"All Believers": Reflections on the History
of the General Conference Mennonite Church
by Steve Estes

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This is the first verse of a poem originally composed in German by Henry Ellenberger (1784-1869), a Mennonite minister ordained in 1812. In 1850, at the age of 67 years, Ellenberger left the Rhenish Palatinate in Germany and migrated to Lee County, Iowa.1
There, on the prairies of Iowa, with people like Henry Ellenberger and with a conviction to "be always loyal to the LORD," the General Conference Mennonite Church began. These south German settlers in southeastern Iowa had been part of the South German Mennonite Conference and in 1853 two little Mennonite congregations at West Point and Franklin Prairie decided they needed something like it and adopted a common constitution. On March 21, 1859 they were prompted by an urgent sense of call to accomplish something for home and foreign missions. They recognized that only in united action could good results in mission be secured and called a meeting on the second day of Pentecost, 1860 in the German Methodist Church in West Point, Iowa. Other Mennonite churches were invited "for the purpose of considering ways and means for the unification of all Mennonites of North America."2

As one of the leaders, Jacob Krehbiel I (1802-1864)3 said:

May the Lord lend his blessing to this small beginning, that eventually a common bond of brotherhood bind all our Mennonite communities to work in unity that the brethren living in isolation may receive the pure gospel . . .

John Oberholtzer (1809-1895), a minister separated from the Franconia Conference in 1847 and founder of the East Pennsylvania Conference of the Mennonite Church, who himself since 1856 had advocated a "union of all the [Mennonite] churches in America,"4 published the report of this meeting in his periodical Das Christliche Volksblatt on April 20, 1859. He rejoiced that the western brothers and sisters were seeking to "blow the ashes from the glimmering coals that the flame of the Lord may appear."5
The next year "Father" Oberholtzer traveled the hundreds of miles form Pennsylvania to Iowa to attend and chair the first session of the General Conference Mennonite Church held on May 28-29, 1860. But first, Sunday, May 27, 1860 was Pentecost6 and someone described the moving communion service held that day:

In observance of this occasion as also for a preparation for the unification deliberations which were to begin on the day following the Lord's Supper was celebrated. The visitors from abroad [the Pennsylvanians, that is] also took part in this. To be assembled under these peculiar circumstances could not fail to bring the hearts of those sincere Christians into closer fellowship; being consciously reminded that all have but one and the same Lord.

The first resolution of this meeting of five little congregations declared: "That all branches of the Mennonite denomination in North America, regardless of minor differences, should extend to each other the hand of fellowship."7 And "all who hold to the fundamental doctrine of our confession, reach to each other the hand of fellowship and overlook those minor points wherein salvation is not to be found."8

This was the basis of unification: "the fundamental doctrines of the denomination . . . which we with Menno base solely upon the Gospel as received from our Lord Jesus Christ and his apostles."9 The union was to be conformable to I Corinthians 12:12-27: "All of you are Christ's body, and each one is a part of it!"10

And the reason for this union? "That hereafter Home and Foreign Mission shall be carried on according to ability by our denomination!" And education and publication were to resource this united church for its mission.11

"Unification for mission!" could have been their motto. With this vision for mission the "hand of fellowship" extends across the trajectory of these 137 years from a few south Germans and Pennsylvanians to a Vietnamese Mennonite Church in Winnipeg; from the prairies of Iowa to the sub-continent of India and beyond. And some have left to seek the place for them where salvation might be found.

After the first conference in 1860 John Carl Krehbiel (1811-1886)12 wrote of his attendance there:

I must confess that the pentecostal days which our heavenly father permitted us to enjoy will remain as an especially bright place in my memory of the past. For seemingly we were taken by the unifying spirit of God and together lifted to Tabor's height. Who would censure us for being filled with the wish to stay the flow of time, saying with the disciples: `Lord it is good for us to be here.'

The flow of time is not stayed. God's spirit is still at work among us. It is good for us to be the General Conference Mennonite Church. It is good for us to be wherever it is that God leads. The bright places of our memories of what it means for us to be the General Conference Mennonite Church are bright because of the places in which the flame of the Lord glimmers in our churches reflecting the light of the morning star.

When Henry Ellenberger wrote of Jesus Christ as the morning star he surely knew that the same planet that we see as the morning star is also the one that we see as the evening star. And in this time of the General Conference Mennonite Church, Jesus Christ is the evening star leading us to new life. He is giving us these "pentecostal days" in which to be loyal to Him, and is sharing with us the unity of His spirit that we are "all Christ's body, and each one is a part of it." Jesus Christ is giving us the opportunity to extend the hand of fellowship a little further in the Mennonite family, and is reminding us that we have "but one and the same Lord." He is challenging us to extend the "hand of fellowship" a little bit further to our neighbors, to the stranger and to the enemy. He is reminding us to remember and proclaim the glorious deeds of the Lord, that we are being transformed in Christ. We have a mission that we cannot do alone: to proclaim salvation-- a salvation that we proclaim by being "Christ's body and each one is a part of it." This is mission that we live when we "follow Him, our morning-star." AMEN.

Steve Estes presented this meditation at a communion service at the General Conference Triennial Session, Winnipeg, Manitoba, July 6, 1997. Steve is a chaplain at Meadows Mennonite Home, Eureka, Illinois, and a member of the Central District Historical Committee.

 

1 Howard Raid, Henry Ellenberger: Pastor, Poet, Pioneer, Organizer of the Zion Mennonite Church, 1851 (Bluffton, Ohio: Howard Raid, 1976) gives a succinct and informative account of the life and ministry of Henry Ellenberger. Ten of his poems are included in English translation. The verse quoted here is from the poem "Words of Farewell" which was originally printed in the Friedensboten.
2 H.P. Krehbiel, The History of the General Conference of the Mennonites of North America (Canton, Ohio: By the Author, 1898), pp. 30, 53; Samuel Floyd Pannabecker, Open Doors: The History of the General Conference Mennonite Church, Mennonite Historical Series, no. 11 (Newton, Kansas: Faith and Life Press, 1975), pp. 42-44. The Franklin Prairie congregation is now the Zion Mennonite Church, Donnellson, Iowa and the West Point congregation discontinued in the 1880's.
3 Das Christliche Volksblatt, 20 April 1859, p. 78 quoted in Krehbiel, History of the General Conference, p. 35 and in Pannabecker, Open Doors, p. 45.
4 Krehbiel, History of the General Conference, pp. 20-21 gives an English translation of John H. Oberholtzer's proposal which appeared in the editorial columns of Das Christliche Volksblatt in 1856.
5 Das Christliche Volksblatt, 20 April 1859, p. 78 quoted in Pannabecker, Open Doors, p. 45.
6 Krehbiel, History of the General Conference, p. 52. John H. Oberholtzer is referred to as "Father Oberholtzer" in Cornelius J. Dyck's book, Twelve Becoming: Biographies of Mennonite Disciples from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century, (Newton, Kansas: Faith and Life Press, 1973), pp. 48-49.
7 Krehbiel, History of the General Conference, p. 56; Pannabecker, Open Doors, p. 47. There is some controversy as to the actual number of congregations represented at the conference. Krehbiel, History of the General Conference, includes a "Table Showing What Churches Were In Conference At Each Session, 1859-1896" between pp. 398 and 399 which indicates four congregations in attendance: Zion (Franklin Prairie), West Point, and Polk City in Iowa and West Swamp in Pennsylvania. Cornelius Krahn and John F. Schmidt, eds., A Century of Witness: The General Conference Mennonite Church (Newton, Kansas: Mennonite Publication Office, 1959), p. 23 states that there is evidence that S.B. Bauman from Ontario was also in attendance. This would make five churches represented. Enos Loux accompanied John H. Oberholtzer from Pennsylvania.
8 Pannabecker, Open Doors, p. 49.
9 Krehbiel, History of the General Conference, p. 56 from Article 2 of the plan of union.
10 I Corinthians 12:27 from Good News Bible: Today's English Version (New York: American Bible Society, 1992), p. 1674.
11 Krehbiel, History of the General Conference, pp. 56, 59-60.
12 Krehbiel, History of the General Conference, pp. 63-64.

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Mennonite Historical Bulletin, October, 1997