In the book of Revelation, John is given a vision of what God is doing in the world. It begins with warnings and affirmations for seven churches. How do our churches in North America measure up today? Here are the 19 characteristics of the churches of Jesus Christ

1. Deeds, hard work, perseverance, endurance of hardship
2. An intolerance for wicked people, testing leaders and not being afraid to name them as false teachers.
3. An openness to poverty and suffering.
4. Faithfulness in the face of blasphemy.
5. Loyalty in a satanic, occultic place
6. Not tolerating leaders who teach that sexual sin is okay and participate in idolatry
7. Constant improvement.
8. Trusting God to judge and to work at identifying the intentions of the heart in those in leadership.
9. Keeping the simple teachings and rejecting those who try to teach "deeper truths" (which are really of satanic origin)
10. Difficult obedience which results in great authority.
11. Holding on to what was given.
12. Maintaining its first love for God.
13. Hating the leaders who lord over others, and loving those who serve.
14. Strengthening the inner life.
15. Repenting of wrong, strengthening what is good.
16. Being useful
17. Not counting on acquired wealth.
18. Opening the door for the living presence of Christ
19. Listening to the voice of the Spirit

These 19 things are a powerful reminder of how self-serving we have become in North America. May God help us repent and receive new life.
-John M Troyer

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When I talk about the division of a denominational institution, it's easy to jump immediately to the assumption that I am dividing the church. No denomination is the church. The big C Church is the people that are gathered around a real relationship with the Holy Spirit. When the institution becomes primary, that's when things begin to break down.

Institutions can be helpful. They're like buses, cars, ships and planes. When people hear God asking them to move together in some effort, it makes sense to get organized. But the church is never the mode of transport, it is the people inside. When our allegiance shifts, we shame each other into doing what we want. We lie and hedge the truth for our ends. We shame into silence with an attack others' character if they speak up. We work as silent allies so that we can rescue those within who we believe are victims of bad theology or ethical understanding.  We want the bus to be full even if the people on board don't like the destination.  So we make it hard for them to exit or we leave them stranded alone, isolated from others they might join.

Some are saying that the answer for Mennonite Church USA is to shift to a congregational polity. This sentiment is supposedly rooted in the idea of giving each other the freedom to follow Christ in whatever way it makes sense for each congregation. If that were truly the motive, then this sentiment would not be coupled with a fierce emphasis on loyalty and unity as a denomination. A true polity of congregationalism would do its best to help those with differing points of view join together and go their separate way. It would help them exit gracefully at the next bus stop and help them find a new ride. Congregations will bless same-sex marriages and ordain pastors in same-sex relationships. But when they do, and when they begin to determine the direction of our institutional bus, it's time for many of us to get off that bus. The attempts by those with the unity perspective to shame leaders for leaving is a sinful and diabolical attempt at manipulation and control. It is inconsistent with the congregational polity they claim to hold. It needs to stop and should be named and exposed for the abusive and ungodly use of power that it is. It is the spirit of Constantine, not the Holy Spirit.

I love Mennonite Church USA. But I love the people in it even more. It's time to help us separate well.
-John M Troyer

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I've spoken before of my growing up years in the Beachy Amish church. When I thought about leaving and going to a place that was less restrictive and conservative, there were a lot of fears.  I never was baptized there, but the messages seemed to come that I would experience losses if I left. Some were directly named for me by my father, but others were more subtly communicated through stories. The strongest stories were the stories that communicated how messed up life became for people who did leave, how far away they fell from God, and how their lives were filled with all kinds of sin. It shaped for my young mind an understanding of reality that somehow all these things would also happen to me. As I got older, my fear was less that those things would happen to me, but that I would become one of those stories that were told. I was surprised to eventually discover that there were many who had left and built lives that were God-centered and full.

Chimamanda Adichie, a Nigerian novelist, gave a TED talk in which she "tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice -- and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding." This single story idea, is powerful because it misses no one. It is the very beginning of the scapegoating process, a process that flattens and loses the nuances of those who disagree with us.  This metaphor is an excellent example of what I saw in my growing up years. I learned a particular view, not because it was in some curriculum, but because all the stories together shaped a perspective. 

Activists, both within and outside the church, use this method. We wait for one person to push out ahead and name a direction we don't like, then like the game of Whack-a-Mole, we use the story hammer to polarize, freeze and isolate that person. We cast aspersions, cluck or tongues, and fully engage in the slanderous act of misrepresenting their perspective and kindness.  Ron Sider recently wrote a blog post for Mennonite World Review in which he stakes out a perspective that will "uphold biblical teaching about homosexuality — and be places to love and listen rather than shame or exclude." Almost immediately, the responses came in which activists conveyed their disbelief that their single story about a conservative perspective on marriage might be untrue. As a result, a man who has devoted his life to justice and peace with advocacy for the poor and marginalized has these young activists immediately suspicious of his motives and the reality of his love. They cling tightly to their single story.

When a couple is going through marital difficulty, many times they feel the marriage has ended long before anyone either party takes any formal steps to say it is over.  What I have already seen is that this can turn into a waiting game, waiting for the other person to make a public misstep so they can rally the opinion of their family and friends onto their side.  It is the fight to come out of the divorce with a single story and to end up with the most assets and receive child custody. It is about blame and retribution.

In Mennonite Church USA, we are experiencing the same thing. We are not one church, and we weren't even when two denominations merged together fifteen years ago. What we are seeing now is an attempt to shape a single story, that staying one denomination is the one most holy good that we can agree must be pursued, and that leaving this denomination (or being divisive or causing a split) is the one unpardonable sin that must be condemned.  All this is given in the name of diversity. (The irony in taking this position is quite palpable.)  I have even had people name our institutional connection as a denomination as a commitment that is on par with a couples commitment to stay together until death would part them from each other. Frankly, that is not what an institutional commitment means, and it's disingenuous to try to make it that.  There is no shame in choosing to separate as a denomination, and our testimony is helped when we help each other do that well rather than pretending we need to continue clinging to each other to the bitter end.  Our merger has resulted in a fifteen year War of the Roses and a truce should be declared in that war. It's time to let it end.

As a result, leaders are paralyzed in taking action that really is for the good of the whole. The whole denomination needs leaders who are willing to come together (maybe that will help mitigate the effects of whack-a-mole) and say that we are two bodies and we need to do our best to help each body move forward in as healthy a way as possible.  Let's make our testimony about ending well, not about making an idolatrous creed around institutional unity at all costs.
-John M Troyer

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For many years it seems we've been moving in the wrong direction with our approach to our children. I struggle with writing this because I personally know this challenge. We'll soon enter the middle school years with our daughter, and the balance of studies, sports, arts, and church are already difficult.  

What kind of adult do we produce when we raise our children the way we do it today? What happens to creativity, initiative, boundaries, etc? As I interact with young adults that are the first products of the crazy busy teenage years, I am seeing a pattern in the struggles that are there.

I am seeing the challenges of knowing how to navigate life when something is not already structured. The unstructured play that is now mostly missing from many children's lives means they are not developing the capacity to create their own structure. Playground ball without referees provided an opportunity to argue about rules and fouls without the presence of an adult to settle things. These arguments are important developmentally to help children learn how to socially interact, figure out structure, lead, and follow. The organized activities of today, whether they are sports and arts programs, planned recess, or video games, all have the structure already in place. As a result, young adults are leaving college with a diminished capacity for holistically shaping their lives.  Life continues to be about participating in things rather than figuring out how to make your own thing happen.

An even bigger issue is the question of boundaries. I am seeing youth participate in programs that consist of daily 3-4 hour practices and being gone for more than 24 hours on a Saturday. Many of the youth programs today ask things of our children that we would never put up with in the workplace as adults. What would you do if your boss said you no longer have off for longer than one day on Christmas and Thanksgiving, that you needed to put in 24+ hours of work for six Saturdays in a row, that you have 3-4 hours of work each night from your full-time job, and will need to do an additional side job for another 3-4 hours a day. Would you continue working at a job that is pushing your bodies so hard that injuries are common, injuries that may plague you for the rest of your life? This has gone beyond keeping our children busy and has set them up for a life in which we are teaching them to be workaholics as adults. Are you teaching your son or daughter to navigate healthy family, social, church, and work balance? What will be the effect on their ability to parent and make wise choices for their own children? We live in a world with too many options and one of the greatest skills adult will need is how to say no even when the pressure to participate is intense. 

When we cannot say no when the coach, director, teacher or club asks too much from our young people, we are not teaching our children to say no in many other arenas. We are shaping them for a life of binging and enslavement, whether it is with food, sex, debt, Netflix, alcohol, work, porn, relationships, and even oppressive religious structures. And if the trophies and rewards aren't significant enough, they will move on to next thing that seems more promising. Living so intensely for so many hours is not discipline, it's abandoning our children's lives to values and systems that are not God-shaped.

This system is also not preparing our children and youth for new economic realities. The industrial worker who dutifully shows up for work for forty years is no longer a feasible path to success in the future. Economic success will be led by those with great abilities to set boundaries, to think creatively, to shape new directions, and to have a strong ethical core that guides them. Our educational and extracurricular systems are still largely set up to make our children great workers who simply do what they're told. Businesses are experiencing an increasing struggle to find people that make great managers, that think in an entrepreneurial way, that move beyond being a victim of their circumstances to finding solutions.

There aren't easy answers. I'm not advocating dropping out of everything or rejecting seasonal bursts of activity. But when those seasonal bursts become too intrusive or take up the entire year, that goes too far.  Tomorrow I'll make some suggestions about some of the ways we can define the center, then put boundaries in place and return childhood and adolescence to its rightful place. I also invite you to give your thoughts and ideas in the comments below.
-John M Troyer

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Part of Einstein's theory of relativity is something called an inertial frame of reference. I'm not skilled enough to fully understand physics, but I want to borrow the phrase to talk about a philosophical understanding of reality. Something that is inert is something that is not moving. Frame of reference is the basic means by which we evaluate reality. I want to talk about our inertial frame of reference, our basic framework for how we make sense of our world. What is the one thing that we start with as our basic understanding of self, that which cannot be violated?

In our understanding of self, ethics, sexuality, and emotional health, our inertial frame of reference is often not examined. Yet it often determines the conclusion.  Another way to understand this is to ask what should be inviolable, secure from infringement. If my internal feelings or thoughts are inviolable (I think, therefore I am), then my understanding of the world will be very different from a worldview that starts with embodiment.

The current descriptions of gender identity and orientation are a great example of this. I am not minimizing the depth of the feelings that constitute ones orientation and gender identity, but simply locating them within the spiritual, emotional, thinking side. Even if they are a part of the embodiment side (something you are born with), that is somehow carried or translated into our mind's understanding of self. The use of the word gender to describe our male/femaleness is an example of this change from body to mind. Gender refers to our internal feeling of being male or female while our sex refers to the physical indications (genes and genitals). In orientation, feelings are at the heart of identity.

The irony for me is this: Feelings are so important, so inviolable, it is now illegal in many states for a therapist to try to help a client change what they are attracted to if it is a same-sex attraction. But our sense of embodiment is so malleable, it is legal to have a surgeon cut oneself up to give oneself what looks like the genitals of the opposite sex. Children are even being given this choice. According to most LGBTQ activists, our spiritual, internal self must not be adjusted in any way, but our bodies can be cut and re-formed as we please.

This is Gnostic thought. It is heresy in the Christian church. Gnosticism elevates the spiritual and denigrates the body. Scripture teaches us to value embodiment. Our bodies are the pinnacle of God's creation, the temple of the Holy Spirit. Body and spirit are integrated. We can know know the inner spiritual sense of who we are by looking at our body. We can know our created orientation and gender identity by looking at our body, not by focusing on what we feel.

Part of what causes the confusion is that our culture and churches are too rigid in defining masculinity and femininity. There is nothing inherently Biblical about defining masculinity as lots of grunting, extreme sports, and shooting stuff. There are many masculinities, and some are expressed as attentiveness to the arts, intellectual pursuits, and being emotionally connected. Femininity is not just looking beautiful and demure. It can also be expressed in aggressive action and challenging physicality. But being a man and being a woman are most fully defined by the genitals we have when we are born, not by the cultural meaning we add to that definition.

Even those who are genetically born intersex, with an extra X chromosome, can be understood in a new way if we took embodiment seriously. We can recognize this as a real variant and develop an ethical response that takes our embodiment seriously. But that is a very different ethical response than the 56 different gender identity options now offered by Facebook that are mostly about the elevation of our mental and emotional identity.

If what I feel is the true me, than 56 gender identities is only the beginning. If we begin with God's transcendence, in which He created my body, and His immanence, in which I am a temple of His presence, we will live a very different story.
-John M Troyer

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It seems we lose a lot of nuance in news reports. When Hillsong's pastor, Brian Houston, declined to give a clear answer to the question of the church's stance on marriage. people jumped to the conclusion that they are not keeping their traditional stance on marriage. On Saturday, Houston clarified that they have not changed their stance and believe in traditional marriage.  I resonated with a lot of what he said in both answers. 

Answering questions at a news conference is not an obligatory place to give your opinion. When the Pharisees asked Jesus about his thoughts on paying taxes to the Roman government, he gave an evasive answer. I'm sure the bloggers of his day were ready to jump to all kinds of conclusions. 

What I did like about the original answer was Houston's concern for three things.  "There's the world we live in, there’s the weight we live with, and there’s the word we live by." Christianity is incarnational, it does not exist in a vacuum. As Christians, we are tasked with sharing the good news with the world around us. We need to be aware of how the world understands us, and the way our words may deepen the pain and suffering of others. This is true even when the scripture is clear.

Concern about our context is not an automatic sign of capitulation. It can also be the first sign of capitulation.  We should have the maturity to look for the difference without jumping to conclusions.
-John M Troyer

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Since I've been writing this blog, I've occasionally gone into some controversial areas, areas that sometimes friends will tell me that I shouldn't even be writing about them. The risks of being misunderstood, taken out of context and quoted are seen as risks that should be avoided. It's a risk I knew would be there when I started.  

The Vatican recently released a report on the church's response to gay and lesbian individuals. The response by journalists was that this report was a "stunning shift," a "pastoral earthquake," "using strikingly open language," "would have been unthinkable a few years ago," and "revolutionary." So what did the report say to earn this celebratory approval? It emphasizes the importance of walking with people where they're at, looking for the good things that are present in their life, even while emphasizing the discipleship journey that  walks them toward the teaching of the church about marriage, which they are emphasizing as unchanged. This is essentially the perspective for which I have advocated, costly discipleship, which walks compassionately with people and shows grace while continuing to hold to the ideal of marriage between a man and woman. 

On Sunday, I received a vulgar, private message from someone I love who believes I am pompous and self-righteous, not representing Jesus' love at all, a hypocrite, condemning, unable to see that Jesus died for all people, petty, unreasonable, and medieval. I didn't repeat the vulgarity here, but you get the point.  I'm quite sure I am many of the things on this list, but there are a few that I most assuredly am not. I am absolutely convinced that Jesus loves all people and died for all of us, and that I am at the front of the line in my need for his grace and forgiveness.  Now, I want to make sure you understand something, I'm not complaining about the way I was treated, I am simply naming a reality that is there. 

But why are there different, hyperbolic responses to essentially the same perspective? It is because celebration and shame are handed out based on the direction you move, not on the perspective you carry. In other words, celebration and shame are intentionally and strategically used to silence opposition and provide the appearance of an inevitable movement toward the affirmation of gay marriage. So if you are seen as working in even a small way against the movement, you must be stopped and labeled as one who hates. If you are seen as opening up to even a bit more grace, each micro-shift will become stunning, revolutionary, and open.  Your polite acceptance into society is not based on what you believe, it is that you stay quiet and don't saying anything that would slow down the oncoming train. Activists for gay marriage have strategically used the church's commitment to being nice to move our culture as quickly as possible down the path of affirmation.  So this strategy is essentially an exercise in hypocrisy, as those who claim the label of tolerance disseminate some of the most vocal, intolerant, intimidating rhetoric that is accepted within our social circles.

In today's moral climate, it's okay for you to privately believe whatever you want, but if you post something that goes against the current cultural wave, you will be labeled a hater. I think the church has let the intimidation keep it silent for too long. It is time to speak of welcome, love for all, and the beautiful gift of being "in Christ" and letting all our internal desires come under His lordship. So speak up. let your voice be heard. The world is dying to hear you.
-John M Troyer


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Yesterday the Supreme Court chose not to review an appellate court's ruling that struck down the law that only recognized opposite-sex marriage in Indiana. That's where I live and I've been thinking about what that means for those who are united with Jesus Christ.

Back in the early '90's, I remember the disappointment of conservative Christians because Disney made a number of public changes in support of LGBTQ individuals. I remember at the the time that I was unable to understand the disappointment. There were plenty of others places in culture that were making similar changes, but why was Disney such a focus? I realized that it was because many Christians thought Disney was "theirs," a safe place for entertainment for their children.

Having grown up Amish Mennonite, Disney had always been seen as a part of the degenerate culture for many reasons. We didn't have television or radio in our home. I had a very clear sense growing up that I was called to live separately from our broader culture, and everything beyond our small community should be treated with mistrust and critiqued. Life has changed a bit for me since then, but I continue to carry with me a suspicion of what is happening in the broader culture.

We are united with Jesus Christ. Christians have been at their worst throughout history when they've used government policies to make people be good. We've been at our best when we sacrifice, live as alternatives at the edge of society, when we live into the story we are given by God rather than reacting to a story we think is being imposed upon us.  We are called to be a counter-culture and to live it with joy. We are a nation that has incredible freedom. Our most cherished freedom, the presence of the Holy Spirit within us, is a freedom that can never be taken away. 

When we get focused on laws and rights, we lose our saltiness. Our identity is compromised in the midst of the battle, and the fruits of the Spirit in our own lives are the first casualty. Perhaps Christians will look more carefully at other areas where we have compromised and been taken in by cultural values that conflict with Christian virtue. Materialism, the way we value and raise our children, and our food addictions are all problems that need to be addressed. Christians are called to live joyfully into an alternative that is empowered by the Spirit of God within. The ending to our story has already been written in the book of Revelation. We can move full speed ahead with the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control that God has already given us. We are a counter-culture, we are not American citizens first. We are citizens of the upside-down kingdom.
-John M Troyer

I was going to write about snobs today. In fact, I had the whole thing written about Mennonite Intelligentsia and then deleted it.  I became snobbish about snobs by the time I got to the end.  So I'm writing this to repent.  

At the heart of our struggle as Americans and Mennonites is that we think we're better than others.  We have no need for that.  And I do it all the time.  Snobbery is toxic. When an opponent becomes snobbish, it's almost impossible to avoid imitating it.  We become rivals, trying to win points and gaining ground over the other. 

Last summer at Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference sessions, I was often asked why my church was leaving the conference. My best answer was an analogy.  Suppose I went to an Alcoholics Anonymous group and I was experiencing recovery through the support of the group and God's grace in my life.  After some time, someone joined and began to use the sessions to extol the virtues of Amway. Week after week we would gather, and we would hear about how it could change our lives, how to find economic freedom, etc.  Finally, I asked the leaders of the group, "When will you do something about the Amway guy? When can we go back to being an AA group?"  The leaders responded, "Well, we believe diversity is important. You need to stop being so judgmental." The Amway leader started advertising the group as an Amway group.  I asked the leaders, "Can you make a public statement to let people know what kind of group we actually are? That's not the purpose for which we were formed, it's not what we agreed upon." So the leaders asked everyone to stop making public statements. And they told me I was too prescriptive about what we believed instead of seeing it as descriptive.  After awhile, I decided to go look for another AA group.  No matter what you think about AA or Amway or denominations, our visions and purposes for gathering can become so opposed to each other, our gatherings become destructive, and we need to stop gathering.

I think remaining together as a denomination is a bad idea because of our fallenness. In our current environment, I have to fight daily to see the imprint of God in each person, to not think ill of those who disagree, to discern without being judgmental.  And I've received this ill-will from others who disagree with me as I made my voice more public. It doesn't matter any more who started it, we both do it.  We compete on who is the most Jesus-y, who likes the Bible better, and who most faithfully carries the mantle of Mennonite or Anabaptist. And I have to fight daily to have the compassion of Christ restored within me.

When friends become rivals, it may be time to make new friends. Not to make the old friends enemies. Not leave, burn the bridge and never return.  Not determine and name your perspective on the eternal destinies of those you leave behind.  Just leave. Find new friends. Occasionally hang out and swap stories with the old friends. But get some space and leave the toxic environment behind.  Because the problem I have is that who I become in the middle of the toxicity is not who I want to be.  I need to walk away because I am too broken, not because I am better.  And I desperately need a place, any place, where God's healing grace is evident and received.

So does anybody want to be part of something new, where we are confessing our sins of snobbery? Where we are not better than what we leave, but more in need of grace and redemption? Where truth and compassion joins hands first in the brokenness of our own hearts? Where we do not celebrate who we are, but who God is? I am a Snob, I was born that way. But it is not who I am called to be.  I continue in my repentance.
-John M Troyer