Rocky Cape Christian Community

Young people in front of Heinrich Goossen's wagon shop in Blumstein, Ukraine, ca. 1890.

 
What about the "new group" -- the place where the big revival is happening -- should you join it? Or should you wait a while longer and see?
 
Bernhard Harder, living in the Mennonite village of Blumstein, Ukraine, asked himself that question 150 years ago.
 
As a twelve-year-old Bernhard lost his father. His widowed mother did what she could to raise the family, but Bernhard's older brothers got into rough company and brought her much grief. Already as a child Bernhard decided to choose a better way and become a school teacher. With great effort and many prayers, he managed to complete the courses at the Mennonite Central School in Halbstadt on the Molochnaya River. Then, as an eighteen-year-old he first heard a missionary evangelist (a South-German Pietist) preach and broke through to find forgiveness for his sins and the "assurance of salvation" so many around him were discovering at the time.
 
For many years the Mennonites in Russia, far removed from their Anabaptist origins, had retreated further and further into the shell of their traditionalist colony ways. But now, under the influence of revivals in Europe and America, hundreds were finding new life in Christ and a new group, the Brüdergemeinde (community of brothers) took shape. Everyone joining the new group got baptised by immersion, after testifying to a crisis conversion experience. The new group, following the pattern their ancestors had established before them, looked at their former one as "Babylon" out of which the Lord had called them, and whose leaders were blind leaders of the blind. Horror stories of sins and errors in the old group got wide publicity. In their testimonies (many of them circulated in written form), new converts told of the sins, the ignorance, the darkness that had held them bound within the old group, and revelled in the glory of their deliverance.
 
All this while keepers of tradition took reactionary, ineffective, and often foolish measures to keep the Mennonite colonies in Russia together on the "tried and proven way." The more measures they took, the more people they alienated, and the new group spread like wildfire, not only affecting all Mennonites in Russia but spreading into the population at large. To virtually all awakened believers in Bernhard Harder's time, the answer looked simple: Those of the new group (the Brüdergemeinde) were the "good guys" and whoever stayed with the old group was lost.
 
Only Bernhard was not so sure.
 
As a 22-year-old he married and several years later the old group chose him to be a minister. He preached powerfully and many found the Lord, but more often than not, those who did so went on to join the new group. Then they got upset with Bernhard for not doing the same. "Why do you waste the talent God gave you," they wondered, "and refuse to go the whole way with the Lord? Are you afraid of the persecution you would suffer?"
 
Bernhard was not afraid -- just cautious. As he wrote in a letter to a friend (Johann Fast from Annafeld in the Krimea), "New groups may well blaze brightly, like a straw fire, at first. But if their fire is fueled by personal ambition, by fleeting emotions, or by emphasizing one doctrine above the rest, it usually does not last long. Members of new groups often ride their pet theories like a child rides a new hobby-horse, but after a while they get tired of it, and what was new at one time becomes just another ritual, another dead tradition, like those it displaced. Then, once everyone has stopped throwing dirt at everyone else, and the excitement dies down, matters remain pretty much as they were, with nothing gained for the cause of the Kingdom of God."
 
Bernhard noted that members of the new group were really no more careful in their walk with Jesus, than members of the old group. If anything, they were even less so, and less afraid of mingling with and imitating the world. This came from their ready acceptance of anyone with a good "born-again testimony" as a fellow-believer, a brother in Christ, no matter what he believed or how he lived. It came from a great focus on "getting saved" and getting assurance of salvation, that took the place of careful discipleship, and obedience within the Lord's body.
 
With little else to do but revel in their own salvation and tell all the world about it, members of the new group, had less need for one another, and often disdained the idea of accountability, rules, or structure within the church. All that mattered was that the Lord got praised and more people got plunged into the waters of baptism, week after week.
 
Did Bernhard become a sour critic and enemy of the new group?
 
Not at all! For as long as he lived, he stayed on friendly terms with them and answered their heated demands and challenges with gentle words. At the same time, he took their criticism seriously and worked night and day to remedy the problems that existed in the old group. After the birth of their eleventh child, Bernhard's wife, Katherina, died, and a year later he married again. With his second wife he had three more children. Bernhard raised a godly family, zealous for the Lord. Several of his sons became writers and poets like himself (he wrote over six hundred songs, most of which got published in his lifetime). For as long as he lived he travelled the length and breadth of old Russia, from Siberia to the Black Sea, holding meetings, preaching as often as four times a day. As soon as the boys could manage the farm at home, he spent several months a year on the road. Besides this, Bernhard was continually involved in the schools, in teaching young people, and he travelled several to St. Petersburg several times to seek permission to start new colonies of believers in Central Asia.
 
Returning from a preaching trip on a cold day in the fall of 1884, he took sick and died several days later. Many thousands of people, a multitude he had inspired, from the new group as well as from the old, mourned his death and kept on singing the songs he wrote.
 
Not just in Russia, but in Germany, Canada, Mexico, and South America -- even in far away Tasmania -- we still like to sing his simple words:
 
Die Zeit ist kurz o Mensch sei weise, und wuchre mit dem Augenblick,
Nur einmal machst du diese Reise, lass eine gute Spur zurück!
 
Du kannst nicht eine Stunde halten, eh du es merkst ist sie entflohn,
Die Weisheit rät dir treu zu halten, den Treuen winket hoher Lohn.
 
Sieh, wie dem Tor die Zeit verrinnet, mit Essen, Trinken, Scherzen, Ruhn,
Der Kluge wirket und gewinnet, erfüllt die Zeit mit gutes tun.
 
Drum Heiland Lehr mich meine Jahre, zu deinem Dienste einzig weih'n,
Von heute an bis hin zur Bahre, für jenes Leben Samen streu'n.
 
Here in Australia we have translated them as follows:
 
Time is Short!  

Your time is short, dear friends, be prudent,
Use every moment wisely now.
//Just once you walk the path before you,
Remember all your tracks will show!//

You cannot grasp one hour and hold it,
Right quickly it will fly away,
//Heed wisdom’s counsel! Friends, be faithful,
True faith a high reward will pay.//

See how poor fools waste time and money,
They feast, they joke, they rest and play!
//The wise keep working now and winning,
Making the most of every day.//

So Jesus, take my time, I give it,
To serve you till my life is done.  
//From here to when I rise to greet you,
Scattering seeds for life to come!//

 
Should anyone wish to hear this song by Bernhard Harder, so familiar among all Mennonites of Russian background, let me know and I will send you an MP3 clip of it.
 
* * * * *
 
Well over a century after Bernhard's death I have come to know a large number of members and attend meetings among both the old and the new groups (the "Kirchliche" and the Brüdergemeinde) in Europe and North America, and I must say what he predicted has come to pass. Those of the old group that learned from the new, made out fairly well. And those of the new group that kept their respect and brotherly relationships with the old one, did likewise. But extremists in both camps got into extreme trouble, both ways.
 
Should you now join the new group starting in your area? Or should you stick to the old?
 
I do not know your case well enough to advise you what to do. But, if you take Bernhard Harder's example, if you stay calm and keep your eyes on Christ, you will not go wrong. "Just once you walk the path before you. Remember all your tracks will show."
 
Peter
 
Rocky Cape Christian Community
19509 Bass Highway
Detention River, Tasmania 7321
Australia
www.thecommonlife.com.au