Holdeman

The Haldeman World of Approval, Fear, and Shunning

People in the community often see the Haldemans as just another Christian group. They're kind, simple, plain people, and the community tends to see them in a positive light.

I believe I came to Christ as a 12-year-old lad in that structure. I've never doubted that.

One beautiful thing about the Haldeman culture is the camaraderie is awesome, as long as you're in the system.

Everybody's watching everybody, and no matter where you are in the system, there's somebody you need to please. So you're trying to satisfy, and especially as a young man when I was coming up in this, I wanted to be approved of.

I wanted the approval of those older ministers, and I was under older ministers. So they would be telling me how we do things. When you would like to show grace and mercy, it wasn't allowed.

We know what happens when someone leaves the Haldeman denomination, the shunning of the families that that does to you, your friends, your whole culture that you grew up in.

Discovering the Errors in the Church's Teaching

Uncovering the doctrines that they grew up with in that church, I was really shocked. What Haldeman Mennonites need to understand, John Haldeman, he's not the only one who's made this claim throughout church history that his group is the only one with the secret knowledge.

When people would talk to me, I would be like, but they're wrong about this, and this matters. And I had people kind of like, I don't see why that matters. That's just confusing to me because whether you get your Savior right or not, it's everything.

There's many people that claim to believe in Christ, like the Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses, other cults. Yeah, we believe in Christ. Which Christ? The Christ of the Scriptures?

I thought I was converted at probably 11-ish, and it didn't work very well for me because I would try, I would fail, I would give up, I'd eventually quit trying. So I would just keep kind of going through that cycle over and over.

That just continued on. Every revival was scary because I never knew if I was saved or if I wasn't. I figured that the end of the world would have to come pretty much right after we had communion because otherwise I didn't think that there was really hope for me.

As time went on through the years, I developed a lot of anxiety. I just lived in that place, you know, kind of back and forth and trying, eventually giving up, just living kind of how I wanted, then getting back into fear and trying really hard.

Whenever I was trying was actually when I had more anxiety and more fear. So then I just wanted to give up because I could just live then. But there was always the underlying guilt the whole time, and I didn't know what was wrong with me because I had no power.

I did not have power to live victoriously.

I was always concerned as a minister about all these young people being baptized into the church, and very few of them knew anything at all about Jesus. Very little was being said. We wanted to be in the church.

We wanted to be baptized to have the approval of the people. That was what we were looking for. So a lot of my first experience was getting that approval. But my conversion, I believe, was clear in what I understood at that time.

When I came to know Christ alone, where I had the peace in my heart, was probably, it was after I was expelled, sometimes where I would say that I could look up and I knew without a doubt I was accepted and at rest seven, eight years ago.

When I first heard about the Holdemans, it was in a negative light because certain doctrines were lifted out as being false. And so I knew ahead of time there were some issues there, but I didn't know how serious those issues were until I studied their own documents myself.

So the Holdemans began around the 1850s. John Holdeman, a 26-year-old young man, broke away from the Mennonites, believing that they were bringing the truth with them. And so from that point, he believed and taught that the only truth is found in the church.

The Holdeman Church, which is officially called the Church of God in Christ, Mennonite. And so from there, they've spread to different states and Canada.

He departed the old Mennonite church on a couple of points. One of them was that he felt like they weren't raising their children in godly ways and they were accepting unconverted people into the church, in his view.

One thing that I recall being driven home as a young adult, that John Holdeman, when he left the old Mennonite church, that he took the candlestick of truth with him. We might say he saw himself as somewhat of a mini-reformer.

True doctrine, true understanding of doctrine, continued with him into a new environment, a new setting. The truth of the Church of God, the New Testament church, made it through history and all the way into the Holdeman structure, which we know as the Church of God in Christ, Mennonite.

The theology in the Holdeman Mennonites is not orthodox. Even at the gospel, they pervert who Christ is. When you hear the testimonies of the people in the church and then the bondage that these people in this group are under, they feel like they've been living on a treadmill and they can't keep up with it.

And then finally, the ones that come to Christ end up stepping off the treadmill and understanding the gospel and then just trusting in Christ.

My brother, he was planning to leave. Well, I told him all the things that people say, you know, well, the church isn't perfect, but it's the truth, and you're expecting it to be perfect, and it's not.

Basically, that's not fair to expect it to be perfect. He kept telling me, you know, giving me facts. And as I started looking into it, studying the church doctrines versus what the Bible had to say about it, I realized it wasn't the same thing.

I actually couldn't argue because it wasn't. He was right. It was not the same thing. It wasn't what I had been taught. So one day, it was kind of out of the blue, we didn't talk about things very much back then.

In our relationship, we really almost never did talk about spiritual things, or we just didn't communicate a lot about anything beyond daily life. And one day he asked me, if you could do anything you wanted to do with your life, what would you do?

And I remember I just felt like I went lightheaded and whatever, and I said I would leave the church. And he's like, I was scared you would say that. So that's when we started really discussing it.

I was against it. I wanted to stay. I was just, don't worry about it. It'll be all done. Out of sight, out of mind. It got to where for the first time in my life, I pulled out my Bible and started studying and digging into it.

I think that was probably the first time in my life on my own I've done something like that.

You wrote up papers.

Yeah, I had papers and was writing notes. They wanted to have a visit with us, and I sat there and told them, crying basically, that look, I wasn't going to leave at that point. Look, I need help. We need answers.

We want help with this stuff. I remember the one line for sure that was told a couple times, is they would just be like, you have a beef with the church. I'm like, no, I'm here begging you for answers.

And they never once, I think there was one or two of them, that had brought their Bibles and never once opened them.

Testing the Spirits and the Fear of Leaving

That's actually called an ad hominem argument, which is a logical fallacy. You went in with a specific subject. You said, I need help. So they ignore the subject, and they attack your character. And that happens all the time.

I find that many of the Holdeman people cannot recognize logical fallacies. Partly because they don't allow them to be educated beyond the 8th grade. There's no training in logic. There's no training in fallacies.

They don't train them to think critically at all. I have a question. So what happens if you, he's giving us an indication there, what happens, like 1 John 4 .1 says, test the spirits. Paul commends the Brians in Acts 17 .11 as being more noble than the Thessalonians because they tested everything the Apostle Paul said.

Here's the Apostle Paul teaching. And they're like examining everything he's saying with the Scriptures. Search the Scriptures daily. Exactly. So can you do that? Can you do that with the Holdeman preaching and ministry and counseling?

Can you do that with the Holdeman church?

You can if you want to see the exit door.

My understanding, most of those who leave end up coming back largely because of the fear that they've stepped outside of grace. They're no longer saved. There is a formal excommunication, and they may not eat closely together.

It does create a lot of fear, fear of spiritual death. In Hebrews it says that Jesus became one of us, that he might destroy this fear of death that keeps us subject to bondage. And fear of being separated from God is fear of death.

It's a fear of spiritual death. And so many are held in that fear that if I do the wrong things, then I'm out of step with the church. So there is a lot of people that are depressed and fearful and anxious.

I know of, I think, at least one person who is, personally who's on antidepressants. That's a common thing. Antidepressants is a common thing historically in the church. They just, a lot of depression.

I think their fear comes from not putting their faith in Christ and rather trying to keep up with man's rules and expectations, which always, that's just bondage. The head council of the church makes decisions that are binding, and to go against it is sin.

So they've set themselves up in a way that they're almost Christ. They've taken the headship of the church, but they claim to be doing it under Christ, of course. So there's written rules, but then there's understood rules of how you dress that may not be written down, but you feel the pressure and anxiety, and you'll know if the cold shoulder is being given to you.

You'll sense that you're not right in there with the click.

I was young, got married, and really didn't put much, just basically lived my life to maintain membership. Just trying to keep under that radar, and it never really worked. I wasn't chasing after Jesus, but I knew I wanted to be saved.

You know, the culture of saying that if you ever left this church, you're lost, so that held over my head. Like, okay, I'll do whatever it takes to stay in just so I can be saved. Well, that's not the gospel, that's not Jesus saving me.

That's not His blood covering me. I didn't know that. I was like, okay, I am going to study the Bible. And then I went through the New Testament again and again, and I kept saying, something isn't lining up with our belief system that we're in and what I'm getting from the Bible.

Something's not lining up. You go then to church, and you start to bring this out, and you start to get the looks. Like, hold on, we don't do this. And it bothered me. When I used to have hair, they said, your hairstyle, you need to change it.

Okay, so I changed it. And then, your hairstyle, you need to change it. So I cut it really short. So they said, your hairstyle, it's too sharp. And I told them, I can't wait because my dad is bald. I can't wait until I can go bald so I can be done with that issue.

I would get to a point where I was just ready to throw it all out, even God. Just throw it out. I'm done. I can't handle it. I can't live perfect enough. I can't drive the right, exactly the right vehicles.

It didn't matter. I would change. They would say, change this. I would change it. And then they would say, change this. I didn't gasp that, any of that. So that turmoil is going on. I can't do this. I just can't do it.

There's a long distance between the leadership and the laity. It's a performance-based religion. So if you're performing and you can maintain your performance, you feel fairly good about yourself, and you feel like everything's going pretty good.

But when your runner runs out, you can't do it anymore. You can't pedal your own boat. And it's a way of life that people accept. But there's really, a lot of it, there's no blessing. There's not the blessing of complete peace and rest.

Grace, Excommunication, and Life After the Holdeman Experience

I grew up having a good time. I had a lot of friends because of the way I'm wired and put together. And I was part of the Haldeman structure for 32 years, having been born there and raised in the home of a pastor or a minister, as they call it.

It felt generally warm. And I knew that people cared for me and loved me. And I grew up knowing that from my parents as well. I left my home area, Kansas, and went to California in 1965 and got married to my wife in 1966.

Grace and I had moved to a church plant by her uncle. We were encouraged to have home Bible study groups, which we did for many years, actually, in our home. And it was in that process, initially, as we studied the Scriptures, we came to discover that we couldn't accept the traditional understanding that we had actually grown up with as a result of having studied the Scriptures carefully.

And it was in 1976 when we were disfellowshipped from the Haldeman Church. They said we were an error. And we felt like we couldn't recant what we had come to understand and know based on Scripture and the freedom we have in Christ, knowing and believing that we were accepted in Him through faith alone, not having to belong to a certain group of fellowship people or Christian people or a certain church.

And, of course, that resulted in our excommunication. They tried to be gracious. They tried to be kind about it. But it was a very difficult time, emotionally and psychologically, as well as spiritually, because of the negative emotions that rose out of that experience.

Certainly, it put our relationship with our parents and our siblings in a difficult spot. They were very intent on observing what they called avoidance, like putting you aside, not sitting at the same table with them, reaching out a greeting of a handshake that represented fellowship to them.

And now that fellowship is broken by them, it puts you in a hard spot with your family. And so some of that has mellowed at this point after 40-some years, as far as that goes. I give praise to God for the work of Christ on our behalf.

And He helps us through these times. But it was very difficult. And it was difficult for them, too, for my parents and my father in particular.

We have been alongside a couple families that came out of the Haldeman Church through excommunication. The two husbands of the families that were coming out actually spoke at the council meeting and gave testimony, and one of them was delineating the errors of the church in front of the whole congregation when they were basically on trial.

It was a council meeting. They decided whether to put them on repentance, which is one step before excommunication. So you know you're in trouble if you're on repentance. And so the one brother, he testified, spoke against the false doctrines of the church.

And right when he sat down, the head minister stood up and said, this is the spirit we're against. Like a typical group that's not in line with orthodoxy, you don't ask questions, you don't doubt, you don't question people that bring up questionable things about your doctrine.

It's shaking the foundation of their hope.

It was difficult because I've watched this. I watched it enough times to know exactly what it was going to do to my family and to my husband's family and my friends. I knew what it was going to do to them.

I knew it was going to be very, very hard on them. And it was going to, they were going to be very afraid for me and for us, for our children. And I had started to question God's existence. Like I was at the point where I couldn't get anywhere.

So I was finally like, is there a God? Like that's where I was at. For years, I had to went back and forth between this. So then I just, that night I remember it was just dark and quiet and I just prayed, I believe you died for me.

And I just had this instant wash of peace. And I would say after that I started to understand why it was so discouraging before. Because after that I had a power that wasn't for me. And I knew it wasn't for me because I had tried and I couldn't do it.

I can't live something that's not biblical. You start studying their literature and they'll use a verse to support what they're saying. You look up that verse, you look at the context of the verse. There's too many times where it'll be the complete opposite of how they're using it.

You can't misuse scripture. Their doctrine of one true church, that's not in the Bible.

Menno Simmons had a very different view of the church than John Haldeman did. Menno Simmons believed in a view of the church just like we would. And I'm paraphrasing, but he says this. A church is a communion of believers who have been rightly baptized, who have covenanted together to follow Christ.

And it's a very simple definition. Well, John Haldeman comes along and he invents this radically different view of the church. John Haldeman comes along and he claims that with him, he's starting a one true visible church.

John Haldeman said this.

Now there's a distinction within Haldeman doctrine between the church and the kingdom. Where there's many believers outside of the church who are part of the kingdom. So they'll use two concentric circles to describe this.

And this is in their official doctrinal book. Two concentric circles. One, the inner one, is the church. The outer one is the kingdom. And those believers who are not part of the church are only part of the kingdom.

They're not part of the bride of Christ, the body of Christ, the church. They're just believers. And one of the main scriptures they would use is from John 10, verse 16. Where Jesus says, Other sheep have I that are not a part of this fold, them I must bring.

So they consider those outside of the church. There are other Christians that need to be brought into the fold of the church. The scripture only talks about one group of believers. Throughout scripture you don't see a division between this kind of believer and that kind of believer.

The Christians are Christians and they're part of the body of Christ. So that alone, just the whole picture of the New Testament speaks of the body of Christ. Which is everyone who's been joined to Christ.

And we look at the book of Revelation as well. There's seven different churches. They're all called churches. And yet we see each had different problems, different beliefs. And so the church is not just one visible group as they claim.

I think that Holdom and Mennonites need to understand that their group holds a view of the church that is very different from Menno-Simmons. Very different from the Waldensians. Very different from any orthodox group throughout church history.

Matter of fact, this view of the church is more in line with Jehovah Witnesses.

Or Mormons.

Or any other cult group. This view of the church that you're the only group in the world. That God is, you're the only church. That is a feature of a cult. John Holdeman said this. Now what is he saying here?

Well, what he's saying here is that his group, the Holdeman church, has the whole truth. And no other church, he uses the word church there in lowercase, no other group has the whole truth. Well he's not talking about the scriptures because, you know, we have the scriptures.

We have the same Bible. He's not talking about general revelation.

How are we in fact saved then? Are we saved by justification by faith alone? Or are we saved by belonging to the correct church?

Your trust and faith is shifted from, I'm clinging to Christ, I'm believing in Christ by faith, to, I'm trying to keep my membership in this church and keep a good standing with the elders and everyone else.

And if I leave, I'm in trouble, so there's fear there.

The one truth to church issue is one thing they won't talk to you about. And even when I was in there, I wouldn't talk about it. We didn't want to talk about it. In fact, in our community, we've had a couple of other people that, you know, were acquainted with some of the Holdeman group.

And they would like to challenge us about the one true church teaching. They would start having Bible studies. The Holdemans were thinking they were getting these people to come to the Holdeman church.

But then they were always asking about the one true church teaching. And it wouldn't be very long, they'd be upset, and they'd say, we don't need to have them Bible studying no more, that ain't working.

And it'd be all dismissed. And any time I've, since I've been out, tried to talk to them about it, there's no open door to talk about it because there is, they don't want to discuss it. After being raised in that and always looking up to those ministers, those ministers that come for revivals and always watching that, I was elected.

I never went to seminary. I studied the Bible some, but supposedly by inspiration, you're supposed to just automatically know how to preach. Well, I did the best I could. And some of the things that I studied and the things that really meant something to me were a lot about who Jesus was.

And that was a lot of what started the process for me of coming to where I am today because many a night I would sit and study different books and different old preachers. Spurgeon was one of them that really impressed me.

I would read them sermons. And we'd sit there, and my wife would sit there with me, and we'd just cry because this is the gospel, and we had never really heard it before. So it was so impactful. We would just sit there and cry.

So when I'd get up and preach and everything would just be dead, I'd walk off the rostrum and nobody would say a word because He wasn't precious to them, it didn't seem like. They wanted to hear more about submission to the church, getting our clothes right, having the right car, and a lot of those kind of things.

And it was very disappointing. They definitely want you to go to these annual meetings every year, which I wanted to go. I was an eager beaver preacher, and I wanted to get up there. So after starting going to those meetings, it was all about regulations.

And I've got a whole stack of minutes over there. I could get them out and just start going through it. Every talk, it's about big collars on dresses or the head covering being too small. You know, are young people wanting to play ball too much, or the weddings are too big, or they can't be driving their own car, or they can't be wearing the wrong shoes.

Most of the time, we'd be there three days or longer and not ever a word being said about who Jesus is and our faith in Christ and getting people to come to understand who He really is. And I'd start talking to my wife on the way home.

I'd say, I don't know what the deal is. The only answer we have, we don't talk about. The only answer to people's real heart need, what really changes the inside, we say nothing about. We just talk about getting everybody in this little box and corralling them enough that they'll all be good church members.

A couple of our really good friends got into trouble with the church over this one church doctrine. We go, what is going on? Because these people, we know they're Christians. They follow Jesus. We know that.

And we really hadn't had this conversation. A lot of this stuff is kind of hush-hush. So we went back to the Bible to study this, and it's not in there. One true church, visible church. We said, this isn't right.

This is false. And that really got us going on this journey.

There had been a few times when I was in the Mennonites where I would think, what if this isn't quite the right church? What if we're wrong? So I had a few of those thoughts. And when I did, it was, I'd say, beyond fear.

I was terrified of that question. I did not want to ask that. So I just shoved it down, didn't deal with it. When I came out, I was just so amazed by the praise that people can show God and just be so intimate.

I got involved with the Bible study group. That's where I found Jesus, and it was just full of life. There was around 20 members right at first. Then it grew so fast. Every week, there was probably one or two new members.

The intensity of it just brought true Christianity to me. It's that community of different believers out there that are so intimate with the Lord that are really pulling you through. And me being 19, it's so important for me.

At the church we go to now, I came in and I sat down beside an older gentleman. And I looked over at his Bible, and I saw it full of highlights. And he spoke, and the Word just flowed from him. And I thought, I'm going to sit here, and I'm going to listen, because I don't have anything.

But here you came from the group.

Here I came from the group.

The only group. And none of us have been to seminary. None of us have really been into very clear Bible study. We've studied the Bible through our childhood, but not with somebody that understood Scripture and context and all of these things to actually help you come to a clear understanding of how to use Scripture and where we just put in.

So we're just plopped into this. Therefore, the system is set up for people to fail. It's set up for ministers. Because I think many of them, they arrive at that place, and they're well-meaning. They want to see people come to God, but they really don't know about the Gospel very clearly.

They know a little bit. They've heard talk about Jesus, but it's mixed in with the system. It's not a clear teaching of Christ being first in everything and my trust being completely in Him. These little kids growing up in this church, every Sunday they come to church, one way or another, they hear that we are the only ones.

Every other church is part of the world. And so in order to get the approval, which the whole system is built on the approval of one another and of the higher-ups. So these little children, when they're growing up, the little girls want to wear that head covering.

It's not hard to make them wear it. They can't wait until they can put that on because that gets the approval. And this was something I was very concerned about. It really bothered me a lot, and I couldn't get through it.

They can't make up their own mind. They have to have the approval of their brethren. I can't, as a Holdeman Mennonite, I wouldn't be able to say, this is my conviction, this is what God wants me to do.

I would have to pass all of your proving.

We was focused on the system, but not on Christ. Christ was over here on the side. We focused on all this other stuff and then added Christ to it.

So I grew up in a Holdeman Mennonite church, and that's all I knew. So I got baptized when I was 13. It was after revival meetings, and I felt convicted, felt like I was a sinner. I went outside and stood on the top steps of the church and just kind of sighed a prayer, and I felt relieved.

And so that's what I was baptized on, but nothing changed in my life. I mean, I didn't read the Bible, I didn't pray. Nothing changed at all. At 18, I had what they called a death sin, so I was excommunicated and got reaccepted.

You know, you're just desperately trying as hard as you can to fit into the mold because this is the only life you know. And so then I got married at 20, one child, and then I got excommunicated again.

All this time, I didn't know it at the time, but I was self-medicating, deep emotional pain. And so after that, when I got reaccepted, I just, I call it swimming. I learned how to swim. From then on, I didn't give out as much information about myself.

Finally, I've accepted this is just Christian life. I don't know anything any different. And, you know, you talk to people and they say this is, I mean, this is it. So I just thought, well, okay, you know, I'll just ride it on out.

So then at 49, I got called in that revival, and that was the year they told me it appeared like I was born again and never converted, which means I possibly had found forgiveness of sins at 13, but then I never converted from the old life to the new.

Well, it kind of made sense a little bit because, I mean, if I found forgiveness of sins, I knew I never converted from the old life to the new. All right? But it only made sense because I didn't know any better.

So then at 49, I was excommunicated. I tried to get back into the church. Couldn't seem to make it work. And at 53, on 4th of July, we had all the children over. By then, they're all married, got grandchildren, had a great time together.

And the 5th of July, her phone rang, and she said, oh, the children want to come over. And I said, what the world? They were just over yesterday. You know? She said, well, they just want to come over.

I said, okay, fine. So they come filing in the house, sober as drudges. I don't know if they met somewhere, all four vehicles, and drove in together or what, hand me a piece of paper. So I'm reading it, and I knew immediately that they hadn't wrote it.

It wasn't their phraseology. It wasn't their terminology. It was a word curse. I mean, no hope, zero hope. And said, because you were verbally, emotionally abusive, we think mom should be taken out of the home.

And, I mean, I just kind of went into shock, you know, because this is out of the blue. I had no clue this was coming. And then she walked back to the bedroom, and I went back there, and she gave me a hug, and she said, this isn't my idea.

And I'm just in shock. And so she left, and I went and talked to the preacher, and I said, I don't know what to do. He said, yeah, we've talked about this. I said, I don't know what you're talking about.

I said, what do I do to get her to come back? And he wouldn't tell me. Of course, it was August by then, and extremely hot. I mean, I was mowing five acres twice a week and getting behind and doing my own laundry, doing my own cooking, and trying to keep the house clean and trying to run the business.

And I said, I think I'm just overwhelmed. That was an incredibly dark time in my life. But I was telling the preacher, well, I'll try to do whatever I have to do to make it work. And I started getting frustrated because I didn't know what to do.

Nobody would tell me what to do. I didn't know what to find. And so I kept going up the food chain, you know. I said, well, I started putting some pressure on him. I said, look, I'm not sure that this is of the Lord.

Church Discipline, Marriage Pressure, and Manipulation

Well, you know, we didn't do it on our own.

When we were helping a couple families that were trying to leave the church, there was a council meeting. And before the council meeting where they discuss whether to put this person on repentance or excommunicate them, they go and they talk to those who are in trouble, who are maybe in sin.

And they asked this one couple, and I was there in the room, whether each of them stood together. Like, did they take their stand to leave the church and against the One True Church doctrine or whatever it was.

And the wife specifically said that she stood 100 with her husband. When it came to the council meeting, the elder, one of the elders said, she said she stood with her husband, but I could sense, I don't think she really did.

And so they got put in two different categories of church discipline, or one was put in church discipline and the other wasn't, which creates this separation, this attempted divide. And we've seen this with couples.

They're not afraid to separate them to a degree in order to keep one. They'll definitely keep one in the church. They want to encourage them, well, you need to be united. You need to worship in the same place and be in the same place.

They'll bring some separation between the couple spiritually if they can just to keep one of them in the church.

Everybody knew, basically, that when they took my wife away from me, it was a terrible thing. It was completely unfounded, unjustified. But nobody dared to say anything about it, because if they did, they'd be the next one on the chopping block.

So I called this preacher and I said, what do I got to do to get my wife back? And he said, well, don't you think it'd be nice if you had an experience with God? And it clicked. This is manipulation. Because I'm not under their jurisdiction.

I've been out of the church for four years, and they're forcing me by taking her away for me to have an experience with the Lord and come back to the church, right? And so then I started to push back pretty hard.

I said, if this is such a good idea, why don't you go to the mission field, separate all the men and the women, tell the men when they get right with God, they can have their wives back. I mean, that'd be a great idea, right?

They got really, really worried that I was going to sue them. And I said, I'm not going to sue you. But they got just fierce worried. And so a local preacher came over one day and he said, sir, what do you think about having your wife come home?

I said, do whatever you want, because that's what you're going to do anyway. So they sent her home. She'd lost a bunch of weight. She didn't. I mean, she's stressed out, too. You know, this is hard on both of us.