Mennonite Weekly Review

Old Order Mennonites, Amish and other conservative Anabaptists keep out of the media spotlight. So it’s a surprise to find them in a high-profile spot like the cover of Christianity Today, a leading evangelical magazine.

The May issue featured an unidentified, plainly dressed woman, along with a woman and child of another nationality. The photo was supplied by Christian Aid Ministries, or CAM. “Even in tough times, your favorite charities are surprisingly strong,” the headline read. CAM is the favorite charity of many Amish and plain Mennonites. Distributing material aid overseas, the Berlin, Ohio-based ministry is their version of Mennonite Central Committee.

The loyalty of CAM supporters caught Christianity Today’s attention. In a survey of giving by active Christians, CAM “finished far and away as having the highest average giving amount from individual donors,” writer John W. Kennedy reported. In 2008 the average donor gave $1,255. That kind of generosity has made CAM, founded in 1981, a $187 million organization. “Low-key [but] incredibly successful,” is Christianity Today’s assessment.

“We don’t feel comfortable pressuring donors,” CAM founder David Troyer told Kennedy. “We make them aware of the needs through the newsletter. Then it’s between them and the Lord.”

That understated approach fits the conservative Anabaptist worldview. “In contrast to the confident and aggressive posture of many evangelicals, Old Order faith is remarkably gentle,” write Donald B. Kraybill and Carl F. Bowman in On the Backroad to Heaven (Johns Hopkins, 2001). “A quiet and humble spirit is cherished.”

Humility shapes the Amish and conservative Mennonite approach to meeting physical and spiritual needs in the world beyond their communities. “Old Orders are not evangelists bent on converting the world,” Kraybill and Bowman write. “Devotion to God and treatment of their neighbor is their witness.”

This humble witness blesses the world with salt and light. It also helps to endow the body of Christ with diverse spiritual gifts. The Anabaptist faith tradition embraces both the quiet and the vocal. It has room for those who speak and those who let actions speak for themselves.

We need those who preach — the ones who, like the apostles, “cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20). Nor can we do without those who share the simplest of gifts, as Jesus said: “If anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones … he will certainly not lose his reward” (Matt. 10:42). Each of these shares the gospel of Jesus Christ, who healed both bodies and souls.

Whether we give to CAM or to MCC, we can be humbly proud of our Anabaptist material-aid ministries.