The covenantal and postmillennial emphasis that has historically marked Reformed and Puritan life is one of the most compelling aspects of the Christian story….The biblical world picture involves the succession of generations, of the sovereign Lord producing godly seed through godly parents (Malachi 2:15).

One morning in the spring of 1990, my sister and I watched our mom drive off the farmyard for the last time. After years of struggle and then a very tempestuous night in our home, it was now clear that our family had changed forever.

Growing up I became deeply aware of the sharp contrasts in the world around me. Ours was a close-knit community. A small farming town made up of Mennonite families who had been intertwined with one another for generations. These families had moved to Prussia together from Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands in the mid 1500s. When their way of life came under strain there, they moved as a group to Russia in the late 1700s. As religious freedom waned in Russia, and the Canadian prairies opened up, another mass migration happened in 1874. Through a combination of necessity and conviction, the Mennonites formed and maintained a very distinct culture. Always wary of “the world,” they kept their Low German language, their energy-dense food, their familiar last names, and their particular expression of the Christian faith intact.

In 1990, much of this accumulated history remained on display. Our small town was largely represented by a small handful of last names, a church that served as the hub of community life, and a long tradition of honouring history, hard work, and preserving a distinct identity. Families were tight-knit and marriages were forever, except for my family. We served as the singular case of contrast, one that stood out very obviously in an otherwise homogonous microculture. My parents’ divorce marked uncharted water for the community, and I grew up keenly aware of the fact that I was now living in two different worlds.

One world mirrored what wider western and Canadian culture was becoming: mobile, transient, temporary, and enamoured with the novel values of secularism and the sexual revolution. The other world was connected to the old ways: fixed, generational, stable, and close-knit. Despite the unsettled nature of our home life, it remained true that that my school class, my hockey team, my baseball team, and my Sunday school class were all the same group of guys. I loved it. I was naturally drawn to anything that resembled stability and strength. Our dairy farm was a quarter mile from my grandparents’ dairy farm. I frequently stuffed a kitten into my pocket and rode my bike to grandpa’s after dad and me had finished morning chores, so I could “help” him too. The help usually consisted of me getting pushed around the barn in grandpa’s silage cart. Life was simultaneously unsettled and idyllic. After the divorce, our farm was sold and my family moved to the American west coast where I finished high school.

God was kind to me amid all the change. Good memories were made and new friendships formed. Yet as I grew up, I felt increasingly uncomfortable inhabiting two worlds that already barely touched, and which seemed to be growing further apart. As I observed the world of transience and contemporary values, I found myself drawn more to the old ways. This disposition was in me as a small child already, but the intentionality with which I pursued the permanent things grew stronger as I got older.

After high school, I moved back to my old hometown. I lived with my grandparents and spoke primarily in Low German with them. I wanted to be sure that the language of the old world continued to live through me. I became a member of my old church, the one in which I was the fourth generation Plett man. I enjoyed my grandma’s traditional Mennonite cooking and loved nearly every minute of working on the original home farm with my grandpa and uncle. When I started a new career at the local feed company, I met my wife. She was from one town over, also from a dairy farm, and from the same strain of Mennonites (Kleine Gemeinde [lit. “small church”]) that established my town. Starting my own family was a driving desire in my life. I knew that I wanted to move on from the unhappiness of my past, and it always seemed that the best way was to press ahead and do what I could to establish the stability I had so powerfully craved as a kid. God was merciful and He has blessed me with a wonderful wife and an incredibly fulfilling marriage. He has filled our home with three children who are now on the cusp of starting their own households.

Six years into our marriage, we had the opportunity to purchase the farm I had grown up on; the farm that sold after my parents’ divorce. This was a very specific answer to years of prayer. We started farming there as a family, and I was blessed to now provide my children with the life that was taken away from me. My sense of the importance of history, of family identity, and of being “home” grew in both importance and beauty. A few years after starting our own farm on my home place, my wife’s home farm came for sale. It provided a bigger opportunity for us, but my sense of having gone “back home” made this a difficult decision.

Eventually the decision was made to move our farm. But even here there were plenty of reminders of how interconnected the old world was. My grandma informed me that the 100-year old hip-roof barn on the new farm was built by her grandfather, and moved to its current location by my wife’s grandfather. It further turned out that my grandpa helped my wife’s grandpa cut the lumber that was used to build our farmhouse. The saw they used is on display on our living room wall. I was connected to my ancestors even amidst a move to my wife’s family farm.

My instincts have always been of a conservative nature. I have always valued the permanent over the popular; the stable over the sexy. The values that came in vogue after the 1960s always seemed unserious to me. The egalitarianism, progressivism, collectivism, the sexual license, and the transience seemed capable of using up the capital that past generations had built, but entirely unable to create more capital or even of maintaining what capital remained. The move from the silent generation to the boomers appeared to resemble a car that grandpa filled up before parking. My parents’ generation went on a joyride until it was empty, then left it parked that way for their children. It seems like the whole world was moving into a prodigal son mentality. An entire generation was happy to walk away with all the wealth previous generations had built up and contented themselves with the notion that they’d be rich for weeks. The emphasis had seemingly shifted from playing the long game to pursuing self-fulfilment and leisure.

Becoming a father in 2005 forced me to reckon with the responsibility of shepherding little hearts. I wanted this work to be intentional, and I wanted a surer foundation than personal instincts and cultural memories to raise my own family with. Bible study and exploring different questions took on a new intensity for me. Through a series of many complex providences, I found myself exploring Calvinistic soteriology, quite much against my wishes. The Mennonite expression of Christianity revolves quite strongly around personal morals such as pacifism and distancing oneself from the world. It has never really concerned itself with doctrinal precision, expository preaching, with a theological vision that extends beyond the private life of Christians, or with the history of Christianity. Calvinism was definitely bad, but we weren’t quite sure why.

Since the earliest days of Anabaptism, there has been a self-conscious rejection of the history of the church with its creeds, confessions, and public theology. The proverbial baby was thrown out with the bathwater. Everything between the book of Acts and the rise of the Anabaptists was seen as part of the idolatry of the Roman Catholic church, to be discarded wholesale. Lutheran and Reformed Christians preserved too much history. They knew too much. Their theological vision was far too ambitious. Their understanding of sola fide would probably lead to loose morals. Ironically, the (small) tradition which had given me so much comfort growing up had its roots in an intentional rejection of the (big) Tradition which has marked Christianity through the ages. Mennonites are often quick to point out that while they aren’t Roman Catholic, they are also not Protestant. Nor are they in between. They represented a very radical approach to the faith which allowed them to look at all the major streams of Christianity with suspicion. It is a tradition of rejecting Tradition.

Nevertheless, I am thankful that my Mennonite tradition instilled in me a respect for the authority of Scripture. Because of this I remember being at a crossroads of telling myself “If I’m committed to the inerrancy of the Bible, and to the laws of logic, then Calvinism is correct. But I don’t have to like it.” I made the uncomfortable change in doctrine and lived in that dissonance until a winter of depression caused me to see that God’s meticulous sovereignty was not merely true, but also good and beautiful. I remained firmly planted within my Mennonite church setting despite this change in my theology. My love of history and identity was strong enough that I never considered switching churches to even be an option.

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