Grace Bible Institute and Grace University at Omaha

The Mennonite institution associated with 1943 was Grace Bible Institute in Omaha, Nebraska. Its founders sought a centrally located school to prepare Christian workers across Mennonite church boundaries. Ministers and Oklahoma Bible Academy representatives met in Omaha on June 1, 1943, and arranged to use buildings belonging to a recently closed Presbyterian seminary. Classes began on September 8 with eighteen students, soon increasing to twenty-three.

Grace developed an increasingly interdenominational constituency while continuing biblical education and ministry preparation. It became Grace College of the Bible in 1976 and adopted the corporate identity Grace University on July 1, 1995. Undergraduate, graduate, and adult programs followed before closure in June 2018. The chart calls it “Grace Bible College,” but that wording should not merge it with Michigan’s different institution. The Michigan school began as Milwaukee Bible Institute in 1939 and used the Grace Bible College name from 1962.