My Mennonite Youth
by Gijsbert Schilthuis

 When the phone rang, I was working on an answer for Louise Bergen Price. She asked me to write about my “Mennonite youth” in the Netherlands; after all it is the country of Menno Simons. But progress was slow. I wondered whether I had even had a specific Mennonite upbringing. Wasn’t it just like all the other kids?

 It was my sister on the phone. After lengthy travels she had come home for Christmas and to replenish her bank account. Expecting jokes and complaints about her day job at the time, I was happily surprised when she told me she decided she wanted to be baptized and that it would take place at Easter. Not me, but, my about-to-be-baptized sister, should be writing this story.

 Discussing her choice, and later reading a draft of her self-written confession of faith, childhood memories came trickling back: the small and cozy Mennonite church in Middelstum where we grew up, Sunday school with the children of the Dutch Reformed and the Rereformed Church (the triple reformed church did not participate), and later the International Youth Conference in the Mennonite Church of the regional capital Groningen.

 Not that I went to church a lot. Well, I did go to the building often, to help mow the lawn, turn on the heaters on Saturday evening, whitewash the walls, or, when I was older, climb the ladder to replace broken tiles on the roof. Church was work, and not always voluntary. Specifically mailings I thought rather tedious. My father wrote these on a classic typewriter, after which the newsletter was printed using an old-fashioned duplicator. After a long evening, he would come into the living room with ink stained hands; somehow he always managed to get it done. Then my sister and I came on the scene: folding the newsletters, sticking them into envelopes, putting stickers on the envelopes, and bicycle delivery. Although the church membership and list of “friends” was small, they seemed to live in all corners of the village and beyond. I think I was especially annoyed when I found out that a classmate, son of a local entrepreneur, got paid per envelope delivered for his father.

 Whatever Mennonite was, I only discovered later. Church was for special occasions. I especially remember those Christmases. At the time, in absence of a regular minister, and with everyone else booked for Christmas, daddy would prepare and conduct the service himself. He would ask my sister and me to read the Christmas story in a lovely version by children’s author and artist, Dick Bruna, and to play Christmas songs on our recorders. (I would like to take the opportunity to apologize for that recorder playing, although we did practice a lot.)

 When I was 17, I remember asking to attend the communion service, held once a year on Good Friday. I had never been to one, and wanted to know what it was all about, before I left to become an MCC trainee in Canada later that year. Don’t blame my parents for this lack of education though. For a teenager it didn’t seem particularly exciting. And it did not look or feel like a distinct way of life: Mennonite, or Doopsgezind in Dutch, was simply there. In hindsight it seems that with the stories from Peter Dyck and other Mennonites across North America, my personal Mennonite story got perspective.

 And there was local history too. Some of the farms, where I used to deliver the church newsletters, had been in the hands of Mennonite families for generations. One farm particularly, called Melkema, had been farmed by descendants of one particular Mennonite family from the sixteenth century until the middle of the twentieth. In those early days services were held in secret at home and it is well possible that Menno himself spoke, ate a good meal and spent the night at Melkema, before moving on to other places to spread his ideas about Christianity and to stay out of the hands of the authorities. Granted, such thoughts did not cross my mind when I jumped the ditches around neighbouring fields. And I am sure my mother did not especially care for the historic dirt and duckweed she had to scrub out of my hair. Nowadays, the Melkema farmhouse is a restaurant, but a modern painting of the old barn hangs as an icon on the white church walls.

 More history we found in the baptismal register of the church, which we studied the days leading up to the baptism of my sister, who was about to become a Mennonite sister too. Digging back into the nineteenth century we found older family members in the register, several with the same name as my sister’s.
 It felt like Christmas in spring, all those careful preparations for a special day. With a small church of 14 members (soon to be 15!) and around 25 “fellowship friends,” organizational matters came down on a few people. Some weeks before the service, a small session with Church members was arranged, where my sister read her confession statement. Then of course invitations for the service had to be sent, much more widely this time. A cleaning party needed to ensure the church looked proper and flowers were arranged. Kneeling pillows had to be brought down from the church attic and the copper font had to be polished. At home food and drink was being prepared, to ensure we could serve family members and friends from afar a good lunch, and raise a glass.

 Come to think of it, I think that is my Mennonite youth. Preparations. Helping out. Nothing glorious or deep, simply helping my parents with the upkeep of the church. “We cannot simply abandon the church here,” my father once said, “when there have been Mennonites in this area for five hundred years.” In a world awash with opinions and change, such preparations may be the rituals that bring some peace and contemplation, like cooking a meal and setting the table at home.

 I am sure my father and mother will smile at this observation, and sigh that it is a lot of work and not always easy. But on that glorious Easter Sunday of 2007 when my sister was baptized, it seemed well worth the effort. And I was asked, are you next?

Gijs Schilthuis lives in Brussels, Belgium where he works in the agriculture department of the E.U.