The East Union Mennonite Church (Mennonite Church USA), located at 5615 Gable Avenue SW, Kalona, Johnson County, Iowa, was organized in 1884 under the leadership of Christian Warey, having come out of the large Old Order Amish settlement in this locality. It first met for worship at the Prairie Dale schoolhouse, 1 1/2 miles west of the present location, and was known as the Union Church. Christian Warey was ordained bishop the following year, with Jacob B. Yoder as deacon. Others who have served as deacon, minister, or bishop up to 1950 are A. J. Yoder, Jacob J. Schwartzendruber, Jacob S. Yoder, Fred Gingerich, S. C. Yoder, A. C. Brenneman, Harold Brenneman, and Edward Shettler.

The East Union congregation was a member of the Western District Amish Mennonite Conference until the merger of 1921 and since then has been a member of the Iowa-Nebraska Mennonite Conference. (In 2001 the Iowa-Nebraska Mennonite Conference merged with the Northern District Conference of the General Conference Mennonite Church to form the Central Plains Mennonite Conference as part of the new Mennonite Church USA.)

The present church was built in 1922, and was the largest Mennonite church of its branch west of the Mississippi in the 1950s. The ministers in 1955 were D. J. Fisher, bishop; A. Lloyd Swartzendruber, assistant bishop; J. John J. Miller, minister; and Henry H. Miller, deacon; the membership was 565.

Additional Information

East Union Mennonite Church website

Adapted by permission of Herald Press, Harrisonburg, Virginia, and Waterloo, Ontario, from Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. 2, p. 130. All rights reserved. For information on ordering the encyclopedia visit the Herald Press website.

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