Eastern Mennonite Missions

More than 3 billion people don’t have access to the gospel or proximity to a follower of Jesus who can tell them about this good news. Another 2 billion people may have access to the gospel but have not experienced its life-transforming power. Very simply, our work is to share the good news of Christ’s transforming love with people who don’t know him.

EMM’s story begins with a boy who asked, “Why?” In 1869, 11-year-old John H. Mellinger was sitting in a church service when he heard Matthew 28:19-20: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

The preacher spent the entire service focused on the “teaching them to obey” part of the passage but didn’t say anything about going and making disciples of all nations. John asked his father, “Why?” John’s father couldn’t answer him. For the next 25 years, John wrestled with the Great Commission until he and 11 friends gathered to pray together and started what would eventually become EMM. When EMM officially became organized in 1914, John would become EMM’s first president.

In 1934, EMM sent our first international missionaries to least-reached people in what is now Tanzania. For the many decades since then, we have engaged in mission around the world, facilitating the development of more than 20 church multiplication movements and many other ministries.

We praise God for the work he has done through EMM in more than 100 countries over the past century. Now, we are focused on multiplying disciples among least-reached people in several priority regions.

EMM is the mission agency of LMC — A Fellowship of Anabaptist Churches. We also partner with Anabaptist and other like-minded organizations in the U.S. and around the world. As an Anabaptist organization we establish movements of disciples of Jesus in keeping with the historic position of the Anabaptist church and in agreement with the Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective (1995). EMM is a member of ECFA.