General Conference Mennonite Church - Organizing and Gathering

Organizing and Gathering

In the 1850s the Mennonite congregations of Franklin Center and West Point in Lee County, Iowa adopted a common constitution in order to cooperate in various projects, stressing the desire to preserve the religious faith of the small frontier groups of Mennonites. At their 1859 conference meeting a resolution was adopted to invite North American Mennonites to join this union in order to promote home and foreign missions. This invitation was extended to all Mennonites and published in Volksblatt.

At a meeting the following year, four individual from outside the local congregations attended the gathering, including one from Ontario and Oberholtzer from Pennsylvania. An association of Mennonite congregations was proposed that would accept any congregation, regardless of other connections, that held a basic set of Mennonite beliefs: baptism, non-swearing of oaths and the authority of Scripture. Complete freedom was to be permitted in all matters not explicitly taught in the Scriptures. Although Mennonite beliefs such as rejection of violence were not specifically mentioned, these were assumed to be covered by the authority of Scripture.

Agreement in essentials and freedom in nonessentials was the formula for uniting congregations that varied widely in custom and practice. This formal organizational meeting on 29 May 1860 is considered the beginning of the General Conference Mennonite Church. The minutes of the meeting refer to the group as Conference Minutes of the General Mennonite Community of North America (translated from German).

The group resolved to organize a mission society, establish a training school for Christian workers, form a historical society and print tracts. Daniel Hege was appointed to travel among Mennonite communities in the United States and Canada to promote cooperation for mission work and education.