffered. And also, Paul suffered so much more in his life than I’ve ever experienced. He suffered so much more. And he calls it a momentary light affliction, which will be very quickly forgotten in the light of eternity.
So, I plead with you, my fellow excommunicated, ex-Amish friends: let’s not be bitter. Let’s not have any roots of bitterness in our lives. And let’s relate to our dear Amish people in loving ways, in ways that are kind and merciful. Returning good for evil is Jesus’ way. Not being spiteful. Not being resentful. Not being, you know, up in arms about it. That will only give them fuel for their fire. And I am grieved sometimes to think about the reality of how many people have left the Amish and given them a lot of reasons — and, by their behavior, closed themselves off to the gospel. And what I mean by that: folks that have left and ended up really falling into deception, and ended up in bitterness, and in reaction to their background.
So my desire is that there would be — here’s my vision. My vision is there would be a generation of ex-Amish who are strongly committed to the way of Jesus, having such a testimony of faithfulness that, instead of unhealthy reactions on both sides, there would be a coming together and understanding, where the strength that the Amish have could be blended with the strengths of other faithful churches, to the betterment of all — resulting in Amish churches everywhere full of life in Jesus, walking in the joy of the Lord and in the beauty of holiness, the way of Jesus. Where, someday, we can have a testimony that will speak to our dear Amish people, that they will not continue to react against us. And for that to happen, we need to lay down our reactionary methods. We need to be forgiving and loving, and return good for evil.
The Amish understand the language of love and forgiveness. They are very strong, in some ways, in these things. Consider the Nickel Mines shooting back in 2005, and the message of forgiveness that went out from that through all the world. The Amish understand forgiveness. If we can truly forgive and relate, with that being clear that we hold nothing against them, that we love them and return good for evil, keeping coals of fire upon their heads, as Romans 12 gives us. By the way, if they are right in shunning us, why would we have a problem with it? And if they are wrong in shunning us, why would we have a problem with it, if it’s going to increase our blessing? And I think it can be used to increase our blessing, both in this life and in eternity. It can be a foundation to perhaps win them, if we really love them and show forgiveness — show the way of Jesus.
It can be winsome for them, and refining for us, and can increase our eternal reward if we handle it well. So — Amish outcasts, shunned for life. Why would we have a problem with that? God can use that for good. I really believe it.
I will give you just a few bullet points to be thinking about for the next talk. I’d like to have one more. And the bullet points are these. Expect the road to be hard. The second one: understand and embrace the cross. Number three: the bumps are what you climb on. Number four: don’t be reactionary. That’s a big one. Number five: make yourself right and the Amish wrong. Number six: find a strong biblical church and make yourself a part of it. And number seven: don’t spend too much time with ex-Amish people. I got my foot in my mouth there. I’ll explain what I mean by that, and more, in two weeks, Lord willing. I’d like to get together again in two weeks, six o’clock Saturday morning.
For now, I will give it back to you, Brother Elam. I would welcome any questions you might have, comments, concerns about anything I shared. All right. Thank you, Brother Ephraim, for sharing. I really appreciate your talk this morning. It was very interesting hearing you talk about walking through your shunning experience. I guess for myself, when I left the Amish, there was 10 of us. 10 children. So we had a large family, and I had some siblings I was really close to. And when I left the Amish, I couldn’t believe the shunning I faced from them. And I took it quite offensive. And I remember leaving my brother’s house one time thinking, I don’t even ever want to see him again. But I had to work through that and work towards forgiveness.
I went through that also. And I found it kind of humorous, I guess — that’s going to be your next talk, not to spend too much time with ex-Amish. That is really, really interesting. I really look forward to that. I have my opinions on that also. But, yeah, I love ex-Amish. So anyway, we want to give an opportunity to our audience now. You should be able to unmute yourself now. So if you have any questions or comments, please share them.
So I have a question — maybe several questions. One is, maybe you could elaborate on the fact that there are different levels, different ways, that different communities practice their shunning. And then — I didn’t know if you want to maybe share a few more experiences of when you tried to go back and visit and how that would go, or if that’s still, you know, more of a painful subject. Sure. I appreciate that question.
So when we left, both my parents and Saloma’s parents kind of gave the message that if we leave, we wouldn’t be welcome to come back and visit. And I thought it was probably just a heat-of-the-moment thing, that give it a year or so, they would change their mind. And we did go back visiting after about a year, to both of our parents. And that was a very profound message that we were not to come back again, that we were not to come back and visit at all. Now, there have been a few funerals that they let us know about and let us know that we could come. So there is that, where we can see each other there. I make a point of it sometimes to go to sales where we can see our family and old friends.
It goes pretty well if we stay with safe subjects, and you soon find out who is open to talk about deeper things and who isn’t. And there have been times where we’ve gone to visit siblings and we were able to visit, but they wouldn’t let us into the house — where, you know, they wouldn’t want us inside. They would step outside in spite of the cold and whatever. They would want us to visit outside, and that’s okay. Does that answer your question? Yes. Yes. Thanks.
All right. Is there anyone else? We have a little bit, some more time here to take a few more questions. Yeah. For anybody that doesn’t know me, I’m Jerry. I’m from New York. I missed the first two meetings. I had busy days. But I appreciate what you shared this morning. I was just curious if you have a practical walking-out of shunning as you see it today. Like — I guess it’s a thought-provoking subject for me, because the Bible is very clear on — I mean, if you’re in the Old Testament, if there was a sin in the camp, it was purged. And I guess I primarily see that as step one — the judgment comes to the house of God first. Like, it has to start with you. But then there’s the mixture of someone just new to the Lord and maybe having blind spots. And then there’s a whole new level where, doctrinally, you walk with people that have different doctrines.
I guess I was just really curious what your thoughts are on — you believe in shunning, so where would the line be? Like, where would you say, well, that can’t be, I can’t walk with this brother, this is too hard? And maybe this is off the subject, but I was just curious if you have any elaboration on how you would walk that out in shoe leather, and where your lines are. Because I feel like Christianity today is slightly hijacked for all the various different belief systems. And obviously the first step is to sit down and discuss it with a brother if there’s differences. But when there is a difference and no resolution, how would you see — I mean, maybe your brother’s right and you’re wrong. I guess I was just curious if you have an elaboration on how you would walk that out. I mean, would they not be allowed into your brothers’ meeting, or allowed into your church fellowship? What’s the metric that divides, or brings division and shunning, to decide — you know, then you have the whole thing of, maybe you just have an issue and the whole church doesn’t. Yeah. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?
I do. Yeah, that’s a really good question. So in our time, socially, this kind of thing has just fallen out of favor. Where I have seen it be effective, and where I would see it as being right to use, would be if there’s a brother that very clearly has fallen into sin and is unrepentant. So in my Amish experience, mostly it was used if someone didn’t follow the church rules that were extra-biblical — with a church having extra-biblical agreements. Unbiblical is a totally different subject. But just things that the Bible doesn’t clearly speak on, and we decide that this would be a good practical way for us to live. Now, if someone in the church decides that he doesn’t agree with that, I don’t believe at all in excommunicating such a person for not agreeing and following with our decisions that aren’t clearly spelled out in scripture.
Now, the Amish — you would get excommunicated quicker for not dressing just right than you would for perhaps lying or stealing or cheating, some of those things that are clearly sinful. So that’s where it really got off track. Now, doctrinally, I would be slow in excommunicating someone, unless it was very clearly a heresy and they were very consistent on it and perhaps influential. I haven’t really seen that done, though. Where I have seen it done and be effective was, like I said, if a member clearly falls into sin and refuses to repent, and the whole church is unanimous on it. I’ve seen it where the sin was clear but the church was kind of divided on it, where that didn’t seem to be effective. So hopefully that answers your question. I would welcome your thoughts there if you have any.
Good morning, Ephraim. I just want to say thank you, and I appreciate all that you’ve shared and all that you’re going to continue to share. Very, very quick question. You have mentioned in the last talk, and on this one, that you were taught that you could not know if you were born again. Wouldn’t that constitute a false gospel? That’s a good question. It might. I’m not sure where to put that. It certainly weakens the gospel, and I think by design — it takes the focus off of Christ, to man, whether or not we can be good enough or do enough good or be right enough. Certainly that can turn into a false gospel. And that is what the Amish would blame me for, having a false gospel. So you might be right, Bob. It’s certainly a dangerous false doctrine that can have a lot of repercussions.
Now, the Amish have seen a lot of people witnessing to them that had a strong eternal-security emphasis, where you cannot lose your salvation no matter what. And that, to them, is very repulsive. And they have reacted to that. And in part, I can’t blame them. You know, they take their lives seriously and their actions seriously, and seek to live in the fear of God. They do that. I can give them that. And then when they see someone that claims the name of Jesus but lives in ways that are very obviously unscriptural and ungodly, and excuse it with, you can’t lose your salvation anyway, so why does it matter — that’s the other side of the ditch, or the other side of the road. That’s the other ditch.
And I tried very hard in my discussions with the Amish people, when we would talk about the assurance of salvation and how it’s taught in scripture, I’ve tried to help them to see that there’s another group, where there’s assurance that Jesus died for you, and there’s cleansing, and there’s a renewed life, and there’s just a childlike, simple trust in the Lord Jesus and what he has done for you. And in that there’s an assurance of salvation, and there’s a joy that flows through you, where it’s not the just brash "I can do what I want as long as I believe in Jesus," and yet it’s putting our full faith and trust in him. That’s the tension that we must be able to work through and find the narrow way that Jesus is. Thank you for that, Bob.
Thank you for your answer. Well, I guess we’re meeting again in two weeks, Lord willing. Is that right, Ephraim? Let’s plan on it. All right. Well, hope God’s blessing will be upon you today. Thanks for joining us.
Guide me, O the great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land.
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