U.S. Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches

Heritage

The Mennonite Brethren church began on January 6, 1860, when eighteen families in the Molotschna Mennonite colony of south Russia, stirred by the Pietist preaching of Eduard Wüst, seceded to form a fellowship of the demonstrably converted, baptizing believers by immersion. The great Mennonite migrations of the 1870s brought them to Kansas and the plains; later waves and mission work added congregations in California's Central Valley and the Pacific Northwest. The U.S. Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches — RCMS 2020 counted 218 congregations — now includes strong Slavic, Hispanic, and other immigrant constituencies, with Fresno Pacific University and Tabor College as its schools.

Theological family

Evangelical Anabaptist: believers' baptism by immersion, the new birth as the door to membership, biblical authority, nonresistance in its confession, and a churchmanship that reads Menno Simons and the evangelical revival as friends.

Who decides what

Congregational, gathered in district conferences and a national conference; congregations call their own pastors and own their own property.

What a first-time visitor would find

A visitor finds warm evangelical worship — in English, Spanish, Russian, or another language depending on the congregation — with believer's baptism by immersion and an expectation that faith is personal, testified, and shared.

What it has always cared about

Conversion and discipleship; missions, from the Kansas prairie to a global fellowship; Christian higher education; and the immigrant experience as a repeated, renewing story.

Its gift to the wider church

A working bridge between Anabaptism and evangelicalism — the Mennonite Brethren demonstrated that peace-church conviction and revivalist warmth combine naturally, and their repeated welcome of new immigrant churches keeps showing the American church how renewal actually arrives.

Commonly confused with

With Mennonite Church USA, a separate denomination of different descent within the same family; with conservative and Old Order Mennonites, plainer bodies; and with Baptists, whom their immersion practice superficially resembles.

Range of views inside it

Congregations range across language, culture, and worship style more than doctrine; attachment to the historic peace position varies in practice, a tension the conference itself discusses openly.

Where U.S. Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches churches are on the map

1 U.S. Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches congregations appear on The Church Map, across 1 states.

• California — 1