278 / The Conference in Retrospect

command to witness, serve, and make disciples of all men.

On the whole the church has tried to find its way between these two extremes. The minutes of the Ohio and Eastern Mennonite Conference and the minutes of the Ohio Mennonite Mission Board reflect this tension, though the conference minutes of recent years no longer show the same preoccupation with worldliness, fashions, recreation, "godless" education, luxury, life insurance and the many other prohibitions against conformity to society's patterns. Yet the intention is clear that the conference still desires to maintain the historic faith and at the same time to fulfill its mission by evangelizing. The conference leaders and faithful members know that this will not be an easy task in the twentieth century.

Survival and Growth

It is important to see that the churches of the Ohio and Eastern Mennonite Conference did not, as some church historians would have predicted, die on the frontier of the New World nor did they become entirely absorbed into the larger society in the course of more than 160 years. The extinct churches have been noted above and there has been some loss of members in addition to them. But how explain the survival and the remarkable growth of the churches in the conference? The following are offered as at least partial reasons:

A clear set of beliefs and a willingness to express these beliefs in life. The Ohio Conference churches that were planted on the frontier were heirs to past generations which adhered steadfastly to a faith. A study of the 1843 and 1868 statements by the conference shows that the conference members had a deep sense of separatism from the world and other religious groups. While there are often tendencies to idealize the past, the facts are that religion was taken seriously by the hardy pioneers. Church membership was not a casual affair for them. They were sure of what they believed and why they believed it and they were confident that their faith was worth preserving for their descendants.

In small and lonely settlements, speaking the German language and living in closed communities, the congregations which survived felt keenly the differences between themselves and others. In the formative years of the conference the emphasis was not on how to win the "world" but how to keep separate from it. This sense of feeling different from the "world" can be found throughout the en-