A Response to Herb Franz...sort of.

OK this is hard because normally I don't like picking a fight with a pastor of another church but I sort of had to with this. He kind of got me a little angry. This is a portion of Herb Franz's sermon on exclusivity which he preached at Grace Mennonite Church in Winkler on Sunday. The Mennonite community is small so that's how I found out about this. He posts the sermon on his blog. Here is an excerpt...

Let me tell you about an exclusive church that I experienced last fall. When we were at Hans and Irene’s four of us decided that we would like to go to an Old Colony Church worship service. So we asked around about where we could find such a church. We were told that there was an Old Colony Church in the village of Steinreich just a couple of miles from where we were staying. We asked what time it would start. We were told that Old Colony churches never start at the same time. They start one hour after sunrise. Some of our group, not me, were awake early in the morning and knew that the sun rose at 6:30 AM. We assumed that we should be at the church by 7:30. Actually we were told, the service starts at 7:15 or so.

We arrived at the church and Daryl was driving and Daryl did what Daryl always does when Daryl goes to church, he drove into the parking spot. We didn’t know that no one drives into the parking spots; they back in so they can get away quickly when the service is over.

We had been told to make sure that we entered the church by the correct door. We would have to enter by the men’s door. We were told to just watch which door the men were using and follow them in. We got there and I watched and I saw a couple of men walk in one of the doors. But then I became confused because I also saw a couple of women enter the same door. What was going on? Then I remembered being told that there are a couple of doors on the church where the song leaders and the ministers, and their wives can enter. That must be the door. Eventually we saw what seemed to be a steady stream of men heading toward several different doors and we got out of our incorrectly parked van and followed the group.

As we were walking across the parking lot we encountered another man came and I greeted him with my best Low German greeting. He looked surprised and muttered something in return that made it obvious the conversation was over. We managed to walk in the correct door. We noticed there were no children under the age of about 13 in the church.

Before the service started seven men walked in and sat to the right of the pulpit. These were the song leaders. They led the singing in the most nasal singing I have ever heard. We found that no one brought their Bibles to church, except for our own Bill Zacharias, but everyone brought their hymn books which are carried in cardboard slip covers. When the singing started there was a general clatter as the books were unsheathed and the covers were set beside the people on the bench.

When the minister began to speak there came a time when everyone in the building stood up, turned around and knelt facing the back of the bench. I had been on my knees all week tiling at Hans and Irene’s and my knees were in no mood for kneeling without kneepads on a cement floor. I thought it would be awkward to stay sitting and stare at the man in front of me kneeling to pray looking at me so I stood, turned, knelt and leaned heavily on my arms during the prayer time.

As a preacher I’m always looking to learn from another preacher. When this preacher began to speak he did not speak in his normal tone of voice. He spoke sort of in a singing voice that flowed along like this and only occasionally dropped at end of a sentence. Despite that there were entire sections of the message where he spoke in his normal voice before beginning to once again use what I later learned is called the “Holy Voice”. When church was over I expected visiting to happen but everyone stood silently and left without saying anything to anyone. It was clearly a case of beat the traffic in Steinreich that day. In about five minutes our van was the only vehicle left in the parking lot because Daryl had driven in instead of backing in. We had to wait till everyone else had gone before we could go.

We left the church that day relatively secure in the knowledge that we were going to be the topic of many dinner conversations among the people of the Steinreich Old Colony Church. I have never felt so out of place among a group of 250 white people in all my life.

I went to an Old Colony church service as well when I was in Mexico. And I can only describe Mr. Franz's description as culturally insensitive. Could he have sounded more superior in his description of the Old Colony church service? Maybe next time he should approach the service with humility and a true desire for learning and check his modern evangelical goggles at the door. What did he expect? To be greeted as the wonderful preacher from the far off wonderful place of Canada? If he had tried to learn anything about church before hand maybe the service wouldn't have been so awkward for him. One of his comments was "the most nasal singing I have ever heard". Does he go to Pow Wows and complain about the drumming or watch Riverdance and then complain about how loud it is when they wear those shoes? His comment about "beating the traffic" was also troublesome to me. He really has absolutely NO idea about the culture of the Old Colony people. Instead he invokes his own biases to prove a point. I'm going to fill you in on a little secret. The Old Colony church is exclusive. They are not an evangelical church out to attract new members. They have members, they are the people of the colony. By the way. I did not feel "excluded" when I attended that church service in December. Excluded is when you are left out. Did I feel different? Yes, but I was given as much opportunity to worship as anyone else. On a final note Mr. Franz assumes they were the talk of many dinner discussions. Really??

Cheers