Leveraging Amish Capital for Kingdom Advance — Brandon Byler

Brandon Byler speaks about leveraging Amish social and cultural capital for kingdom advance, not by idolizing the Amish or excusing abuse, but by recognizing the power of enduring group culture. He argues that no family or church lives culture-free, and that culture will form people either by default or by design. Drawing from his own family history, mission-community childhood, Brethren in Christ and River Brethren experience, Amish examples, and Scripture, he urges listeners to resolve reaction against their past, appreciate what they have received, and intentionally build yielded, multi-generational brotherhood for King Jesus.

Key Points:

– Group culture is powerful because people are formed by the inherited beliefs, practices, habits, and shared expectations of the communities around them.

– Brandon warns that leaving a highly structured background in reaction can cut people off from social and cultural capital before they have learned how to critique it wisely or preserve its strengths.

– The Amish are not presented as ideal or free from serious problems, but their enduring public witness shows the strength of thick, visible, shared practices over generations.

– Scripture examples such as the blue tassels in Numbers and the Rechabites in Jeremiah show how embodied practices can help a people remember identity, obedience, and pilgrim character.

– He stresses that individualism destroys brotherhood, while yieldedness to a broader group can work humility, interdependence, and multi-generational faithfulness into families and churches.

– The discussion afterward wrestles with how culture can be misused, how old-order dependence on drivers can burden others, and how success must be measured by faithfulness to God, not culture alone.

Scripture References: Numbers 15:37–41; Jeremiah 35; 1 Corinthians 1; Matthew, Mark, and Luke accounts of touching the hem of Jesus’ garment; “your kingdom come, your will be done”

Guide me, oh, the great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land. Well, good morning, everyone, and welcome to Hope for Wondering Amish. Hope for Wondering Amish holds a live meeting the first Saturday of each month at 6 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. For more information, you can find the website, hopeforwonderingamish.com, and find past recordings,

that are available in video and audio form. We’re very blessed and grateful to have Brandon Byler on this morning, and he plans to share on how to leverage Amish capital. It’s a title that may be, probably can be misunderstood very quickly. We try to focus on positive things here at Hope for Wondering Amish, but if there’s someone that comes from an abusive situation,

you can perceive something that puts Amish in a positive light, which I don’t think any of us here are lifting up the Amish as the ideal group of people. But yeah, thanks again for joining us, and welcome, Brother Brandon. It’s such a blessing to have you, and we’re very excited to hear what you have to share with us this morning, and I think it’s got to be something that will be redemptive and helpful

and of God’s kingdom. So welcome, Brother Brandon. Thank you very much. Are you ready? I am. All right. Well, why don’t we have a prayer, and the time will be yours. Thank you. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for this beautiful morning. Thank you for this time together, sharing, and thank you for Brother Brandon. We just pray your blessing upon him as he shares, and we pray, Lord, that this talk would glorify your name and advance your kingdom,

would be helpful for many people that listen to it, and we pray your blessing this morning, and we pray a blessing on the audience and the listeners, and we pray for your name to be lifted up in the precious name of Jesus. Amen. All right. The time is yours, Brandon. All right. Well, it’s a delight to be with you this morning. Some years ago, I heard a Mennonite man in the Lancaster area make the comment that

when an Amish man leaves the Amish, it usually takes that Amishman about five years to figure out who he is. I had a recent conversation with an Amish friend of mine in another state. He’s still Amish, and he was talking about how troubled he is when he has seen some of his Amish friends leave over the years, and after about ten years,

his eyes. Now, this talk is not about dragging people out of the Amish, nor is it about dragging people into the Amish, but more it’s about a question. And that question is, is there a main quality that makes the Amish enduring so that you and I can make wiser choices or decisions for future generations? Is there a main quality about the Amish that makes them enduring

so that we can make wiser decisions for future generations? I think the answer to that question in part, a large part, comes from a book by Daniel Coyle. He’s not a religious man that I know of. It’s a book that I came across several years ago. And he asked an interesting question. He asked the question, why do certain groups add up to be greater than the sum of their parts while others add up to be less?

And he then went on to answer that question with this observation. He said, group blank, I’m not giving you the word right now, is one of the most powerful forces on the planet. Group blank. And so when you think about what would make a group add up to be greater than the sum of its parts or less than the sum of its parts, what answer would you put in or what word would you put into that blank? Daniel Coyle in his book says that

he feels the answer is group culture. Group culture, he says, is one of the most powerful forces on the planet. So why is group culture powerful? What is it about culture that is so formative and shaping, especially when it is demonstrated by a group? Culture is a bit of a big word. A basic dictionary definition of culture is the total of the inherited

ideas, beliefs, values, and knowledge, which constitute the shared basis of social action. And then a further definition says the total range of activities and ideas of a group of people with shared traditions, which are transmitted and reinforced by members of the group. A simpler definition of culture used by Andy Crouch, adapted from Ken Myers, says culture is what we make of the world.

Culture is what we make of the world. And that is a simpler, if not broader, definition. The matter of culture does raise a lot of questions, perhaps, and it’s good to think through quite a few of those. One of those questions is, is it possible to live culture-free? Is it possible for a church to be culture-free?

We cannot escape culture. Why is that? Well, to use some more big words, neurobiologically, or the way that God has designed us, is that we do not really know who we are as far as our identity, as far as what we should value, who we should become, except in relation to other people. We have lots of people out there who say, I want to think for myself, I want to do my own thing.

I want to be really catching up with the Bible, is that every one of us is wired to constantly be scanning the horizon and the people around us and asking ourselves, who should I be? Who should I become? What should I value? And because of that, and because of just the realities of life, my argument is it’s impossible to live culture-free. Culture is everywhere because we’ve been wired to live in community in one way or another.

A culture or a group culture at its very minimum number is two, I guess. You can think of a husband and wife and home culture. You can think of an employer and employee and work culture. You can think of a teacher and student and classroom culture. Culture is everywhere. Another question might be, is it possible for a church or a church group to have too much culture? Some people would think so.

But the question is more, is it a healthy or unhealthy culture? There’s always going to be culture. And Andy Crouch, in his excellent book, Culture Making, which is an evangelical author, but very helpful for us in thinking about culture, he notes that culture is always full. It never considers itself thin or lacking. Furthermore, on a bigger scale, I think that there’s tremendous momentum,

that has gained even capital, you might say, when a bigger group does certain things together. And that could be a group that is healthy and that could be a group that is unhealthy. And so that’s part of what we’re thinking about today. The reality is, whether we want to or not, no group can avoid the materialization or the manifestation of culture. I would say that where two or three are gathered together, at some point there will be culture.

Jeff Henderson, another author, has noted, he said, your culture will be determined by default or by design. And so we’re thinking about a culture being done well or a culture being done poorly. I think group culture is part of God’s design for the world. It’s part of his idea of human flourishing, living well.

Are forced to isolate themselves because of something like the COVID pandemic, or they simply choose to remove themselves from a broader group. It does not result in anything that is healthy or well. And I also think that a strong group culture confronts one of our biggest struggles as human beings, which is selfishness. That’s the basic root of what my father-in-law calls sin. Our main problem is not an inability to conform, but it’s an unwillingness to yield.

And so group culture has a way of dealing with us on the most basic fundamental issue of our lives, which is selfishness, and that is the need to yield well. Now, I’m confident that every one of us have been and are being shaped by not just one group culture, but multiple group cultures. And so I would encourage you at some point to think about what are the various group cultures in your life

that have shaped you and are currently influencing you? Obviously, there’s family culture, church culture, maybe school culture, work culture, national culture. We are all pro kingdom of Christ, but we also do live in a nation, whatever nation that is, and that has a way of influencing us as well, as much as we want to be transnational. And so what are the cultures that are shaping you?

So you have a context for me, some of the main group cultures that have shaped my life. And my influence does go back to the Amish. At least that’s where I like to start. My father’s father, my grandfather, Allen Byler, grew up as an Amish boy in central Pennsylvania in Big Valley, Mifflin County. And he told me in later years that it was his mother who led him to the Lord. And so as an Amish boy,

he had Amish parents who cared about spiritual things. And I’m very grateful for that. My grandfather had an interest in mission work. And of course, the Amish were not involved in that at that time. And so he took up some drafting courses to learn how to write up blueprints. And he went to Africa in the 1950s as a builder, as a single man. While he was in Africa under Mennonite missions, he met my grandmother who was there teaching school. She was a Mennonite from Indiana.

Married in Ethiopia, in Addis Ababa, the capital, and honeymoon in Yemen. They did several terms of service there in Africa. And eventually came back home to the home farm in central Pennsylvania. And started going to a small Mennonite church in Big Valley. By then, a number of my dad and siblings were born. And they were there at the church as well. But the church was small. It had no young people.

And eventually the whole family joined the Brethren in Christ church there in Big Valley. My dad ended up marrying a Brethren in Christ girl. And then when I was four years old, my parents moved to northwestern Ontario to serve under Mennonite missions, working at a secluded or an isolated boarding school for First Nations, or we would call

them Indian children, who were flown in from various reservations. It’s a very isolated experience as far as contact to the outside world. We would drive to Red Lake, which was the end of the road, so to speak, and then fly another 80 miles into Poplar Hill, which was the name of the school. And I grew up in a very strong community context where there were about 50 staff, about 50 students who were part of this

school called Poplar Hill Development School. It was quite an experience for me from four years old to 11 years old to grow up in this community where our electricity came from three large generators. And we had a crank phone system. So our phone number was one long and two shorts. The campus there had its own phone system. We had our own water system where we drew the water from the lake. It was put into a huge

holding tank in the basement of the dormitory. It was treated. The houses that we lived in as staff did not have running water. So all the water was carried to our houses in buckets by the students or by the staff. I grew up with a cook stove. We could not run a lot of heavy-duty electrical things. So it was just basic electric lights. We had ice boxes. We lived right beside a lake. And in the wintertime, the ice would get to be two, three feet thick.

Men would go out and cut blocks of ice out of the lake. And then they would store them in an ice house. We had a sawmill there that we made our own lumber. And they would take the sawdust from that sawmill and pack it into that ice house with the ice. And it would keep those ice blocks all the way till fall when the lake would freeze over and we could harvest more ice. But lots of ice skating, snowmobiling, fishing, lots of great activities.

Probably the most shaping thing about that community experience as a boy was the fact that we were there as a community, of course. We’re all stuck together in isolation. Only way in and out pretty much was by airplane or helicopter, if it was serious. And the fact that we lived in commonality. In other words, we all had to live the same. All the women were expected to wear black hanging veils.

That requirement. All the ladies had to wear dresses or skirts and just that unified group experience. And then, of course, the fact that we had a common cause that we were working for, which was the education of the First Nations young people. That really impressed on me the value of group identity and culture. I saw my parents conforming to things that they would not have had to at home, but they willingly and happily did that.

When I was 11, we moved to the home farm in Pennsylvania, and we began attending the Brethren in Christ Church again. Just to give you a background on the Brethren in Christ, they started in the late 1700s out of both Anabaptist and Pietist roots. And so it was both a, you might say, experiential group, but also interested in discipleship.

Zion group, which was liberal. The Brethren in Christ were considered the moderate or middle of the road, and the River Brethren, who were the conservatives. And so we were part of the Brethren in Christ. And during my years as a young person, my parents did not always support everything that the Brethren in Christ were doing. They had largely acculturated in dress and in so many other practical choices.

Bible quizzing, where we would quiz against the youth of other churches. We enjoyed that. And yet, in many cases, you know, the girls were wearing shorts and T-shirts or maybe very short skirts. And so it was just a very different interaction than what my parents were raising us with. And during that time, my brother and I actually began to run some with the Beachy Amish youth in one of our local churches there in the valley.

And I’m very grateful to the beachy people for that. I then went off to Bible college when I was in my late teens to study for missionary work. It was a four-year program in a conservative holiness setting. And just to give you a thumbnail sketch of who these conservative holiness people are, just as with the Anabaptist world, the holiness world has a whole range from completely acculturated to very, very

conservative, very defined. And so the college I was at was fairly defined. The men, the women were expected to all wear sleeves to the elbows. The women did not wear coverings, but they wore long hair up. They were expected to not cut their hair at all. One of the messages was keeping the scissors out of the hair. And of course, the men were expected to cut their hair. Wearing suit coats and ties was expected unless

an individual had a personal conviction against wearing the tie, but that was normal class attire, button-down shirts and things like that. And so here again was a group culture, very defined, that had a huge impact on me. From there, I then began pastoring a Brethren in Christ Church in preparation for hopefully future mission work. And I was not expecting to pastor long,

but I was 34 years old, ended up staying 10 years until I was 34. And it was at that time that I really began to dig into the Brethren in Christ history. I saw how defined they had been. And then as they began to adopt many other teachings, began to go much more in an evangelical, fundamentalist direction, how that really did change the overall denomination.

David Bercot and John D. Martin. And that began to have an impact on my life. In those years, I developed a personal mantra that says, I want to embrace truth no matter how it changes me. And I’ve not lived up to that perfectly, but I hope that I am living up to it credibly. I hope that that’s still my desire. I want to embrace truth no matter how it changes me. You know, I don’t have a personal agenda for this talk. I’m not trying to

push something. I want everybody to do well. I want the kingdom to do well. I want Jesus to be glorified. And I think that can happen in very defined group context. So as I was pastoring and wrestling through these issues and what I should do with my church, just a small church, 30, 40 people. These are things I think I was thinking. I was developing in my mind, and this comes actually from an evangelical man that I was following.

He’s fallen in disgrace now, but Doug Phillips. I began developing an eight-generation, 200-year vision for family faithfulness. In other words, if I were to ever get married and have children, I wanted to look down the generations, 200 years, eight generations, and ask myself, what do I want my children, great, great, great, great, great grandchildren to be, to look like? And it doesn’t mean that they’re going to be that way.

What that does for me, though, is it helps me to analyze and evaluate the choices that I’m making right now and say, am I making enduring, long-term choices that have lasting, durable value? And that’s what we’re asking ourselves. These Amish people seem to have something of enduring value. What can we learn from them to make better choices ourselves?

And then nine months later, Heather Martin and I were married, and we moved to Penns Creek, just a small town in Pennsylvania here close to Selinsgrove. And we began attending a small church made up of what I call disaffected, disillusioned, dissatisfied ex-conservative Mennonites, ex-conservative holiness people, and one ex-Presbyterian family.

And we really enjoyed getting together, meeting on Sundays. You know, we were going to try to make something go, and we really wanted to. But what I really learned over the several years, we were there about almost three years together. These men, all of us, we had our vision of what we wanted for our families, of what a good, godly, conservative, defined family should look like.

Our children. But you know, when it came down to it, none of those brothers wanted to demonstrate to their families what they were expecting of their families. You know, they were expecting their wife, their children to yield, to blend, but they were unwilling to come into a bigger group themselves then and blend in a brotherhood. In other words, demonstrate yieldedness to a group of brothers.

And there is something to having a defined or what I would call an intentional brotherhood. There’s value there in what it works into us and not just what it forces us to do. And so Heather and I were very distressed by the inability to have some cohesiveness, to even have brotherhood. There was casualness in the church. Sunday mornings, people just showing up very casually. And yeah, everybody wanted to be conservative by and large, but nobody wanted to yield.

We had the opportunity to move to Shippensburg then, my wife’s home area, to house sit for our brother-in-law, sister-in-law, who were going to Ireland to oversee a boys camp. And so that is what opened the door then for us to think about joining Shippensburg Christian Fellowship, which had been my wife’s home church, but was really quite a step beyond what I would have ever expected joining.

I also was doing some construction, learning, had been learning construction. And so I joined a River Brethren group in this area here in Shippensburg. There’s actually two groups in the Cumberland Valley. And I’ve been working with them now, actually, these seven and a half years that we’ve been in this area. And I have been so impressed by their group and by their highly defined culture.

And, you know, I talked about how the Brethren in Christ and the River Brethren had this experience. It was almost 200 years ago that that split took place where the, quote, middle of the road Brethren in Christ and the, quote, conservative River Brethren parted ways. And so now I get to see 200 years later. Remember, we talked about eight generations, 200 years. I get to see the results of 200 years of choices between these two groups.

And the River Brethren have done it all right. What I am saying is I feel like the River Brethren have demonstrated the ability to generate a fairly healthy culture. Have they had their bumps and problems? Absolutely. They’ll be the first to tell you that. But one of the things I appreciate about this current River Brethren culture is that, yes, they are small. Yes, they are very defined in their dress. Yes, nobody looks like them. Maybe the closest ones would be the German Baptists.

They realize that we’re different and they’re content with their identity. And that results in a people who are willing to work very broadly with many people. In fact, they probably have, I think Edsel Burge is the one who told me this, they probably have the highest percentage of non-Anabaptist names in their group, of any Anabaptist group out there.

They’re either inferior or superior because of who they are, but Be Content has served them well in reaching out and being a spiritual people. And so that has had, of course, a huge impact on me. The power of a clearly defined, securely experienced group. That’s what I want for the Amish. That’s what I want for every conservative Anabaptist group. I want brothers and sisters to be glad about who they are and not feel either inferior or superior.

But recognize that God is delighted in variety and he uses a variety of people to carry out his kingdom purposes. So after we were here at Shippensburg for about a year, we applied for membership, which I would never have expected, but I have really appreciated. And one of the things that I have been learning here at Shippensburg, we are an unaffiliated church. And so we are self-governing. We do have sister churches. There are pros and cons to that.

By and large, the Amish operate in an unaffiliated or an individual church governance structure. And I think that’s an excellent way to work. There are pros and cons compared to, say, a conference model where multiple churches are very tightly linked together. One of the challenges, though, for an independent church like ours here at Shippensburg Christian Fellowship is that we can tend to think that it’s just about us.

Anybody else out there. And so one of the things I’ve been trying to think through and try to challenge our brotherhood about is that I don’t really expect my children to find all of their spouses at Shippensburg. I don’t expect them to do all their mission work just through Shippensburg, even though we have a mission in Chile. I don’t expect them to simply get their education through Shippensburg. I am looking to the broader Anabaptist world, the conservative Anabaptist world,

to help and to receive help in these various areas. And I think that by tapping into a broader movement like the conservative Anabaptist world, we open up ourselves to appreciate and enjoy all that they have to offer and that we should be contributors as well. And so when we’re making decisions as a brotherhood, as we should, we should also be asking ourselves, how does this impact or influence the broader Anabaptist world? Is this a healthy choice?

Is this a good choice? Is this helpful? If the whole Anabaptist world did what we’re doing, would it be a good culture? Now, I know a good question that does come up is, does the Bible have anything to say about culture? And that’s a valuable, very valid question. And so I just want to offer a few thoughts there. First of all, I really think that God did legislate culture. I go to Numbers 15:37–41 there.

When we’re thinking about that. And in that case, you’ll remember that God instituted the wearing of the blue tassel for the Jewish men as a means for them to remember who they were and whose they were. And God makes a very strong statement about that. The sociologists out there, those who study practices of individuals and people, talk about thin practices and thick practices. There are things that we do, even daily,

such as brushing our teeth, that are habitual, but they don’t necessarily shape our identity in the same way that other things do. What we wear as clothing is a very thick practice. What we do about technology is a thick practice. What about the driving of cars or the kind of cars you drive or the horse and buggy or the buggy that we allow?

Thick practices. And so every generation has to deal with the cultural practices and issues of their day. These are things that we face. And because culture is so pervasive and invasive, it has a way of shaping us and changing us in ways that we might not even think about. Even the whole thing of adopting electricity or taking on the telephone, they have ways of shaping group culture.

And that was okay. In fact, he made it possible for culture, actually it’s virtually impossible, culture to not materialize in every group where you have a group of people together. Another, a second thought along those lines is how Jonadab, also in the Old Testament, used group culture for multi-generational advantage. And you’ll recall perhaps in Jeremiah 35 that Jonadab gave a number of, quote,

rules, just man-made, seemingly out of thin air. His main rules were no drinking of wine, no building of houses, no sowing of seed, and no planting of vineyards. And it all sounds very peculiar, but why did he do that? I think it’s because he wanted his family for multi-generations to come to recognize that they are pilgrims. Even in the midst of God’s chosen people, the Israelites, they were allowed to do all of these things.

These arbitrary rules were a means of helping his posterity to remember that they are strangers and pilgrims, even in the midst of something that is really God’s will, God’s pleasure. So there’s tremendous power in group culture for multi-generational faithfulness or for multi-generational unfaithfulness.

I’ve been talking with John D. Martin. I’m glad to have my father-in-law on today. And you probably know that he’s one of about 30 or so phone team members that answer the calls that come in from the multitude of CAM billboards scattered across America. And I’ve been asking John regularly now, and I just asked him again last evening about how this is going, because John says, you know, when he explains a picture of the kingdom to people who are calling in, I mean,

these are people from all sorts of backgrounds, from all sorts of countries, people coming from Iraq and Syria, and you name it, who see these billboards and they call in. When he paints a picture of the kingdom, so often these people get excited because the kingdom is an exciting reality. And they ask the question, well, is there anybody that’s doing this? You know, not swearing oaths, no divorce or any marriage, sharing equitably.

John will often say, well, have you heard of the Mennonites? And most of the time they’ll say, no, I don’t know who they are. And then he’ll say, well, have you ever heard of the Amish? The majority of people have heard of the Amish, even people in other countries. And I keep asking John, and I say, John, what is their response?

A favorable impression of the Amish. That’s phenomenal. And I asked him again last night. He said, yeah, it’s 100%, 100%. Now, here we are. We’re Mennonites. We’re out there. We’re doing, handing out gospel tracts. We’re singing on street corners. We’re going door to door. We’re holding tent revivals. And the population at large has no idea who we are.

We’re going to reach out. And they are effecting change way out of proportion to what they’re not even trying to do. It’s not fair. It’s not fair. Okay. What I’m saying is there’s tremendous power in group culture. I’m not rubber stamping everything that the Amish are doing. We recognize that there are huge problems in various Amish communities. It’s something I’m becoming more aware of as I interact with various Amish over the years. I’m not idolizing the Amish in any way.

There’s spiritual abuse. There’s sexual abuse. There are things happening that should not be taking place. And so I want to put that out there very clearly. What I’m saying is looking at the Amish in aggregate, looking at the whole picture, 300,000 plus and growing very rapidly, there is a huge impact out of proportion to what they’re, quote, not trying to do that is taking place across the nation and around the world.

I mean, for all that the Mennonites and the rest of us Anabaptists are trying to do, you think about the nickel mines incident, and for a week straight, the world can think and talk of basically nothing but the horrible, tragic events and the amazing response of the Amish at that time. So I’m not saying that we should all just run off and join the Amish.

It gives them that enduring value. Because there is something about it that is accomplishing something, I believe, for the kingdom of Christ. Dale Heiseyy has said that you can have structure without life, but you cannot have life without structure. And that is so, so true. I’m sure a lot of people think, oh, those old order groups, they’re all structure in no life. But I think there’s more to it than that. More to it than you would realize.

I think that no matter how dead various Amish groups are, there are always at least one or two people in those groups who are alive. And I appreciate that. That’s a generous assessment. And I think that’s an optimistic and a positive way of looking at all of the Amish groups who are out there. Recently, my wife and I were in a liberal Mennonite church on a Sunday morning for their service.

There were people there, 350, 400 people. And we got into the church. The hallway was packed with people milling about with their coffee cups. And we moved into the auditorium, which was almost empty. It had a few people sitting down. The worship team got up to play their songs. And that’s what sort of drew the people in with their coffee. You know, on the upside, all the ladies were wearing skirts or some sort of dress. Some of them were above the knees, immodest. There was some jewelry.

But a lot of it was about three inches in diameter. It was all black. So there must be some sort of a structure there. But the songs that were sung were so shallow. There was nothing about cross-bearing. And Heather and I, you know, we walked away so sad because we thought, surely a lot of these people have come from more structured backgrounds that had more substance. More substance. Where is this going to be in another 10 years? Just 10 years. We’re not talking 200 years.

We’re not talking eight generations. We’re talking 10 years. Where is it going to be? And I think the thing that grieves me so much is that it’s so easy for people to throw away their dead structure and say, you know, there was no life there. There’s nothing there. It doesn’t have any value. And they just waltz right out into whatever says it’s Christian because it’s Christian. Whatever I had was not Christian. And assume that it’s going to be wonderful.

10 years later, my friend said they’ve got this vacant look in their eyes. How did I get to where I am right now? Never mind where my children are going to be, my grandchildren. Are you going to be happy with the results of 200 years of choices related to that initial choice that you made and all the subsequent choices that come with it? And so my plea is for a bit more discernment and appreciation for what we have received.

There’s an element or there’s a concept called social and cultural capital. And Donald Kraybill talks about this in his book, The Riddle of Amish Culture. He explains the concept saying that analogous to financial capital. Now, I am Anabaptist. We understand financial capital. OK, we can take that money. We can make it grow. We can multiply it. OK.

Social capital entails that the social resources that can be mobilized for the well-being of the community. Social capital consists of the structures, traditions, networks, and rituals that have been invested in the social bank, so to speak, and that can be used to serve the entire community as well as individuals. In a similar fashion, cultural capital consists of the knowledge, the values, beliefs, trusts, and obligations within the reservoir of Amish life. These cultural resources help to motivate and inspire individuals to act on behalf of their fellow members

and community. And so what really bothers me is, I don’t care if you’re older or Mennonite or older Amish or a really strict Mennonite of some sort, Anabaptist, when you react against that, whatever that is, you cut yourself off from that social and cultural capital. And a lot of people aren’t aware of that. They just bail out thinking my next church, the next church will be just like the one I left,

it’ll be alive. I’ll know. Because of the cultural ferment in which we live, most of the churches out there are very shallow. They don’t have that capital. They’re just making it up as they go along. They’re trying to find their way as well. And that just makes me so, so sad because it’s that reaction, that reaction, that causes us to be unable either to appropriately critique our past.

Or to appreciate the things that we were given. You will never be able to completely appreciate or properly critique the things of your past as long as you’re reacting to it. And so one of the most important things for you to think about as far as making wise choices is, am I still reacting to where I came from? Basically, when you’re living in reaction, it’s like driving around with a huge rear view mirror and a tiny little windshield.

You really don’t know where you’re going. You just know where you want to leave. You know what you don’t want to be. No idea what you really want for your family or yourself. And so I’m really saying we need to be careful about leveraging the power of group culture for the sake of multi-generational faithfulness. And I really think that we can do that in relation to Amish culture without misusing it. In other words, I have people that come up to me, and of course, they don’t know a Mennonite from an Amish.

We all look the same to them. And they say, well, are you Amish? I say, well, no, no, something like that. I’m not trying to pretend that I’m Amish, but what I am doing is I am seeking to tap in to that cultural and social capital that has accrued in the Amish bank and leverage it for kingdom advance. And I think every Amish person should feel like they have the freedom to do that, as well as every conservative, careful-living Anabaptist. It’s an opportunity.

To leverage what has been accruing for kingdom influence. I really like what Paul says in 1 Corinthians. You know, we can have all these discussions about covering strings and suspenders and straw hats. But, you know, Paul makes it very clear in 1 Corinthians 1 that God has chosen the foolish things of the world to bring to nothing the things that are. He uses the things that are nothing to bring to nothing the things that are.

Through yieldedness to a broader group than whatever amazing individual spiritual answer you think you have for the world. And so I would encourage you to think about this matter of group culture. A third thing then is I really think Jesus lived group culture. I know that’s a bit of an audacious claim. But in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, all three of those gospels, it talks about how people, either individuals or groups, touched the hem of Jesus’ garment.

They received the healing that they were looking for. As best as we can understand, that hem was the blue tassel we talked about from Numbers there in the Old Testament. And so Jesus showed a willingness to yield to arbitrary command to live according to group culture in a way that brought glory to God.

He has the sorts of virtues that turn independence into interdependence and rejects casualness and individualism for appreciation of the broader group. I think that we are facing some unique challenges in our culture that the Amish group culture provides some really good checks and answers for us. Probably the biggest challenge that we are facing in the American culture

is individualism. The idea that I am my own person, I make my own identity, and not only are you not allowed to speak into my life and tell me what to do, but you must affirm my choice. Individualism is the acid that is destroying brotherhood. You cannot have strong brotherhood and individualism at the same time. And I think that’s why a lot of our churches and brotherhoods are struggling, Shippensburg included.

That individualism is allowed to come into a group and fester and is not dealt with. You cannot have a strong brotherhood. Hence, you cannot have a strong culture. And so what we can observe when we see Amish groups where the entire group is willingly yielding one to another, even to these arbitrary things, is that it’s working a yieldedness.

And submission doesn’t even start until I get to a place there’s something I don’t agree with. You know, a lot of people say, well, I’ll submit until I don’t agree. Now, submission doesn’t even start until you get to something that you don’t have to do or you don’t want to do or you don’t think is necessary. That’s when submission starts. And that’s when that yieldedness starts to get worked into our DNA and into our bones. And it’s not going to happen for our children unless we’re a part of something.

That brings us up against ourself, cuts across that selfishness and forces us into yieldedness. I’m very concerned about casualness. That group that I talked about that we were with just recently, you know, the casualness of coming into God’s presence in dress, the casualness of music, the shallowness, the lack of substance. I really think that as conservative people, when we leave and we want something more spiritual,

we assume that all the stuff that we have received in our upbringing somehow gets automatically transferred to our children. And that’s not true. It’s not true. Everything I experienced as a child that was so wholesome and wonderful does not automatically go to my children. I have to realize that over and over again. If I want them to have the substance of scripture, of hymns that are solid, of a family life that is good, I am responsible to demonstrate that and try to bring that about for them.

They have to experience it for themselves. It doesn’t just come about through genetic DNA passing on. And so you might think, well, yeah, I learned all of these things in the Ausbund. Surely my children know. And they’re not going to know Pennsylvania Dutch. And they’re not going to know a lot of the things that are accrued and inherited by a group of people that lives well over the course of generations, unless you are purposeful about making that happen in their lives.

So our main problem is not an inability to conform, but it’s an unwillingness to yield. The reality is we’re all going to have some sort of culture. OK, it’s going to happen. The question is, is it going to happen on purpose or is it going to happen on accident? Are we really going to be able to say at the end of the day, I did my best? You know, this eight generation, 200 year vision is not about me saying, well, I know what’s going to happen in 200 years.

I know what’s going to happen in the next generation. But it is about me trying to be serious about the choices I’m making now to make it as easy as possible for my next generation and the generation to make the right choices also. And to make it very clear to them that if they make choices that are poor, it was against what their father and grandfather and great grandfather really did want. I want to make it clear where I stand to make it as hard as possible for them to go into the world.

It was as easy as possible for them to follow Christ wholeheartedly. So we’re talking about the culture that we are in right now. We’re talking about leveraging a strong group culture as the Amish are demonstrating. Whether they’re doing it on purpose or accidentally, it’s something that we can definitely learn from.

And this is not just a selfish personal desire. This is a broad desire for the kingdom of Christ, is that every one of our children would choose to be part of a family, that choose to be part of a brotherhood, that choose to be part of a movement, that choose to be part of the kingdom of God under the rulership of King Jesus. That’s my vision for you, for us, for every generation.

I have great hopes for the Anabaptist movement. So we’ve asked the question in closing here, in closing, what quality makes the Amish enduring so that I can make wiser decisions for future generations? If, and I’m assuming you are, if you’re part of a careful kingdom culture, my desire has been to cultivate your awareness of the power of group culture in general.

And a sense of appreciation for your tribe in particular. Our main problem is not an inability to conform, but an unwillingness to yield. And so my desire is that God would help us to yield to a godly group culture for the sake of the kingdom and for the sake of King Jesus. Thank you. Thank you so much, Brother Brandon. I really appreciate what you shared this morning.

I appreciate your passion, your heart for Christ and his kingdom and his people, your passion and your heart for the Amish. And then your vision for multi-generations. You brought it back to what decisions am I making? You brought that responsibility back to you, yourself as the father. And then also the choices that we make doesn’t only affect us, but it affects others around us.

Our church community, the church communities we associate with. I really appreciate that. You had a lot of good exhortations for us this morning and challenges, which is really, really good. You also mentioned about the concern of us cutting ourselves off from the cultural and social capital of our heritage, our church communities.

How you laid that out. And I just had to think. I’ve seen this in me. There’s something in our human nature. If there’s something that needs corrected, there’s this reactionary thing or this overcorrection that we try to do. And we usually make a wreck of what we’re trying to correct because we’re overcorrecting. And I think we should be very cautious, very careful with that because there’s no perfect situation on earth here.

Any church community we’re part of, it will never be perfect. Of course, our own lives aren’t perfect. Hopefully we’re growing into perfection and being redeemed daily. But again, it’s this odd thing in our nature of trying to correct something. We always tend to overcorrect it and make it worse than it was before. So may God help us in all that. So thank you again. And I’m so blessed by your ministry.

To Hope For Wondering Amish here, your ministry to the broader Anabaptist community and other Christians. So it’s been a blessing to know you. And I’m very blessed by you and your family. Thank you so much. Thank you, brother. Again, a big highlight of this meeting is to hear from the people in the audience. You should be able to unmute yourself and share with Brandon

whether you have a question, whether you’d like to make a comment. Please take the freedom to do that. Atlee, is our audience able to unmute themselves? So people with a phone line, I muted them. And I’m able to unmute themselves again. So if they’re not, they might just have to call back in. Yeah, we keep having a problem with people calling in by telephone where there’s background noise and their little phone symbol pops up

on the screen. So hopefully the people calling in by telephone will be able to unmute themselves. And what you’re saying, Atlee, if they can unmute themselves, they might need to drop the call and call back in again. I mean, that’s all I know to do, because I can’t unmute them again. But those calling in by Zoom will be able to talk and unmute themselves. Is that correct? Yes. All right. Well, we’re looking forward to hearing from you all in the audience.

This morning and take the freedom to… How would you say that, Brandon? You open for correction if you said something you shouldn’t have said? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. No, I’m limited and finite in my understanding. So fire away. You’ve had an interesting quote that I’ve heard you say in the past. It’s not coming to me right now. Like after you’re done preaching, it’s like if you have a correction, you fire out.

I’m not sure. Any comments, corrections, rebuttals, bring them on. That’s fine. I’m a constant learner, so I want to learn more about this. Culture is a huge, huge subject. Andy Crouch says that it’s probably the second most complex word in the English language. Actually, he’s quoting somebody else, but Terry Eagleton says that the most complex word is probably nature.

Well, I would just like to make this comment about the power of culture. We all know that groups that have a very highly defined plain culture have the problem of people who go on with the culture and lose the meaning and the dynamic and the spirituality behind it. And that’s bad. And so that’s discussed a lot. You know, it’s dead culture. But I don’t think they stop to think what they’re really seeing.

But it’s so strong. It’s even stronger than your theology. You can lose your theology, but the culture will keep on going. And that’s a good thing because that culture embodies what we believe about simplicity, what we believe about unity, what we believe about unworldliness. There’s so much tangible reality in those cultural forms. I’m sorry when they get eroded of what they really mean. But the interesting thing is,

a revivalist comes along, and these people come to these meetings who have a culture that is sort of dead. The meaning has sort of been lost, and it all comes alive. And in those meetings, you don’t have liberal Mennonites. You don’t have Lutherans. You don’t have Methodists. None of those people, or if they do come to the meetings, they don’t respond in the same way because the people who are there who have had that dead culture, if you want to use that term,

the values and the beliefs and all the things that that culture represents have been embedded into their very, very fiber of their being. They’re still there. They’re not alive, but they’re still there. And so Ben Shapiro says that to destroy a group in three easy steps, first of all, destroy their history. And our conservative people came into this century with a very poor knowledge of their history. The second thing is destroy their philosophy or theology.

A Protestant theology, a save me theology rather than a kingdom theology. So there we have those two things, not in very good shape. So what held our people through the last century when all that was happening? They continue to be plain. The culture kept those values there. And so I’m prepared to say that theology is the most important part of those three. But culture is the strongest of the three. And if you put the two together,

if you have the, revive the theology, the culture is still there. And put those two together, you have a very, very powerful way to make sure that what you believe and what you value will continue. And I think that’s what we see with our plain groups. Even though they lose the beliefs, or they forget what they are, the culture still keeps those there in tangible, expressible, visible form. And they’re still there. They may be dead, but they’re still there.

And I think that’s what I didn’t get growing up. I grew up in a very plain church. It was ridiculing all our plainness. If we just get rid of all this crazy stuff, then we could be more spiritual. And I’ll be honest with you. I’m looking for the super spirituality that happens when people toss it all out and claim they’re not going to be more spiritual. I don’t see it. It doesn’t happen. They end up becoming more worldly instead. So I’m not saying we should have a dead culture, but I’m saying, I’m agreeing with Dale Heiseyyy. You can have structure.

How did you say it, Brandon? Structure without life. Structure without life. But I don’t think you can have life without structure. I think that life has to be embodied in tangible, visible forms, which I think was the wisdom of our plain people. They maybe didn’t understand that, but that’s what they did. Wow. Thank you for that, Brother John. I hope a lot of people will listen to the part that you shared here this morning as well. Well, good morning.

Thank you, guys. As I’m listening to all that Brandon said, I think we could sit here for another hour and discuss this thing and maybe get somewhere with it. And that would be my question. So what do you do next? We talk about how it should be, but we know that it’s not that way. Brandon, you were part of a church that was trying to blend and you found that it didn’t blend.

You know, you went ahead on with something different. And we have this, you know, hang on to the culture. Well, the 200 years ago, if we do a 200 years ago, the Anabaptists were not in America. It was, you know, I don’t know all the history of the foreign Europe and Russia and all that.

Work with the culture and some did a better job than others. And I think of the story where the Mennonites that were getting persecuted went and visited the ones that weren’t and said, you guys are Mennonites. You know, they were totally different from what cultures they were, you know, into at that time. And then I also look back in the Bible times when the Jews came up and said, you know, you guys are going to have to be part of our family.

And do this, this, this, this, and this. And I think it was Peter that came along and said, look, this is what they’re going to have to do. No more. And we’ll leave it at that. You. I’m not trying to pick, but I’m trying to say, what do you know, how do we do this? You talk about an Amish group that had two spiritual people in it. And, you know, is that what we want?

Is that, so how do we make that blending of cultures? And I mean, also the American culture. I was raised in a Catholic church, but I was in American culture. The church, they kind of had their own thing, but mostly it was, it was what Americans were doing. And part of that was freedom. And it was, it was to be able to choose what you do. And you, you call it independent. Yeah, that’s, you know, we just celebrated the,

independence day. So that culture is embedded in me and a lot of people and probably some of the people that you went to church with in that little, that little group that got started. So I guess it’d just be, you know, how do we work? You know, how do we blend? As you said, how does that happen? And I’ve been a part of some trying to blend and some that were more successful than others. And, and some that were like yours where after three years, it was done. Mm-hmm.

There are no easy answers, of course. I think it starts with several things. One is making sure that we’re not reacting to our past. And I would say that no matter where you come from, if your past is new age or it’s Presbyterian, you will never be able to fully appropriate and appreciate what you were given until you resolve your reaction. Nor will you be able to critique well what was poor. And so I’m not just saying that to Amish people.

I say that to any person. If you’re coming into a group with a reaction, it’s not going to go well for you. Because wherever you go, there you are. And you talk to people that, well, this group didn’t work out and that group didn’t work out. And then you say to yourself, well, there’s only one common denominator here. And it was you. You don’t want to say that. You just think in your mind. So it is a serious thing. Have I resolved my reaction? Do I really appreciate where God allowed me to be placed?

Whether it was Catholic or Amish or whatever. So that I can look back with a measure of distance or a measure of health. And not be constantly reacting to it. I think also seeking to foster appreciation in our children and in those around us. I get to travel some in various Anabaptist groups. And I like my children to see the broader Anabaptist world. We’re on the same team.

We want to serve King Jesus. We’re all doing it a little differently. There’s variety. I don’t think that should threaten us. I think we should recognize that God is pleased with variety. We’re not looking for perfection. We’re looking for credibility. And so is this group following in a credible way? And that’s part of what my struggle was with this fairly liberal Mennonite church that we were at on a Sunday morning. It felt incredible. It didn’t feel real. It didn’t feel like it was…

They were taking things seriously. It wasn’t perfect, of course, but it wasn’t even credible as far as long-term substance. And I’m not bashing those people. As I analyzed that group, I thought to myself, for the hundreds of liberal Mennonite groups out there, I think all of them have at least one or two people, at least, maybe more, who are spiritual people. Just like in the hundreds of Amish groups that are bad, there might be one or two who are spiritual.

What’s the main difference between those two then? It’s culture. It’s culture. So there again, culture is the difference maker when you look at things on one scale or one side or the other, as far as what’s going to have enduring value. The liberal Mennonite church is not going to endure. The dead Amish culture very well might endure. And so culture is the difference maker. So what do we do about it? Well, I think awareness,

appreciation. One of the huge issues for us, I think, has been not being aware of how powerful culture is and the fact that it’s everywhere, whether we want it to be or not. Somehow there’s this idea that I can live culture free. Well, if that’s not true, and you’re welcome to say if you think it’s true or not, but if it’s not true, we better pay attention to it. That’s a serious thing when something can influence us and we have no idea what its power is.

We’re aware of it, appreciating our past because we’ve resolved our reactions. And then, of course, taking steps to talk about it with our children. Both Heather and I grew up in homes where there was constant discussion about cause and effect. And I know that can go in a wrong direction where we become critical. But there is a huge difference between being critical and developing critical thinking in our children. And the difference is, what is your motive? Are you engaging in it because you want people to lose?

Are you engaging in it because you want people to win? And we want our children to win. And we, of course, have to be careful not to engage in a way that bashes people, but we do need them to see. You take this step and this step and this step, and you chart that trajectory, pretty likely you’re going to know about where they’re going to end up. And it just feels like a lot of our people are not engaging in critical thinking. They take these steps, they make these choices, assuming things are going to work out well.

And floored that it just didn’t turn out the way they expected. So those are thoughts I have. I’m open to more because that’s, John, that is probably the weak point. How do we bring this all together to something that really will work? Yeah, well, I appreciate your question, John Higgins, and your response. Brandon, our slogan here at Hope for Wondering Amish is, have you gained more than you’ve lost? And obviously, when you leave the Amish, you make a lot of changes. And these changes, are you gaining more than you’re losing?

Well, we’d like to open it up or keep it open here for any more questions. We’re after seven o’clock now, but if there’s anybody else that would like to make a comment, ask a question, please bring it on. Well, the big elephant in the room is this, and that is we now see groups that have basically, they ended up with a very thin culture, if they have any culture that’s distinct from the world around them. So how is culture created?

Our American culture is definitely a very self-centered culture, and it does influence us in more ways than we are probably aware of. All right, anyone else? Well, I would like to say what it is, and that is a group is going to have to have the courage to actually discuss what are some things we can do together that give tangible expression to what we say we believe in value.

That would be an easy thing. I mean, I’ll just give an example. The Amish, of course, say we do not wear any printed clothing. We wear all solid colors. That’s simple. It’s plain. We don’t enter into the temptation of people getting all kinds of designs and figures to impress people. I mean, that just deals with that problem. I dare you to even discuss that in the group that you’re with, that we’re all going to wear plain colored clothing.

Definitely be a challenge, wouldn’t it? All right. Anyone else? I mean, our people, what I’m saying is we’ve gotten to the place where we can’t even discuss such a thing. The idea of a plain culture has been so denigrated and so anathematized that even to suggest now we’re going to do something together that will look plain and we’re all going to do it together would create a huge uproar in most of our church. Is that part of that individualistic American culture?

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, John. All right. Is there anyone else? Don’t want to cut anybody off if anybody else has any questions or comments. Am I seen? We can see you. Thank you for joining me. Okay. The question I would have that I have been

wondering a lot already is can you define success by the way a group has held to their culture? Is that is that defined as success in in the eyes of God? And the reason I ask that question is

just the way the Muslims, for instance, I just think of them just the way they’ve stuck to some of their cultural practices. Is that successful for them? Because I agree the Amish have been very successful in sticking to their culture, sticking to their

how could you say it to their way of life. And I call it it’s a I would feel it’s a very radical way of life, radically against world progression, as in driving horse and buggies. And I’ll just in this making this statement, I’ll just the struggle that I’ve had with the radicalism against world progress.

My concern is that my concern is this is my personal concern that I’d like to just share with with you all to this morning is if we have to use our culture. And. How could I say this? It actually affects the people around you. It actually.

It doesn’t benefit them or it doesn’t we if our culture has to affect the people around us and we have to. Live our culture in a way that it. Hmm. It may be doesn’t necessarily hurt them, but we we raise a lot of questions like, why are you doing this? And we hurt people.

We hurt people with our culture. We hurt the people around us with our culture. That’s my concern. So that’s the question. Back to my first question. Is that do we do we rate our our success over how good we held our our culture in the last 200 years? How do you define hurting people with culture? Do it at their expense.

I’m still living your I could give you incidents but I don’t just to be discreet. I don’t necessarily want to give them but it’s but it’s but you’re you’re doing you’re living a culture that actually is benefiting your people but it’s not benefiting them.

The people around you, your neighbors, your probably one of my biggest ones growing up Amish was our dependability on on our neighbors to take us somewhere. That was probably the that was probably the biggest one that I that I always struggled with growing up.

As time went on, matter of fact, just just this last past summer, I removed myself from a very spiritual Amish group that I really appreciated where we were with spirituality, where we were with church life. And and yet that’s where I could see I was starting to bump heads with some of my brothers was was the horse and buggy issue and the driver issue. And and and just being just being very discreet.

I’m just going to leave it at that. But because I don’t want to I don’t want to. Be disrespectful in any way, because I want to respect. The Amish with that, because they have been very successful, but I’ve I’ve really pondered that that word successful are are they being successful if. If there is there are people that.

That are just OK, we hire drivers and and and stuff like that. But then a couple of things were happening with our drivers that I wasn’t OK with. And there was not steps being taken or repentance being taken in my mind. And I was just starting to bump heads. And. So where we’re at today is we’re on a journey of of exactly I really appreciate some of the points that you made, Brandon.

And about having a little windshield and a big rear view mirror. I don’t I. I’m very aware of that. And we’re simply on a journey. Trying to find something that’s sustainable. But but I still also see the need that it’s like also like you said, you can’t you don’t know what’s going to happen in the next 30 years.

You have that ability to know what’s going to happen. And I guess where I’m where I’m kind of leaning towards is my children have to see me be serious. Just like you had mentioned, we have to be serious about serving King Jesus. We have to be serious about that. And we have to take it seriously and pray seriously. To me, those are going to be forms of success.

Or to bring on success is how serious I really am about serving King Jesus and giving myself, submitting myself in any way that I can. Does that make sense? In any way that I can? That sounds like submission is kind of, you know, what’s the word? I do it if I feel like it.

It’s not I’m not saying that it’s it’s not conditional. I’m just I could not. I found myself just it was getting worse and worse. I could not submit myself under the horse and buggy lifestyle. If it’s that one makes any sense. Yeah. Well, thanks for joining us, Nathan. I don’t know you. I don’t think we’ve ever met, have we? I don’t think so. I appreciate you joining us. Yeah, I can see some of your points perhaps being a burden.

To the neighbor, whether it’s using the neighbor’s phone or constantly calling the neighbor up to take you to town or whatever. And some of the steel wheels that we have around Shippensburg that can be a problem at times and so on. But how is success measured? I would say it’s probably measured in more than one way. And the one way would be passing your faith on, you know, from generation to generation, a sustainable church community.

More than one way to measure it. I don’t know if you have any thoughts on that, Brandon. Yeah. Thank you, Nathan. I don’t know if I’m entirely getting your point, I guess. And I might be wide of the mark here. I think about Gary Miller’s book on Reaching America. And he says one of the biggest problems with Anabaptists and their non-Anabaptist neighbors is that Anabaptists are so independent. They don’t even need their neighbors. They just live with their community and everybody helps one another. And so,

I think of the need for a driver as a good thing overall. I can see where it could be unhealthy or misused. I did talk to my friend Herman Yoder from Michigan yesterday. He’s Amish. And he was saying that his driver, one of his drivers is Pentecostal of some sort, a lady. And she just expressed a real appreciation for their people. She said, you know, the thing that had,

you guys have going is you’re so obviously different. And she said, we’re out there. We’re trying to tell people about Jesus, but we don’t look any different. And people think, well, you know, it doesn’t make any difference. So I know that’s anecdotal, but I do think it’s valuable for us to need our neighbors, to express a need. Like yesterday, we want to go biking and we have two young children that can’t bike. And so I asked my neighbor if I could borrow his baby carrier, un-Christian neighbor. And he said, sure, borrow the bike too.

And well, that’s very humbling that I have to borrow somebody’s bike and the baby carrier to take two of our children. But it was the only way for us to be able to go biking as a family. And, you know, I don’t like to be dependent on my neighbors, but I like when they depend on me. So I’m trying to foster that sort of interdependence where I need my un-Christian neighbors, non-Christian neighbors. And they always appreciate it. They never say, oh, you know, you shouldn’t need me. I don’t know. Maybe I’m wide of the mark here, what you’re talking about.

Maybe, Brandon, I could probably throw a little something in here, too, because I went through it myself. I was Amish for three years, and I totally understand what he’s talking about. And somebody that hasn’t been through it, I really find it would be a hard thing to understand. And I’ll just share this part. When I went into it, I didn’t think that it was going to be a big deal of hiring people to take me places.

Well, it becomes survival. You need these people. It’s not, can I borrow your hammer? It is, can you work for me whenever I need you to and take me wherever I tell you I need to go? And no, Nathan, thank you so much for sharing that, because I struggled with that big time. And yeah, it was. And the drivers, no, I mean, on a percentage, it’d be a very high number.

And the percentage that looked at Amish and said, oh, I really appreciate what they’re doing here, using me to take them places. There was a couple, but most of them, it was working behind your back. They were, this was not a, it was not a pleasant thing. And especially if it was an emergency. That was, okay. I said, no, thank you, Nathan, for sharing that. I understand. Yeah, you’re welcome.

So we’re definitely a record breaker. So what state are you from, Nathan, if I may ask? I’m from Michigan. Okay. All right. Very good. Appreciate you joining us. I sent you a little message with my cell phone number on it. So I don’t know if you got that or not. I seen that come up and I grabbed my phone. I didn’t get the phone number, but yeah, thanks for sharing that. And I appreciate what, I believe it was Joe that just mentioned that.

I’d like to, I’d like to just affirm that for Brandon. That is, he’s, he hit it on the top of the head. So, because I’m, I’m a licensed contractor. So I’ve dealt with a lot of that hours and hours of being on the road with a very ungodly man. And yeah, just trying to work with him, you know, and, and, and being polite. And then also,

I don’t know, was it my politeness or my openness to them? I got a lot of, I got a lot of critics from the driver’s side, their story. But, but then I, then I hear a lot of Amish people saying, but I never hear that. I never hear them say that to me. I don’t know what you’re talking about. That kind of thing. And, and I don’t, and I ponder that a little bit. Why,

why don’t the other Amish ever hear what I hear? I’ve heard countless drivers just murmur against Amish people, how they get used and go shopping and sitting for hours at the Walmart parking lot. So that’s the side I’m coming to. So that just wanted to affirm that for, for Brandon, if that, I don’t know if that makes more sense. It’s a little different than borrowing a hammer or a bicycle. So it’s a little different from that. Okay.

Yeah. All right. Well, I’m thinking, brother Nathan, there are groups that are just practically car driving Amish. I mean, they are still Amish in almost every other way. So you might consider that. Thank you, John. All right. I appreciate everyone’s time, all the questions and comments. And again, many thanks to brother Brandon for doing the talk here this morning.

We’re heading close to 730. It’s the longest hope for wandering Amish meeting we’ve ever had. Sorry about that. That’s okay. It’s all good. Well, would you like to close us in prayer, Brandon? And then we can consider ourselves dismissed. Sure. Let’s pray. Father, thank you for this day that you’ve given to us. Thank you for each of these brothers. And we know that there are many, many fathers, grandfathers like them that desire the best for their family.

God, we confess that we do not have the answers. We need your wisdom. Thank you that you promised to give us wisdom as we cry out to you for it. I pray that you would continue to direct our paths, protect our families, help us to do great damage to the kingdom of the enemy. I do pray that your kingdom would come and your will be done in every one of our lives, each one of our families, and in generations to come as you tarry, bless our day, direct our steps. We pray this all in Jesus’ name. Amen.

God, we pray this all in Jesus’ name.