Southeastern Mennonite Conference

[mike]

Our church is currently having revival meetings with a speaker from Southeastern Mennonite Conference. I was surprised by a few things I learned about them that I didn't know. For some reason I had pictured them as a larger group than they actually are.

According to GAMEO there were 16 churches in 2010 with 734 members. They were founded in the 1970s.

Any Southeastern members here?

It’s interesting your conference is caucusing with a revival preacher from SE conference. Has this been a long standing relationship or is this a new thing?

I'm new to Hope Mennonite Fellowship, but I assume that this sort of association is nothing unusual.

[Josh]

Our local Pilgrim church (equivalent to Hope) would not invite a Mid-West or BMA preacher to conduct revivals (equivalent to SE Conference), unless it was a preacher who had a reputation of being notoriously conservative.

[mike]

My family was Virginia Conference going back many generations. My parents went with Southeastern in 1972 when that split off. I have one brother who is still there and has raised his family there.

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.

It would be interesting to know. Those numbers seem pretty high to me but I have no way of knowing how they compare to loss rates in other conferences.

According to Wikipedia, here are numbers for EPMC:

In 1969, the Eastern Pennsylvania Mennonite Church and Related Areas had 27 congregations with 1,181 church members; in 1995 it had 59 churches with 3,434 members.[3] In 2001 there were 4,206 members.[4] In 2010, it had 77 congregations with 5,333 members. In 2020 it had 95 congregations, 6,656 members, 27 Bishops, 179 Ministers and 113 Deacons. In 2019,the Church also had 84 schools, 300 teachers and 2,679 pupils.

[mike]

Our local Pilgrim church (equivalent to Hope) would not invite a Mid-West or BMA preacher to conduct revivals (equivalent to SE Conference), unless it was a preacher who had a reputation of being notoriously conservative.

I see. I'm probably not a good person to ask because I'm not fully aware of all the politics among these groups. We'll frequently have Pilgrim speakers in our church; we've also had revival speakers from Beachy-type and even some preachers from independent churches on a Sunday night.

[joshuabgood]

Our local Pilgrim church (equivalent to Hope) would not invite a Mid-West or BMA preacher to conduct revivals (equivalent to SE Conference), unless it was a preacher who had a reputation of being notoriously conservative.

I think a lot of people in those conferences would feel there are significant differences between SE Conference and BMA. Cape dresses and straight cuts and no TV as the main things...

And for others they look pretty similar. For a guy like me, my life wouldn't change at all really between SE and BMA - so maybe your point stands.

[ohio jones]

Our local Pilgrim church (equivalent to Hope) would not invite a Mid-West or BMA preacher to conduct revivals (equivalent to SE Conference), unless it was a preacher who had a reputation of being notoriously conservative.

Midwest and Southeastern are similar enough to each other, but both are distinctly more conservative than BMA (from what I can tell).

[Ernie]

The 2019 CLP Mennonite Church Directory shows SMC as having 15 congregations and 838 members.

Many Old Order Mennonites in Virginia have been joining Southeastern in recent years, so I think that probably explains the higher numbers.

[mike]

The 2019 CLP Mennonite Church Directory shows SMC as having 15 congregations and 838 members.

Many Old Order Mennonites in Virginia have been joining Southeastern in recent years, so I think that probably explains the higher numbers.

Interesting.

[QuietlyListening]

Many Old Order Mennonites in Virginia have been joining Southeastern in recent years, so I think that probably explains the higher numbers.

They either join Southeastern or Dayton Mennonite- was part of VA conference but left when USA started and is Rosedale now. Some have gone to Calvary Mennonite which was first started by Brunk but not as many- at least not years ago- could have changed.

[barnhart]

For some reason, over time, Southeastern has not been able to gain many more members than they lose.
In 1981, they had 732 members.
1996 =770

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.