Southeastern Mennonite Conference

[barnhart]

I think that is accurate. I know the founding stories of nearly all the congregations in GA and SC, those locations were chosen because there were no Anabaptists there. The Virginia congregations are much older and I don't know as much about their origins. Wesleyb likely knows more about that region. Some of the congregations like Bank Mennonite date to the colonial era when many of the inhabitants would have been Indigenous.

Yes I think that's right. Although there have been Mennonites in this area since 1727, they didn't really establish churches until the early to mid 1800's. Bank was around 1850, Trissels and Weavers would have been earlier.

A little nitpicking here, but I would say pre- 1800's there were organized churches but not church buildings.

[wesleyb]

A little nitpicking here, but I would say pre- 1800's there were organized churches but not church buildings.

Maybe, but I don’t think they would have thought of themselves as members of a specific congregation and I don’t think there was much conference level organization back then either. Even in my parents memory the home churches did not have church every Sunday and ministers were not assigned to a specific congregation. I think that changed in the 40’s or early 50’s.

[barnhart]

It would be interesting to know how they thought about church organization, they certainly had groups, leaders and some mechanism for choosing them although it was far less formal than today. I remember my grandfather taking me to tour a very old meeting house, no longer in use, that was shared by at least three groups, including Mennonites. Since none of them met every week a shared structure made sense.

[Elmer]

I did a quick calculation and it looks like out my high school class and the ones immediately before and after about 30% are still in Southeastern, about 30% are in other Mennonite churches and 40% have left the Mennonites altogether. It would be interesting to know how this compares to other conservative Mennonites.

Some figuring I did would put statistics more recently at about 58% stayed Southeastern, about 18% stayed with a Moderate Conservative Anabaptist Church, about 12% went to a Progressive/Fundamental or Theological Conservative Anabaptist church, and about 12% went totally worldly.

[barnhart]

I did a quick calculation and it looks like out my high school class and the ones immediately before and after about 30% are still in Southeastern, about 30% are in other Mennonite churches and 40% have left the Mennonites altogether. It would be interesting to know how this compares to other conservative Mennonites.

Some figuring I did would put statistics more recently at about 58% stayed Southeastern, about 18% stayed with a Moderate Conservative Anabaptist Church, about 12% went to a Progressive/Fundamental or Theological Conservative Anabaptist church, and about 12% went totally worldly.

Interesting. Can I assume the data pool is Harrisonburg area?

[Elmer]

I did a quick calculation and it looks like out my high school class and the ones immediately before and after about 30% are still in Southeastern, about 30% are in other Mennonite churches and 40% have left the Mennonites altogether. It would be interesting to know how this compares to other conservative Mennonites.

Some figuring I did would put statistics more recently at about 58% stayed Southeastern, about 18% stayed with a Moderate Conservative Anabaptist Church, about 12% went to a Progressive/Fundamental or Theological Conservative Anabaptist church, and about 12% went totally worldly.

Interesting. Can I assume the data pool is Harrisonburg area?

Yes, all but 7 congregations (McDowell, Boyer Hill, Brushy Run, North Fork, Strasburg, Caswell, and Ebenezer) are within the greater Harrisonburg area, and the statistics would have been formed from students of the main Southeastern school, Berea (from about 2008-2014).

[Josh]

I did a quick calculation and it looks like out my high school class and the ones immediately before and after about 30% are still in Southeastern, about 30% are in other Mennonite churches and 40% have left the Mennonites altogether. It would be interesting to know how this compares to other conservative Mennonites.

Some figuring I did would put statistics more recently at about 58% stayed Southeastern, about 18% stayed with a Moderate Conservative Anabaptist Church, about 12% went to a Progressive/Fundamental or Theological Conservative Anabaptist church, and about 12% went totally worldly.

This is the generally expected retention rate for Intermediates. (Moderates are 60%.) I assume SE is Moderate so this a higher than expected retention rate.

[Elmer]

According to that, they actually lost membership between 1996 and 2010.

In the late 90's the conference divided geographically in an effort to pursue local leadership. The congregations in Georgia and South Carolina formed a sister conference, South Atlantic. As far as I know it was amicable, I was a member of one of the Georgia congregations at the time.

Oh, OK. That's good to know. Looks like that accounted for 4 congregations with 255 members, in 2010.

Around 2018 or 2019, Southeastern also transferred the 2 Puerto Rican churches to the South Atlantic Conference. It seems to me that Southeastern is not so concerned about growing Southeastern as some groups are about growing their group. Southeastern hasn't had any major split since they left Virginia Conference other than when South Atlantic was started due to the distance needed to travel for Conference meetings between GA/SC and VA. I think this has led to Southeastern not having many "enemies" (the "since we split from you we won't work with you" mentality) or as many church politics problems.

[wesleyb]

I did a quick calculation and it looks like out my high school class and the ones immediately before and after about 30% are still in Southeastern, about 30% are in other Mennonite churches and 40% have left the Mennonites altogether. It would be interesting to know how this compares to other conservative Mennonites.

Some figuring I did would put statistics more recently at about 58% stayed Southeastern, about 18% stayed with a Moderate Conservative Anabaptist Church, about 12% went to a Progressive/Fundamental or Theological Conservative Anabaptist church, and about 12% went totally worldly.

That's interesting. My guess would have been that the recent retention rate is higher than from my time period in the late 80's and your data bears that out, although of course your group may look a lot different in another 20 or 25 years.

Just for the record, after compiling those numbers I thought of two more I had forgotten (That's what 35 years will do to your memory), so I recalculated. Corrected numbers: 26% Southeastern, 35% other Mennonite, 39% non-Mennonite. Sample size 23.

[QuietlyListening]

Southeastern hasn't had any major split since they left Virginia Conference other than when South Atlantic was started due to the distance needed to travel for Conference meetings between GA/SC and VA.

Maybe not a split but in the late 90s they had a huge number of people leave- most went to Calvary which later became BMA tho others to Dayton, Zion Hill etc. But while not a split it was a significant loss.