A History of the Mennonite Brethren Church, Ja Toews

The church existed only a few years, partly because some families moved away and others joined the local Baptist church. According to J. F. Harms, the Mennonite Brethren never felt quite "at home" among the Baptists. 57 Thus in 1905 twelve families resolved to unite and again establish an M.B. church. They organized themselves as the North- Dallas M.B. Church. The brethren 1\ C. Hiebert and H. S. Voth were instrumental in the expansion and MENNONITE BRETHREN COME TO THE UNITED STATES 149 growth of this congregation. With the shift of population from the rural area north of Dallas to the town itself, the congregation rented a hall in Dallas which served as a meeting place of the group that resided there. By 1919 this group organized ris the Dallas M. B. Church, and just four years later, in 1923, the remaining members of the mother church were received into the daughter church — thereby dissolving the former congregation." The Kingwood Bible Church, established in Salem in 1940, can be regarded as a daughter congregation of Dallas. An M.B. Church established in Portland in the 1890's has become extinct, but in the 1960's a new urban fellowship emerged in the city of Eugene. Washington In the 1930's members from M.B. churches in Oklahoma, Kansas, Montana and California began to settle in Washington, a state in the northwest corner of the United States. In 1937 a congregation of twenty-three members was organized at Blaine, within eight miles of the Canadian border and only one mile from the Pacific Ocean. Although it might be classified as a rural congregation, the church has experienced steady growth and has a membership of one hundred and sixty-nine at present (1971). The church, removed geographically from other congregations of the Pacific District Conference, profits from mutual visits with Canadian churches in the nearby Fraser Valley. The Shoreline M.B. Church in the large metropolitan center of Seattle was established between 1958 and 1963 and has a present membership of ninety. This brief survey of church planting and church growth in the United States reflects both the movement of a people and the prop- agation of a faith. The organization for united action, the work and witness of the brotherhood through its congregations and institutions, will constitute the story of subsequent chapters. 150 HISTORY OF THE MENNONITE BRETHREN CHURCH 5. Major Mennonite Migrations: 1874-84; 192U :(0 MKNNONITE BRF.THRKN COME TO THE UNITED STATES 151 (i. Monnonite Migration: World War II Chapter 11 Mennonite Brethren Come to Canada During the last one hundred years probably no other country in the world has received the Mennonites as graciously and treated them as generously as Canada. It is not surprising, therefore, that during the twentieth century more Mennonites who were seeking relief from the religious and economic oppression of Europe chose Canada rather than