244 / The Growth of Newer Congregations

now has a membership of one hundred and eleven. Herman F. Myers is pastor.

The 1950's were to see even more churches planted. In 1951 Paul Stoltzfus traveled throughout the hilly regions of southern Ohio and found numerous communities interested in summer Bible schools. The conference mission board gave its support to such efforts, and the result has been that a number of families from older churches have moved into this area to engage in mission and teaching work. In 1951 the Gilead congregation was formed in Morrow County> Ohio. Here a congregation grew in a rural community where numerous families wanted a church home, having moved into ,the area from older church communities. Murray Krabill, formerly from Iowa, has served as pastor since the church was founded. Rudy Stauffer as a mission board representative helped in the founding of the congregation and was its first bishop.

The St. John's Mennonite Chapel of Logan, Ohio, is another example of how new churches have been planted by the Ohio Mennonite Mission Board. In 1952 Paul Stoltzfus, and Walter and Evelyn Oberly, conducted services in a chapel building near Logan. In 1953 a service unit under Neil Beachy held two weeks of Bible school. In the same year Lester and Dorothy Roth of Bellefontaine, Ohio, members of the South Union Church, moved into the area and assumed leadership. In 1956 a church (originally Evangelical Lutheran) was dedicated, having been purchased by the board from the Methodists who had acquired it in 1881. St. John's Chapel has an active women's and youth organization, and in all fifty-one people have been received into church fellowship.

The Fairpoint Mennonite Church is an outpost established
by the Ohio Mennonite Mission Board and is located in Belmont
County, Ohio. Its beginnings date from 1938 when a Sunday
school was organized at Crabapple and Kinsman. The Bethel Church
of West Liberty> Ohio, was active in sponsoring this work as was
also the Walnut Creek Church in Holmes County. Among the
early leaders was Orrie D. Yoder. D. D. Miller of Berlin, Ohio,
was the first bishop in charge of the Fairpoint Church. Nelson
King and Raymond Shank have served in recent years as pastors.
A number of older churches have founded daughter congregations, the core of which are "surplus" members who formed the
new units with the goal of reaching unchurched persons as well as