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Our congregation gathered for worship on a beautiful September Sunday morning at the Conley farm in western Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. This was the fourth of a series of weekend meetings we call "love feast"—the high point of our church year. An intense spiritual experience, the series culminates on Saturday evening as the plainly dressed, bearded brothers and the sisters in their capes, aprons, and snow white head coverings wash one another's feet. Then, positioned around long wooden tables, they exchange the kiss of peace and pass the bread and cup of Communion in a complete circuit.

All of this takes place in a spacious Pennsylvania "bank" barn, built in 1876. The barn had been merely an agricultural building until, a few days before the services, a crew of the brethren had attacked it with brooms and blowers, preparing it to house more than 200 worshipers. Now the congregation gathered here for four separate services of preaching, singing, and testimonies totaling more than ten hours. The heartily sung but slow a cappella melodies of the brothers and sisters rose to the rustic rafters. To many of those assembled, this was as inspiring as a trained choir in an ornate cathedral.

If asked, none of the members would say the barn had "become a church." Neither would they say they were "going to church" when they gathered for their regular weekly worship services. Instead they might say "the church was having meeting" in the barn. The brothers and sisters of like precious faith are the church, and not having a regular building for their worship accentuates this fact. Although this congregation has many of its meetings in their school close by, the families of the brotherhood take turns sponsoring the meeting, which includes providing a noon meal.

This small body of Christians is one of many independent "plain people" groups. They represent a version of Christianity that stresses simplicity in lifestyle, especially in dress and worship. There is no nonsense in their worship: no effort to entertain the members with special music, no dramatic lighting, grandiose art or architecture, or professionally trained ministry. The focus is the inspired Word of God, which, when preached, moves many to tears.

The people meeting at the Conley farm belong to the Old Order River Brethren. This group is often confused with the much larger and better known Old Order Amish, with whom they have much in common—plain clothing, beards, simple worship in houses and barns. But the Amish forbid car ownership and electricity from public utilities, and use German in their worship and Pennsylvania German in everyday life; all of which are not typical of the majority of Old Order River Brethren.

There are also numerous groups of conservative Mennonites close by, each with their own distinctive symbols and practices. All are "plain people." Most of the different plain groups associate and cooperate with each other in various ways (half the students in the Old Order River Brethren school are from conservative Mennonite families). Actually, distantly related groups who share common convictions on non-conformity to the world interact more with each other than with the mainstream groups from which they withdrew.

All of the plain elements of the Anabaptist family grew from a similar concept of the church as a visible body of believers, distinct from the world in almost every way. Many of these spiritual descendants of the 16th-century Anabaptists (Old Order Amish and Old Order Mennonites) adhere to a confession of faith drawn up in 1632 at Dordrecht, the Netherlands:

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October (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50