Eigenheim Mennonite Church

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may not meet the general notability guideline or one of the following specific guidelines for inclusion on Wikipedia: Biographies, Books, Companies, Fiction, Music, Neologisms, Numbers, Web content, or several proposals for new guidelines. If you are familiar with the subject matter, please expand or rewrite the article to establish its notability. The best way to address this concern is to reference published, third-party sources about the subject. If notability cannot be established, the article is more likely to be considered for redirection, merge or ultimately deletion, per Wikipedia:Guide to deletion. This article has been tagged since March 2008.

This article is orphaned as few or no other articles link to it. Please help introduce links in articles on related topics. (August 2006)

Eigenheim Mennonite Church is the first Mennonite Church structure in Saskatchewan.

Located 12 km. West of Rosthern, Saskatchewan, Canada on Highway 312, the Eigenheim Mennonite Church has been a local landmark since 1896, when the first Mennonite Church structure in Saskatchewan was completed on the current site. Built of logs cut on the North Saskatchewan River, it was 24 ft by 40 feet, the approximate size of a small modern bungalow. As new families arrived to homestead in the area, this first log church very quickly proved inadequate, and in 1902, a new structure was dedicated. By 1954, this structure, too, was in need of renovation and at that time, work was begun that resulted in the building as it appears today.

Eigenheim was originally central to a larger church body called the Rosenort Mennonite Church, a multi-congregational church encompassing roughly an area from Hague to Waldheim, Tiefengrund to Rosthern. First elder and prime mover in the development of the Rosenort Mennonite community was Peter Regier, working together with Gerhard Epp, Johann Dueck, David Toews (associated primarily with facilitating further Mennonite immigration after the Russian Revolution and with the building of what is now Rosthern Junior College) and others. By 1929, people in Eigenheim had determined that the large size of the Rosenort Mennonite Church stood in the way of local development and chose independence, with Gerhard G. Epp as elder and H.T. Klaassen as minister.

Eigenheim has always been a staunch supporting congregation of the larger conferences of Mennonites in Saskatchewan, Canada and North America. This tradition is expressed today in activity supporting the Food Grains Bank; MCC; the Christian Witness program of MC Canada; MC Saskatchewan’s camping programs, nursing homes and prison visitation outreach; Rosthern Junior College and Canadian Mennonite University. Through participation in the Rosthern Ministerial, it cooperates in local ventures such as ecumenical worship, a local food bank and Meals on Wheels, to name a few.