Mennonite Weekly Review

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — A forested area two hours’ drive from the capital is the homeland of a minority tribal people where a significant group of house churches has joined the Mennonite family of faith.

A Vietnamese pastor and his wife, who asked not to be identified by name, stand next to one of their cash crops, black pepper, drying on the ground. — Photo by Gordon Janzen/EMM

Leaders of these congregations met with North American Mennonites in March to talk about issues facing the Vietnamese church.

Leaders of house churches not directly planted by Anabaptist missionaries began identifying with the Mennonite church after receiving copies of the 1995 Mennonite Church USA confession of faith. The document was translated by Vietnamese Mennonites in North America and distributed widely in Vietnam.

As some Vietnamese Mennonite leaders applied for legal registration with the government, they also gave copies of the confession to the local authorities. They wanted to demonstrate that Mennonites were not some strange, indigenous sect, but part of a worldwide body.

In addition, the Vietnamese Mennonite leaders knew that the government had permitted Mennonite Central Committee to work in the country, and identification with Mennonite churches overseas could strengthen the argument that they were a legitimate religious body.

“It is mind-boggling to realize that during the decade that copies of the Mennonite confession of faith were circulating in Vietnam, an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 believers in unregistered house churches came to consider themselves part of the Mennonite family of faith,” said Don Sen­senig, a former Eastern Mennonite Missions worker in Vietnam.

In March, Sensenig and a Vietnamese Mennonite pastor from Canada traveled to the region to meet with 10 Vietnamese Mennonite house church leaders. For this meeting in an outdoor restaurant in a large market town, some of the house church leaders traveled several hours over rough dirt roads on borrowed motorbikes.

As the group assembled, one pastor, the head of this district of house churches, invited the leaders to share from their hearts. First, they expressed deep appreciation that someone from so far away had come to visit them.

Then they spoke of their struggles and challenges. As evangelical Christians, and a minority people, they are suspected of being disloyal to the Vietnamese regime. They are constantly monitored and questioned, although now rarely imprisoned.

Their way of life is changing. They can no longer practice traditional upland agriculture, and much of their farmland has been confiscated. Recent years have brought drought. There are few sources of income and limited educational opportunities. Their young people are being lured to the factories springing up near Ho Chi Minh City.