Who are the Mennonites?

It was a question Allan McGarvey asked as he and his wife Valeri were looking for a church family a number of years ago. They had neighbors who attended Mountain View Mennonite Church and even had preached at the church, yet they knew little about the denomination.

As the McGarveys began to explore the Mennonite faith, they found a close-knit community that puts social justice at the forefront and practices their faith with a practical “feet on the ground” approach. There’s a concerted effort to help others, from staging an annual international gift fair at the church to sell fair trade goods made in other countries, to traveling to Haiti, New Orleans and Minot, N.D., to offer disaster relief.

“We showed up and found [the church] is everything we hoped for and more,” McGarvey said. “[Mennonites] empower people to find their own solutions. It’s a fertile place for people to grow in their own work [and faith], and that can be in many forms.”

So much has changed since a small group of settlers led by Jacob Roth formally organized Mountain View Amish Mennonite Church in 1913 in the heart of Creston’s rich farmland.

One of the hot issues of the day for Roth, an ordained Mennonite minister and bishop, was whether parishioners should be permitted to wear buttons on their clothing, current pastor Jeryl Hollinger said. The Amish favor less showy hook-and-eye fasteners for their clothing.

Another matter was what language to use in worship services. Roth preferred German and considered English too progressive, so services in the early years were conducted in German.

Today, topics for discussion at Mountain View Mennonite Church might be how to raise money for the next mission trip to Haiti, or what to serve the second Tuesday of the month when the congregation dishes up meals for Feed the Flathead.

During its early years, the Mennonites were a conservative congregation who preferred to keep to themselves. Eventually, the Amish designation was dropped and the church began involving itself heavily in the community.

In the winter of 1970, for example, Mountain View Mennonite Church distributed 750 pounds of used clothing on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation and spent two years along with other Mennonite churches in the Browning area helping to winterize homes, make bedcovers, distribute clothing, can applesauce and organize summer activities.

In 2000 a team went to Townsend to rebuild fences after a fire and later helped the community build a church.

Those kinds of service projects were precursors to today’s steady mission of sending “work and learn” teams to places where help is desperately needed.

“With Mennonites in general, faith is practiced and put to work in the world,” Hollinger said. “There’s no top-down heavy leadership. Ideas for outreach arise from the congregation.”

Libbie Lapp, a physician’s assistant and emergency medical technician, has been heavily involved with the church’s mission trips to Haiti, where she’s taught first aid to young Haitians who then develop the skills to administer help to others. She’ll be teaching first aid at a vocational school when a group returns to Haiti in December.

Lapp’s daughter, Ellie, who headed off to college this week, said being a part of the mission work in other places has taught her the value and importance of service. Working in Haiti has inspired her to study international policies and history.

“I look at Jesus’ teachings and try to live that out,” she said. “I’ve really come to support pacifism.”

Mennonites always have been known as peacemakers.

“It’s about loving our enemies,” Hollinger said in an earlier interview. “We try not to participate in the violent parts of society.”

That means steering clear of military service and professions such as law enforcement.

Their commitment to pacifism goes back to the Mennonite church’s origin more than five centuries ago. The Mennonites stem from an evangelical Christian sect that was part of the Anabaptist movement, a radical branch that broke away from the Protestant Church.

Early-day Anabaptists often were persecuted because they opposed holding public office, infant baptisms and military service.

There are some lingering misconceptions about Mennonites, Hollinger acknowledged. But for the record, church members have electricity. They aren’t all farmers; in fact the congregation of about 50 people is quite diverse. They don’t travel by horse and buggy.

In recent years the International Gift Festival staged each fall at Mountain View Mennonite has helped familiarize the community with the church and showcases the kind of mission outreach that’s important to the congregation.

Activities are wide-ranging at the church, from weekly quilting sessions to an after-school program in the church basement.

“It’s welcoming and family-oriented,” Ellie Lapp said about the church. “It’s a good place to grow up in.”

As the congregation celebrates its centennial later this month, members will be launching a traveling peace quilt that will be given locally to a person who promotes peace. The recipient will keep the quilt for a year, then it will be passed to the next recipient. The church is accepting nominations for the first recipient to be named in January, in conjunction with Martin Luther King Day.

For more information about Mountain View Mennonite Church, go to Mountainview.squarespace.com, visit the church’s Facebook page or email mvmc@montanasky.net.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.