What Mennonites believe, and how they worship

What Mennonites believe

Mennonites descend from the Anabaptists (“re-baptizers”) of the 1520s, who taught that only believers should be baptized, on their own confession of faith; they are named for Menno Simons, a Dutch priest who joined them in 1536. Mennonites confess the Trinity, the Bible as God’s Word and salvation through Jesus Christ.

The Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective (1995), held by Mennonite Church Eastern Canada (MCEC), teaches that baptism is for those who confess faith and commit to follow Christ in the church, and that the Lord’s Supper is a remembrance and a sign of unity. Most distinctive is the peace witness: “We believe that peace is the will of God. God created the world in peace, and God’s peace is most fully revealed in Jesus Christ, who is our peace and the peace of the whole world.” Mennonites therefore refuse military service and traditionally do not swear oaths.

Wellington County’s Mennonites span a wide range. MCEC congregations are modern in dress and technology, with trained pastors, including women. Conservative Mennonite fellowships drive cars but keep plain dress, head coverings and unaccompanied singing. The Old Order Mennonites of Mapleton, Minto and Wellington North travel by horse and buggy, run their own schools and worship in German.

Worship: what a service is like

An MCEC service resembles other Protestant worship: prized congregational singing, often in four-part harmony from Voices Together, a sharing time of joys and concerns, Scripture, a sermon of twenty to thirty minutes and an offering; communion is celebrated a few times a year. Old Order services are held every other Sunday in plain meetinghouses, with men and women seated separately, slow unaccompanied German hymns, a long sermon by an unpaid minister chosen by lot and kneeling prayer; visitors are received courteously, but the service is not designed for outsiders.

How Mennonite churches are organized

Mennonite churches are congregational. An MCEC congregation calls its own pastor and is governed by a council or elders; congregations belong to MCEC, which credentials pastors and meets annually, and through it to Mennonite Church Canada. Pastors train at Conrad Grebel University College in Waterloo. Old Order and conservative groups are led by a bishop with ministers and deacons chosen from the congregation and serving without pay; the ministers’ conference sets the “Ordnung,” the shared rules of life.

Compared with Reformed churches

Anabaptists and Reformed Christians were both born in Zurich in the 1520s. Both confess the Trinity, the authority of Scripture and salvation through Christ, and both prize plain, congregational singing. An Old Order visitor would find the plain reverence and long sermon of a Canadian Reformed church familiar.

The oldest difference is baptism. Reformed churches baptize the infants of believers as members of God’s covenant, and children grow up in the church before making public profession of faith. The Belgic Confession also teaches that God has given the civil government the sword and that Christians may serve in it and take lawful oaths, where Mennonites decline these as contrary to the way of Jesus. Reformed worship follows a fixed liturgy, sung largely from the Genevan Psalter with organ, in two services each Sunday, one preaching through the Heidelberg Catechism, and congregations are bound together in classis and synod under the Three Forms of Unity (Belgic Confession, Heidelberg Catechism, Canons of Dort). Mennonite neighbours are warmly invited to visit.

Further reading

• Mennonite Church Eastern Canada
• Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective
• Mennonite Central Committee Ontario
• Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online — articles on Old Order Mennonites and Ontario