The Lone Tree conference and confession

The General Conference of the Church of God in Christ, Mennonite met at the Lone Tree congregation near Moundridge, Kansas, on 23–26 November 1896. John Holdeman served as moderator. The preserved Articles of Confession identify the meeting, its place, and its date, providing a documentary anchor for the chart’s small Lone Tree label.

The conference belonged to a church movement that had begun in Ohio in 1859 and later gathered members across wider regions. Meeting together allowed congregations to express shared teaching and address common church life. The confession forms part of that movement’s written record alongside Holdeman’s preaching and other publications.

Lone Tree is therefore presented as a conference milestone within the existing church history, not as the beginning of a separate denomination. The date is established from the surviving document; the indistinct date digits in the supplied photograph are left as a source-legibility question.