An Anabaptist seeker finds alternative forms of community.

How long can a Mennonite survive without community? As definitions for both “community” and “Mennonite” evolve, I hear this question surfacing more often and experience its echo in my own life.

Growing up, I could knock on the front doors of three Mennonite churches within minutes of each other. I assumed that no matter where I ended up later in life, access to a broad Mennonite community would be available.

Even while attending a non-Mennonite college and serving with Mennonite Voluntary Service in a major city, a Mennonite congregation was only ever a city bus ride away.

But my adult vocation has me at a vibrant state college town in Ohio’s Appalachian foothills, 80 miles from the nearest Mennonite Church USA congregation.

Looking back on almost a decade since I moved to the place I now call home, I’m finally able to recognize that I muddled through all the major stages of grief after feeling like I’d simultaneously abandoned my faith tradition and that it had also, in many ways, abandoned me.

I’d convinced myself that in order to live where I did and to become the person I felt called to be (a creative writer, a leader, a feminist, an advocate for the arts), I needed to ignore or even cleanse myself from being Mennonite. But I eventually concluded that stepping outside my ethnic Mennonite culture would allow me to embrace a new life as an Anabaptist-by-choice.

The distinction between Mennonite and Anabaptist has become important to my post-college journey toward Jesus and my interactions with others. As someone born into a denomination, I feel that sometimes Mennonite refers to culture more than living out beliefs. When I pine for hymn-sings, my family’s 1840s farm or even my Grandma’s recipes, I’m really missing interaction with my Swiss-German culture.

But when I pine for everyday reconciliation or question my nation’s addictions to power through violence and wealth, I’m partly acting out of a deep homesickness for the kingdom of God—according to the Gospels, a vastly different existence from most norms in American society.

If this “upside-down kingdom” is so different, shouldn’t today’s Christ-inspired lives also reflect a deliberate choice to be unusual? For American Anabaptists today, perhaps recommitting ourselves to living simply, welcoming the oppressed as equals and refusing to support war in any form may be the most important acts of nonviolence we can commit to in our lifetimes. But how do we change and inspire as a faith family from the inside out?

When I help teach a popular undergraduate course called Difficult Dialogues: Women and Religion, I’m asked to share my own faith experience, followed by facilitated small-group discussions.

I’ve found that after I debunk popular myths and exaggerations portrayed in mainstream media about Anabaptists, the 100 or so college students react most visibly to two things: the Anabaptists’ history and continued practice of nonviolence and the fact that even though I still have deep concerns about my faith as a woman and artist, years of critical thinking and higher education have brought me back to my denomination, instead of driving me further away.

In my lecture, I don’t claim that the Anabaptists were or are without fault. And I try to stress that when any person really follows the teachings of Jesus, our bigger world often reacts with anger or dismay.

Yet when I tell these students about the “third way,” describing such things as the Sermon on the Mount, Ted and Company Theatreworks, relief sales, fair trade, Christian Peacemaker Teams or the Peace Tax Fund, our small group discussions are abuzz with family stories and tough questions.

Usually, a few students ask if they can come with me to church sometime, or others want online sources about alternative service in a region of Ohio where, for more and more students, only the military offers a realistic chance for college or a steady job.

Such a high-energy reaction gives me hope in the future of Anabaptism in America. And while I can be Anabaptist salt no matter where I go to church (through grad school and the first few years of marriage, I was an Anabaptist Quaker and an Anabaptist Episcopalian), I also need the mentorships of other Anabaptists.

For years, I’ve mostly found these mentorships outside any traditional church building. In fact, I’ve discovered some of the most unabashedly Anabaptist communities thriving “at the edges” of our denomination.

A hodgepodge of Anabaptist-affiliated books, sermon podcasts, blogs, writing conferences, magazines and artist gatherings feed my faith journey on Sunday mornings and into the week. Spiritually fed, I go out into my workweek and interact mostly with non-Anabaptists.

Though I’ve now joined the Mennonite Church USA congregation 80 miles from my house and try to attend once a month, virtual and temporary Anabaptist communities continue to lead me like bread crumbs back to a personal relationship with the Jesus of the Gospels, the Holy Spirit left to nudge us, and a fully realized goodness in the world I may never see.

Living and working so far from an in-person faith family isn’t simple or easy. I know that nothing can replace face-to-face fellowship and dialogue. But as someone dedicated to promoting and practicing the arts, I’ve also learned that choosing to live at the edges of society—even a national church family—can be part of healthy spiritual and social growth.

Though I don’t attend a traditional church ser­vice every Sunday, I feel more Anabaptist today than at any other point in my life. The older I get, the more people I meet who are also seeking out these alternative forms of Anabaptist community all over the world.

How will Mennonite Church USA reach out to these seekers, growing in number? And what can the body of the church learn from those who, either by choice or by location, remain “outside the box” of a traditional church building?

Becca J.R. Lachman teaches and tutors writing at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, and is a member of Columbus (Ohio) Mennonite Church. The Apple Speaks (Cascadia), her first book of poems, is dedicated “to humanitarian workers around the globe, but more for the families who love them.”