John Holdeman and a call to renewal

John Holdeman’s concern for the spiritual life of the church followed a deep religious experience at his home in Wayne County, Ohio. He believed he was called to preach, but the existing church did not affirm that ministry. In 1859 he and others began worshiping separately, and their fellowship developed as the Church of God in Christ, Mennonite.

Holdeman subsequently moved with followers to Missouri and then to Kansas. The exhibit notes the growth of the movement and the arrival of converts from the Kleine Gemeinde in Manitoba. Renewal, preaching, migration, and congregational discipline were therefore closely connected in its development.

The church’s own account places believers’ baptism, conversion, nonresistance, and an ordered Christian life at the heart of its witness. Holdeman’s biography provides the human thread behind the branch and event entries rather than leaving the new fellowship as an unexplained line on a chart.