I can count on two hands, the number of people I know or have met personally that have joined the Amish. But this is a question I get a lot of on my site and in my Facebook Group. So I’m going to attempt to answer that question.
What are some of the obstacles to joining the Amish?
So first of all, there are a number of obstacles to joining the Amish. And I should first say that the Amish generally do not recruit other people to join them. They’re not evangelistic or proselytizing in that way. So they’re not seeking converts. The Amish have families of 6, 8, 10, or more children, and the growth of the faith comes from that.
So they don’t have any problem with growing their church. It’s 99% natural growth. It’s not something the Amish are seeking to do to attract outsiders, to join them. And there are some reasons for that.
One is that the Amish acknowledge and realize that it would be quite difficult for an outsider to join them. You obviously have the cultural and tech, technological challenges there, and obstacles and differences between an Amish and non-Amish lifestyle. It should be pretty obvious you would need to give up your car and public electricity in your home, other forms of technology, the internet, all those things that we non-Amish are comfortable with, used to dependent on.
Note: many Amish businesses now have the internet for their businesses and more and more technology is being used, but outside the home. Read more about that HERE.
Those are all things that you’re not gonna have as an Amish person. So that’s an obstacle right off the bat. So the Amish are pretty realistic about that on the other hand too. There’s a big cultural gap.
There’s a mentality gap between a lot of the outside world and the Amish in certain ways. Right? Right. Non-Amish tend to be very individualistic. The Amish tend to be more of a communal or community-minded group where the community comes first before the individual. So that right there is its own kind of challenge, kind of a shift in mentality or thinking for someone who enters the Amish from the outside.
It fairly often doesn’t work out when people do join the Amish and people I think are attracted to the Amish for different reasons. I think sometimes people are living a very busy, hectic life with problems. And sometimes they look at the Amish as an ideal sort of community, maybe a solution to all of the pressures and things they’re feeling in their own lives.
And that’s not what the Amish are for, even though some people may seek them for that reason. So the Amish don’t really recruit.
Now that said, there are certain Amish churches or groups that you may consider to be more open to curious outsiders or open to seekers as they’re called religious seekers. There are examples of communities that had outsiders join.
There’s one in Virginia. There’s another one in Maryland that has had a number of non-Amish join. There was one in North Carolina that had quite a few non-Amish join, but the community eventually became something that wasn’t Amish, it actually became a more progressive church. The idea there was to set up a community, which would be easier for outsiders to join.
And in the end, the church actually became a no-order Amish church, not a horse and buggy Amish church anymore. Just a nondenominational church.
So that’s another concern of the Amish. That an influence of an outsider in coming into the church, someone who doesn’t have the same sort of background or mentality, could be potentially disruptive.
But you do see certain communities that are more friendly towards the outsiders in this sense, the New Order Amish are a group that has a reputation for being a little bit more evangelically minded or mission-minded towards outside people. That could be one pathway for some people, to through a New Order church. That said, it’s not like they’re getting a ton of people joining the New Order Amish.
So how do you join the Amish?
I’m not gonna be able to give you the exact formula and what it would take in each community because probably that’s different in different places. Because it’s not something the Amish deal with that often.
It’s not like every Amish community has a lot of experience with outsiders wanting to join. It’s not that common, but typically the Amish would generally expect you to come and live with them for a certain amount of time. And of course, live in an Amish manner, live in Amish ways, live like an Amish person in the community.
That would include learning Pennsylvania Dutch, which is the first language of the Amish community in the church. You need to have a horse and buggy. And they would be seeing how you fit into the community.
When Amish youth are baptized, they have to take a series of preparation courses where they’re prepared for that step. And of course, that would come for any potential joiner at some point.
But the first part is to understand if they could fit in and how they would feel living in the community, just from a cultural and lifestyle standpoint.
I sometimes get messages from people like, “Hey, so which communities should I join? You know, I’m ready to go. Is this one better than this one? What do I do? Who do I talk to? Where do I sign up?”
It’s just almost as if it’s like you just send in an application and you could be an Amish person in a week or two. It doesn’t work that way. It is a much longer process. And some people might find during that time that it’s not for them.
I’m not gonna give you the playbook of how to join the Amish.
You probably would need to talk to the individual Amish community that you are interested in, but, you’d expect something like that. You know have to live like an Amish person first, before you can even see if that’s something you could do or feel comfortable being.
Because it’s not just doing something it’s really about being something Being a part of something else, being a part of a completely different community.
Richard A. Stevick wrote the book “Growing Up Amish: The Rumspringa Years.” He estimated that around 300 people had joined the Amish. But about two out of three of those had ended up leaving again.
So why do some people fail to join? Or why do some people join and then end up leaving the Amish again?
I think there are several reasons why. This is what I’ve gathered over the years from hearing people’s stories and seeing these things play out.
One reason, maybe simply that they joined for the wrong reasons. I believe it was an Amish Bishop that Richard Stevick who quoted this in his book that said, “The people come from the outside and they want to join us and they want to join us for the wrong reasons because they fall in love with one of our young people. They want to join for love and marriage. And it’s not because they’re drawn to our faith and the way we live our faith and the way we believe the Christian faith should be lived.” That kind of strikes at the heart of it.
If you wanna join the Amish just because you think it’ll solve all your problems or you think that the Amish live some green lifestyle and harmony with the earth and you’re into that. Or you think I’d love to be a part of that kind of a community, but not understanding really what else is behind the Amish way, then you’re destined to fail because there’s a lot more to it than that.
The Amish are not a solution to personal problems. I’ve gotten some messages from people where you know they sound like they’re in a sad state and they’ve obviously got personal issues, family issues in their own lives, and financial issues in some cases.
They think joining the Amish is going to solve all that and it’s not. So they need to deal with that on their own and sort that stuff out. They’re probably not really interested in joining the Amish, they’re just interested in those problems being solved.
I don’t want to sound too negative here because there are some people that are genuinely drawn to the Amish. That’s another kind of group of seeker. Those that are drawn to the Amish for the faith reasons. Because they feel that the way the Amish live a Christian faith is they feel it best reflects say the early church and kind of what Jesus left the apostles.
Some people want to join because of the faith, but many want to join for other reasons because they don’t understand that there’s a faith that’s underneath all this.
That’s a huge part of all this. They’re joining because they just think it’d be cool to live on a farm and grow your own food and be organic and or whatever. And to live off the grid. So there’s, that’s kind of a lifestyle seeker type. You, you come for that because you think that’s fun, but you don’t need the Amish for that.
There’s a whole lot of other stuff that comes along with the Amish, besides living off the grid and having an organic farm. Most Amish don’t have organic farms to begin with, but that’s another topic.
Another issue that causes people not to become Amish or to leave the Amish is that they join and then they become disenchanted with the Amish. When they looked at these people from the outside, they saw them as some ideal type of people, that they’re perfect people, or this is some kind of a utopia where nothing goes wrong and people don’t have problems.
When they come to the Amish, they find out the Amish are people too, and they have their own problems. There are issues in relationships in the Amish community. Their people have all the sort of foibles and flaws that are a part of human nature.
That doesn’t mean that the Amish don’t try to be good people. And certainly, there are many, many good people among the Amish. But they also have flaws because they’re people. And so some people come from outside and they see that and they become disenchanted.
Some of the people come in and they may even try to change the Amish in some direction.
“You guys do everything great, but this one thing you don’t do kind of the way that I think you should be doing it. So let me try to improve this group.”
That doesn’t really work out too well. That is one of the concerns of the Amish about outsiders joining.
There are cases of non-Amish people joining the Amish. They joined and have been Amish for many years. Marlene Miller lives in Ohio. Marlene joined an Old Order Amish community in Ohio, in Holmes County.
Marlene grew up non-Amish. She was English. She was a drum majorette in the marching band in her high school. She met an Amish guy in her community and they fell in love. She ended up joining the Amish.
This idea of joining the Amish because you fell in love with someone, some Amish may not think that’s the most ideal way to do it, but of course, it does happen and it has happened. Marlene joined the Amish and she stayed Amish all her life.
Marlene has a big family. Marley is just the happiest and fun and bubbly kind of person. If you met her, you would remember her. She wrote a book entitled “Called to Be Amish: My Journey From Head Majorette to the Old Order.”
So she came from a nonfarming household. She said, “It was 1971 before I ever tried harnessing and hitching up our road horse.”
She wasn’t immediately a horse person. If you read Marlene’s book you know she may have joined for her love of a young man, who became her husband, but she seemed to have a pretty strong conviction in her faith as a Christian and being an Amish person in the community.
When asked if she knew anyone else who had joined the Amish, Marlene said that yes, two married families who lived 10 miles from her. Also another man who was in his seventies wanted to marry an Amish widow. And he joined the Amish faith, married her and had a wonderful life.
Sadly, Marlene passed away in 2020.
Can you join the Amish?
I’m not gonna pretend to be the expert on joining the Amish, but just from my observation and experience, understanding people over the years and hearing from people over the years, I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone. You need to be really honest about what you’re looking for, what are your motivations, why are you attracted to the Amish?
Why do you want to join the Amish?
Because like Marlene said, it’s not just anyone can do this and that’s okay. YIt’s not for everyone. It’s not for most people to become Amish. And the Amish understand that. Look at the vast difference in the culture between Amish and non-Amish Americans
If you have a conviction and interest in the Amish way of Christianity, you may find that another church shares a lot of the same beliefs as the Amish, but is maybe a little bit easier for a non-Amish person to join.
Maybe a Mennonite church or a Charity church will be a better fit in that case because there are churches that share a lot of the same beliefs as the Amish. There are also Anabaptist churches and they also vehicles. They have a more modern way of life. So that could be a better fit.
Be honest with yourself about why you want to join or why you have this interest in joining the Amish. It’s not an escape plan. If you have other issues going on. It’s not that the Amish don’t care, it’s just that everyone in the Amish community makes their own living. It’s not a communist system. It’s not like you just go there and get taken care of. Everyone’s expected to work hard and provide for themselves because each Amish home is independent and family is independent in that sense, and they make their own living. Although they of course help each other in the spirit of Christian mutual aid when needs arise.
But it’s not just a place to kind of go and say, “Hey, take care of me.” And it’s also not a place to go to try out the life lifestyle or because you’re into solar power or organic farming or you like horses. Those are not the reasons to want to join the Amish.
Definitely visit the Amish and make friends with them and experience that life. But you can kind of get those things without becoming a part of a quite vigorous and drastically different church community.
For some people joining the Amish is the right decision, but it is not something you rush into.
