We of the General Conference have journeyed together for 139 years. Only a few were present at the beginning in 1860, many joining only recently. Now in our wanderings we stand on the banks of a great river, poised with the Mennonite Church, about to cross together into a new land. Today we give thanks for blessings past, to rejoice in blessings present, and to pray for blessings to come.

Incredible: this moment in our journey. A time of death and a time of birth. A time of savored memories and a time of great expectations. A time of sadness and a time of joy. A time of gratitude for glimpses of God's grace, and a time to dream and plan..

In 1971 at our triennial conference in Fresno, California, in the Schowalter Memorial Lecture I sketched in 18-year modules the story of the General Conference: Reedley 1917, Upland 1935, Portland 1953, Fresno 1971, and then projected 18 years beyond to 1989. Many of those predictions I wish were erased, but in one I delight. I quote:

Inter-Mennonite unity will come, perhaps not from negotiation at the institutional top, but in a variety of functional ways. New mission programs [together].... Young congregations asking for dual conference membership.... With a providential development here, an inter-Mennonite... experience there--some day, some place, some... will say: "It is here--a new Mennonite fellowship of congregations--and we had not planned it. It just happened. Or did it just happen?" If there is a 1989, it might be that in that year there will no longer be a General Conference--and it may not be a story of death and sadness, but a story of birth and joy.

A prediction just 10 years off target!

Reflect on these 139 years as a journey with Abraham and Sarah--setting out for a place to be received as an inheritance--a journey of faith. Or consider these years as the long walk to the village of Emmaus--along the way two disciples discuss all the things that had happened. A stranger draws near, listens, talks with them, and interprets that which puzzles and troubles them. Arriving at the village, they invite the stranger, "Come stay with us." At the table he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Their eyes were opened and he vanished. They said to each other, "Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened the Scriptures to us?" They hastened back to Jerusalem to share "what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread." Christ--Lord of our journey.

We sketch our long journey as a General Conference people--our walking the Emmaus way, again and again sensing the radiant presence of the stranger as together we work, study, talk, witness, pray, sing and break bread together. This has been a spiritual journey. Along the way we have sung the haunting strains of "Stay with Us" and the yearning plea, "Come, O Blessed."

With time limited, I can sketch the story of the 139-year journey for only the first 100 years.

The decade of the 1860s. The General Conference was born in a time of trouble. A savage civil war erupted in the United States. Far away in Russia, Mennonites split into two groups. A new nation was born: the Dominion of Canada. Thirteen years before, in 1847, in Eastern Pennsylvania Mennonites split over issues of practice and polity--alienation that has lasted for generations. Two hundred miles north of here along the Mississippi River in a borrowed meetinghouses near the village of West Point, Iowa, a few pastors from a handful of Swiss South German congregations met to form a loose fellowship: the General Conference of Mennonites in North America. In 1860 that Iowa meeting was out on the far western edge of Mennonite settlements. Audacious--this call to the Mennonites of all North America to form a union, to launch home and overseas missions, to publish literature, to establish a school for preparing pastors, and to send Reiseprediger (traveling pastors) to gather Mennonites into congregations. Within a few years at Wadsworth, Ohio, they opened a school to support the vision for an awakened, unified Mennonite peoplehood. The presumptuousness of that tiny group, recent immigrants all!

The 1870s. Disappointments plagued the young conference. Some supporters drifted away. Promising leaders died. The Wadsworth school closed. However, new life came from an unexpected source. Far away in Russia and Prussia, rulers introduced military conscription. Fearing loss of their nonresistant faith, Mennonites in Prussia, Austria and Russia saw in North America a refuge. Leaders of the infant General Conference and "Old" Mennonites formed a Mennonite Board of Guardians to aid 18,000 Mennonites to migrate to the western prairies. A century ago--this first step in integration! Arriving in the new land, many of the immigrants found hospitality and commonality of spirit and purpose in the General Conference. In the next decades these immigrants would enrich the young conference with their gift for choral music, their flair for organization, their commitment to congregational polity, their concern for education and their shared interest in missions. Meanwhile, congregations from the 1847 schism joined the conference.

The 1880s and 1890s. By the century's end, an expansive United States muscled its way into being a colonial power. In this society of brawling capitalism and burgeoning cities, GC Mennonites remained a German-speaking rural people, in 1890 numbering only 5,000. However, the Conference was busy gathering into its fellowship a rich new mix of Mennonite sub-groups, most of Dutch rather than Swiss lineage: Mennonites from West Prussia, Austria, Ukrainian Russia, Volhynia, Alicia, Switzerland. Each came tenaciously separated by dialect, church polity, economic status, patterns of worship, food systems. Gradually these diverse ethnic groups coalesced into the loose fellowship of the General Conference. The miracle of unity was achieved as they sang from a common hymnal, read a common periodical, joined in support of schools and reached out in mission. In 1880 a mission in Oklahoma Territory was begun among the Arapahoe and the Cheyenne Indians.

Those were exhilarating days of institution building: Sunday schools, committees and boards, a church paper--The Mennonite, homes for the aged, a publication center at Borne, Indiana, launching of academies and colleges: Halstead and Bethel, Greta, Bluffton and Freeman. The General Conference belatedly was copying the confident, aggressive ways of American denominational institution-building. From a Russian immigrant pastor-educator, C.H. Wedel, came a bold, expansive vision for his people: a Gemeinde Christentum (a congregation-empowered people witnessing beyond to society)--an authentic Anabaptist vision 50 years before the Bender formulation. But, alas, a vision that failed to cross the language barrier from German to English.

The 1900s. Entering the new century, powerful new forces pressed in upon these separated German-speaking General Conference Mennonites. Acculturation in the American melting pot. The invasion of the telephone, automobile and Sears Roebuck catalogs. The magnetic attraction of cities and professions. In the wake of the Spanish American War, the lure of flag-waving patriotism. Winds of secularism blew in from marketplace and university. And a host of persuasive religious movements beckoned enticingly to Mennonites insecure in their faith or impatient with a bland spirituality: revivalism, holiness movements, pentecostalism, dispensationalism, non-denominational Bible schools, Student Volunteer Movement, fundamentalism and also liberalism--Social Gospel and ecumenical doctrines, biblical criticism and varied forms of progressivism. With General Conference academies, colleges and seminary not firmly in place, our people were buffeted by strong currents that sometimes swept away the unwary. And yet the Conference had much to celebrate: the opening of a mission in India and, by 1906, a doubling of membership to 12,000. With its core commitment to unity, the Conference gained a denominational legitimacy when it joined the ecumenical Federal Council of Churches. Meanwhile, two groups who would later join in the GC journey, formally organized: the Conference of Mennonites in Canada and the Central Conference (a group of Illinois congregations of Stucky Amish origins.

The 1910s. Americans rode the crest of an era of progressivism: Roosevelt and Wilson in the White House. Missionaries were sent to the Congo and to China. City missions opened in Los Angeles, Chicago, Peoria, Hutchinson and Altona. Membership grew to 18,000--50 percent growth in a decade. In response to an editorial in The Mennonite, the first of a series of five All-Mennonite Conferences was held--again the GCs carrying the torch for inter-Mennonite unity. Mennonite pastors visited sister congregations in western Canada, offering the hand of fellowship. More than 500 youth were enrolled in Mennonite colleges. Bethel and Bluffton began to offer A.B. degrees. GCs were moving into the towns and entering the professions. GCs, once a separated people, were priding themselves on being accepted as good Americans. Then the shock of U.S. entry into the Great War. Pacifist Mennonites were shaken by rejection and harassment from erstwhile friendly neighbors. Long thereafter they would feel guilt in their inability to gather as Historic Peace Churches to cope with issues of the draft. The Conference withdrew from a Federal Council of Churches caught up in the fervor of a great patriotic war. Mennonites were still a fragmented people. Several hundred peace-minded GCs fled to Canada for refuge. Also, buoyed by wartime profits, giving to the General Conference soared.

The 1920s. In the wake of World War I secular, worldly forces invaded rural General Conference communities: the automobile, radio, Hollywood, centralized schools. Intimidated by wartime anti-German feelings, congregations abandoned German for English. Farm prices collapsed. Angry theological winds stirred up acrimonious church conflicts. With "Old" Mennonites suffering from a period of stress, several M.C. congregations and a number of their young leaders joined the General Conference and, thus, added strength. This exodus, however, scarred MC-GC relations. The Bolshevik revolution, civil war, famine and terror that struck in far off Russia awakened American Mennonites to the plight of distant kinfolk, among them, martyrs to their faith. The General Conference engaged earnestly in the creation of the Mennonite Central Committee. Most important, 20,000 Mennonite immigrants poured into Canadian prairie provinces. Soon 41 Canadian congregations joined the General Conference, bringing the Conference total to 159 by 1929. Within a generation this influx of Canadians would enrich enormously the vitality and spiritual life of the General Conference. Meanwhile, the Conference opened at Bluffton, Ohio, Witmarsum Theological Seminary for the preparation of pastors. Dozens volunteered for the mission fields in India and China. Shaken by a lack of preparedness for World War I, peace committees were organized. Youth societies flourished. In 1929, several months before the stock market crash, the Conference held its first triennial session, not in a church, but at Hutchinson, Kansas, in a city hall, the delegates staying in hotels and eating in restaurants. Then came the Great Depression.

The 1930s. Deep in the Depression, the next triennial conference was postponed a year, the meeting held in 1933 in Bluffton. In that troubled decade, institutions struggled. In 1931 Witmarsum Seminary closed. In 1932 Bethel College was in danger of closing, with Bluffton and Freeman colleges in peril. The Great Plains suffered the worst drought in history. War threatened in Europe. Mussolini, Stalin, Franco and Hitler bullied their way to power. Japanese armies overran the mission field in China. Amidst this, the General Conference evidenced an inner resilience. The colleges rebounded. In 1935 the Foreign Mission Board reported 1300 church members in India, 1000 in China. The Congo Inland Mission, not yet a conference program, reported 3000. The Conference Peace Committee became active. In 1935 the General Conference leaders hosted in Newton a landmark meeting of the Historic Peace Churches that lay groundwork for united action in event of war. And war came, September 1, 1939, as Nazi troops invaded Poland.

The 1940s. For six years a savage war engulfed the globe, leaving 50 million dead, and a legacy of the Holocaust and nuclear annihilation. War laid bare the uneven commitment of GCs to peace. A majority of drafted young men entered military service. But under wartime test, GCs rebounded. In the United States they joined other Mennonite groups, plus Brethren and Quakers, in a program to administer Civilian Public Service--the biggest institutional enterprise in all Mennonite history. GCs contributed a substantial number of leaders to that program. In Canada three major Mennonite groups negotiated with the government in behalf of alternative service for COs. Buoyed by a sense of confidence in their wartime efforts, GCs gave generously and volunteered in numbers to MCC's global program of relief and reconstruction. At war's end, finding 11,000 Mennonite refugees from Russia and West Prussia homeless in Germany, MCC coordinated a massive resettlement program in Canada and South America. The Conference opened a headquarters in Newton. A mission opened in Colombia. Mennonite Biblical Seminary was born in Chicago. The Central Conference joined the General Conference and brought with it the largest mission field of all in the Congo. Canadian Mennonite Bible College opened. After the war, from Canada flowed into the Conference the greatest stream of pastoral, missionary and institutional leadership in its history. The irony for the General Conference in that tragic decade of war: that it was also a time of renewal and restored confidence.

The 1950s. The General Conference we know today was born in the 1950s: a new constitution with four boards, generous constituency funding, the influx of new young leaders tested in wartime and postwar service, opening of mission fields in Taiwan and Japan, launching of voluntary service, a series of conferences to tackle issues of conference identity and purpose, a recovery of a sense of Anabaptist identity. GCs had known in their bones what it meant to be Anabaptist Mennonites, but now this identity was coming into articulated focus. Exhilarating days. Enhanced by wartime income, the ‘50s witnessed an explosion of institution building: retirement communities, church camps, mutual aid enterprises, local church construction, expansion of college campuses. The walls of Mennonite separation breached during the war, the General Conference became partner in a host of inter-Mennonite enterprises, many under the MCC umbrella: psychiatric centers, Mennonite Disaster Service, MCC relief sales, canning for relief, Mennonite Mutual Aid, Menno Travel Service, MEDA--at last count, some 79 inter-Mennonite entities and linkages. The most significant event of the decade was the decision to move Mennonite Biblical Seminary from Chicago to Elkhart, there to be linked to Goshen Biblical Seminary, then step by step to become integrated Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary.

Conclusion. From this bonding of the two conferences has come a series of covenant acts that have brought us together in kinship on a common journey. We have become brothers and sisters as we have broken bread together: Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, a common hymnal, Sunday School literature, Women in Mission, integrated ministerial placement, integrated voluntary service, a jointly administered Latin American mission program, a directory, integrated Pacific and Ontario conferences, The Mennonite, a Confession of Faith and hundreds of committee meetings.

At the century mark of our General Conference, 1960, we broke off the story of our journey. More have joined the wayfarers. Today in North America we gather to worship in more than two dozen languages: from America to Crew to Laotian to Spanish to Vietnamese. This weekend at St. Louis, meeting on the banks of a great river, we are like Abraham and Sarah regrouping our caravans, about to set out again in faith for a land where we shall receive our inheritance. A later Biblical image--to the stranger who has been accompanying us on our walk, we plead "Come, stay with us." "Come stay with us." Someday we may say of this journey with the stranger, Lord of the Walk, "Did not our hearts burn within us as he talked to us on the road, as he opened to us the Scriptures?" and "how he made himself known to us in the breaking of the bread." From a more distant past we hear words spoken to Abraham: "I will bless you.... You will be a blessing."

From West Point, Iowa, 1860 to St. Louis 1999--139 years, a journey of faith with Christ, beckoning onward, looking forward "to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God."

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Robert Kreider, North Newton, Kansas is a passionate historian and churchman. Kreider gave this address at the final General Assembly of the General Conference Mennonite Church, St. Louis 99, July 23, 1999

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Mennonite Historical Bulletin, April 2000