[checked revision]

Revision as of 13:34, 26 June 2019

Oak Grove Mennonite Church in Smithville, Ohio, ca. 1950.
Source: Mennonite Community Photograph Collection, The Congregation (HM4-134 Box 5 Folder 1 photo 010.4-3).
Mennonite Church USA Archives, Goshen, Indiana.

Oak Grove Mennonite Church, Smithville OH
Source: Church website

Oak Grove Mennonite Church (Mennonite Church USA), located near Smithville, Wayne County, Ohio, is the second oldest Mennonite congregation of Amish background in the state. The first settlers came to the area about 1817 from Somerset and Mifflin counties, Pennsylvania, and organized a congregation in 1818, meeting in homes for worship. Other families of Swiss Mennonite background came directly from Switzerland and Alsace-Lorraine. Early bishops were David Zook, Christian Schantz, Jacob Yoder, assisted by ministers Christian Brandt, Christian Naftzinger, Peter Blough, Solomon Zook, and deacons Jacob King and Jacob Troyer.

By the 1840's the Oak Grove congregation had become so large that it was divided into North and South districts. Each section had a bishop and several ministers. Worship services were held in member’s homes or barns every other Sunday with the remaining Sundays being a time of fellowship with church families.

The first meetinghouse (frame) was built in 1862. The church was known as the Amish Mennonite Center of Green Church, but the name was eventually changed to Oak Grove Amish Mennonite Church. The first building was built on what is presently part of the "old" cemetery on the current property along Smucker Road, East of Smithville.

A second church, (Pleasant Hill), was built in 1881 along what is now Pleasant Home Road, Northeast of Smithville to accommodate members in the northern part of the district. In 1905 the Oak Grove meetinghouse was replaced by the large frame structure used by the present congregation.

The early congregation was a member of the Amish General Conference (Diener-Versammlungen). The first of these conferences took place in the barn of Samuel Schrock, several miles east of the church. These meetings occurred to give the Amish congregations an opportunity to discuss issues of church policy. As time passed, the more conservative members withdrew and were soon called "Old Order Amish." Oak Grove became Amish Mennonite and later dropped the Amish from the church name. Oak Grove and Pleasant Hill became more progressive with Sunday schools, Young People’s Meetings, and laity participation. Members were involved with the Children’s Home, the Rittman Old People’s Home, and the Orrville and Canton Missions. C. Z. Yoder, an Oak Grove minister, was also active in the publishing of several conference hymnals.

After the Amish General Conferences were discontinued, the more progressive Amish Mennonites formed three conferences, the Eastern Amish, the Indiana-Michigan, and the Western Amish conferences. The Oak Grove congregation became a member of the Eastern Amish Mennonite Conference in 1937, and until 1947 of the Ohio Mennonite and Eastern Amish Mennonite Joint Conference. In 1947 Pleasant Hill became a separate congregation, still under the Ohio and Eastern Mennonite Conference, while Oak Grove continued as an independent congregation until 1970 when it became an early dually affiliated congregation in the Ohio and Eastern Mennonite Conference of the Mennonite Church and the Central District Conference of the General Conference Mennonite Church. Under able and progressive leadership the varied background of the Oak Grove congregation led to a fused polity, highly active congregational interest and participation in higher education, missions, and the broader program of the church at large. A church with a rural heritage, members (numbering 375 in November 2017) were still actively involved in the traditional fields of agriculture, education and business, but also in professions such as law, marketing, medicine, and technology. The pastor in 2017 was Douglas Zehr with associate pastor Miriam Zehr.

Other leaders serving earlier in addition to the above were John K. Yoder and Benjamin Gerig (bishops), C. K. Yoder, Jonathan Smucker, Christian Kureth (Conrad), John Smiley, Isaac Miller, D. Z. Yoder, S. K. Plank, David Hostetler, Stephen Miller, C. Z. Yoder, Peter Conrad, Albert Hartzler, P. R. Lantz, Peter Baumgartner, J. N. Smucker, Wm. G. Detweiler, Elmer Meyer (ministers and deacons).

During the 20th century, the Oak Grove congregation provided some unusual family and individual leadership on the local and international level. The Gerig family served in ministerial leadership over six decades beginning in 1895 with Benjamin Gerig (1842-1913) and his son Jacob Sebastian (J. S.) Gerig (1877-1964) and ending with Virgil M. Gerig (1918-2006) in 1960.

The Meyer family left a long educational legacy as Jacob Conrad (J. C.) Meyer (1888-1968) earned a Harvard PhD in history and made a career at Western Reserve University in Cleveland, all the while raising his family in Wayne County and giving strong congregational leadership. His son Albert Meyer (1926- ) became a physics professor at several Mennonite colleges, and for many years served as executive secretary for the Mennonite Board of Education of the Mennonite Church.

Lina Zook Ressler (1869-1948), grew up in the congregation and had a career as a teacher, writer, missionary, and editor. She served at the Chicago Home Mission in the 1890s, and at Elkhart Institute (later Goshen College) from 1901-1903 before leaving for India as a missionary with Jacob A. Ressler. Her literary skills well matched those of her editor husband Jacob (known as J. A.), and they moved to Scottdale, Pennsylvania, where for many years they worked with the children's publications Words of Cheer and Beams of Light. She was known to a generation of readers as “Aunt Lina.” Zook Ressler’s daughters Ruth (1906-2001) and Rhoda (1910-2008), long-time mission workers in Japan, returned to Orrville, Ohio, and lived their retirement years in their mother’s Oak Grove community

Orie Benjamin Gerig (1894-1976), son of bishop Jacob S. Gerig and Mary Anne Smucker, grew up in the congregation, studied at Goshen College, and married Mary Magdalene Blosser. After graduate school, he had a distinguished civil service career with the League of Nations during the 1930s and with the U.S. State Department during the 1940s and 1950s, helping to negotiate the transition of colonial territories in Africa and Asia toward independence in a post-colonial world. During the 1940s he was one of the main planners of the United Nations charter in San Francisco. During his final year in the State Department, Gerig served as an adviser to the American UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson. Historian Gerlof D. Homan said, “his unassuming character and personality as manifested in his role as diplomat and chief of the Office of Dependent Affairs were a reflection of his Amish Mennonite upbringing at Oak Grove.” Few of Mennonite origins have served on this level of civil service, and Ben Gerig kept family relations during this time, including coming back to speak at Oak Grove after his retirement in 1962.

Alvin (A. C.) Ramseyer (1880-1948) was an entrepreneurial farmer, business leader and benefactor who founded the Mara Alva Farm (for wife Mary and Alvin) of purebred Guernseys. By 1932 the Ramseyer family took up potato farming for which A.C. is best remembered as “potato king,” at one time having 1,200 acres in cultivation, the largest potato grower in Ohio. A. C. and Mary Schrock Ramseyer emphasized education and their children attended Bluffton College where Ramseyer served on the board of overseers for 20 years; A. C. Ramseyer Auditorium in Bluffton University’s College Hall bears his name.

Theologian John Howard Yoder (1927-1997) grew up in the Oak Grove congregation where he was baptized and later ordained to the Christian ministry (1974). A brilliant scholar, prolific author, and professor at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary and Notre Dame University, he was an apologist for Christian pacifism and best known for The Politics of Jesus (1972). By the 1990s, he also became known for his sexual harassment and abuse of women. When Yoder died in 1997, The New York Times obituary called him “a Mennonite theologian whose writings on Christianity and politics had a major impact on contemporary Christian thinking.”

During the 1980s and 1990s, two Oak Grove leaders James Schrag and Susan Mark Landis used the congregation as a base from which to move the denomination toward a church merger and a revitalized peace witness. Schrag, the Oak Grove pastor from 1985 to 1994, made the dual affiliated conference congregation an exhibit for the importance of merging the two denominations: Mennonite Church and General Conference Mennonite Church. Activist Mark Landis worked for the Mennonite Church denomination as peace advocate and as a minister of peace and justice from 1994 to 2011.

The present church was built in 1905, with additions and remodeling occurring every twenty years or so since. The Fellowship Center was built in 1949. In 1958, more land across the road, north of the church, was purchased for a new cemetery. In 1963 the parsonage was built, and in 1968 an educational wing was added to the church. In 2003 a carport was added, and the interior was totally remodeled.

The church has been active in relief work in war-torn countries with the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), as well as financial aid and volunteer time with MCC Connections, the MCC Relief Sale, People to People, Boy’s Village, and Habitat for Humanity. The church has affirmed women in ministry since 1974 as well as having student pastors since 1958. Music, with a cappella hymn singing, choirs, quartets, the praise team, and the yearly Messiah program have been an important part of the church’s worship of God.

Bibliography

Author(s)	Virgil M. Gerig
	Levi Miller
Date Published	January 2018

Hege, Christian and Christian Neff. Mennonitisches Lexikon, 4 vols. Frankfurt & Weierhof: Hege; Karlsruhe: Schneider, 1913-1967: v. 3, 282.

Homan, Gerlof D. "Orie Benjamin Gerig: Mennonite Rebel, Peace Activist, International Civil Servant, and American Diplomat, 1894-1976." Mennonite Quarterly Review 73, no. 4 (October 1999): 751-782. Web. 22 January 2018. https://www.goshen.edu/mqr/1999/06/october-1999-homan/

Lehman, James O. Creative Congregationalism: the History of the Oak Grove Mennonite Church in Wayne County, Ohio. Smithville, OH: The Church, 1978.

"Oak Grove Mennonite Church." Wikipedia. 21 June 2013. Web. 1 December 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_Grove_Mennonite_Church.

"Oak Grove Mennonite Church, 2007: Oak Grove History." Oak Grove Mennonite Church. 2007. Web. 1 December 2013. http://oakgrovemc.org/about/history/.

Umble, John S. Ohio Mennonite Sunday Schools. Goshen, IN: Mennonite Historical Society, 1941: 209-231.

Additional Information

Address: 7843 Smucker Road, Smithville, OH 44677 (coordinates: 40.85863, -81.83148 [N 40 51' 31" W 81 49' 53"])

Phone: 330-669-2697

Website: http://oakgrovemc.org/

Denominational Affiliations:

Amish General Conference

Eastern Amish Mennonite Conference

Ohio and Eastern Mennonite Conference (MC)

Central District Conference (GCMC)

Ohio Conference of Mennonite Church USA

Central District Conference, Mennonite Church USA

Oak Grove Mennonite Church Leading Ministers

Minister	Years of Service
Christian Brandt	1818-1866
David Zook
Peter Schrock	?-1846
Solomon Zook	?-1870
Peter Nafziger	?-1841
John Fertenwald	1831-1849
Joseph Frey
Hannes Yoder	?-1850
Emmanuel Hochstetler	1855-1862
Jacob Yoder	1850-1858
Peter Blough	1855-?
Christian Nafziger	1844-1864
Christian Schantz
John K. Yoder	1855-1906
Christian Conrad	1859-1890
Christian K. Yoder	1861-1871
Jonathan Smucker	1861-1887
John Smiley	1866-1878
D. Z. Yoder	1872-1929
David Hostetler	1880-1889
Isaac Miller	1891-1894
Benjamin Gerig	1895-1913
Jacob S. Gerig	1896-1955
Christian Z. Yoder	1904-1939
Peter R. Lantz	1909-1927
Jesse N. Smucker	1916-1936
William G. Detweiler	1938-1947
Virgil O. Gerig	1947-1960
Robert Otto	1960-1965
Lotus Troyer	1965-1971
Peter Wiebe	1972-1984
Jim Schrag	1985-1994
Dennis Schmidt	1994-1996
Norma Duerkson	1997-2008
Will Shertzer	2008-2009
Doug Zehr	2009-present

Map

Map:Oak Grove Mennonite Church, Smithville, Wayne County, Ohio, USA

Cite This Article

MLA style

Gerig, Virgil M. and Levi Miller. "Oak Grove Mennonite Church (Smithville, Wayne County, Ohio, USA)." Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. January 2018. Web. 18 Apr 2024. https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Oak_Grove_Mennonite_Church_(Smithville,_Wayne_County,_Ohio,_USA)&oldid=164254.

APA style

Gerig, Virgil M. and Levi Miller. (January 2018). Oak Grove Mennonite Church (Smithville, Wayne County, Ohio, USA). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved 18 April 2024, from https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Oak_Grove_Mennonite_Church_(Smithville,_Wayne_County,_Ohio,_USA)&oldid=164254.

@@ Line 6: / Line 6: @@
 [[File:OakGroveMennoniteChurchSmithville.jpg|340px|thumbnail|''Oak Grove Mennonite Church, Smithville OH<br />
 Source: [http://oakgrovemc.org/ Church website]'']]
-Oak Grove Mennonite Church ([[Mennonite Church (MC)|Mennonite Church]] and [[General Conference Mennonite Church (GCM)|General Conference Mennonite]]), located near Smithville, [[Wayne County (Ohio, USA)|Wayne County]], Ohio, is probably the oldest Mennonite congregation of Amish background in the state. The first settlers came to the area about 1817 from Somerset and [[Mifflin County (Pennsylvania, USA)|Mifflin]] counties, Pennsylvania, and organized a congregation in 1818, meeting in homes for worship. Other families of Swiss Mennonite background came directly from Switzerland and Alsace-Lorraine. Early bishops were David Zook, Christian Schantz, Jacob Yoder, assisted by ministers Christian Brandt, Christian Naftzinger, Peter Blough, Solomon Zook, and deacons Jacob King and Jacob Troyer.
+Oak Grove Mennonite Church (Mennonite Church USA), located near Smithville, [[Wayne County (Ohio, USA)|Wayne County]], Ohio, is the second oldest Mennonite congregation of Amish background in the state. The first settlers came to the area about 1817 from Somerset and [[Mifflin County (Pennsylvania, USA)|Mifflin]] counties, Pennsylvania, and organized a congregation in 1818, meeting in homes for worship. Other families of Swiss Mennonite background came directly from Switzerland and Alsace-Lorraine. Early bishops were David Zook, Christian Schantz, Jacob Yoder, assisted by ministers Christian Brandt, Christian Naftzinger, Peter Blough, Solomon Zook, and deacons Jacob King and Jacob Troyer.
-By the 1840’s the Oak Grove congregation had become so large that it was divided into North and South districts. Each section had a bishop and several ministers. Worship services were held in member’s homes or barns every other Sunday with the remaining Sundays being a time of fellowship with church families.
+By the 1840's the Oak Grove congregation had become so large that it was divided into North and South districts. Each section had a bishop and several ministers. Worship services were held in member’s homes or barns every other Sunday with the remaining Sundays being a time of fellowship with church families.
 The first meetinghouse (frame) was built in 1862. The church was known as the  Amish Mennonite Center of Green Church, but the name was eventually changed to Oak Grove Amish Mennonite Church. The first building was built on what is presently part of the "old" cemetery on the current property along Smucker Road, East of Smithville.
@@ Line 16: / Line 16: @@
 The early congregation was a member of the Amish General Conference ([[Diener-Versammlungen]]). The first of these conferences took place in the barn of Samuel Schrock, several miles east of the church. These meetings occurred to give the Amish congregations an opportunity to discuss issues of church policy. As time passed, the more conservative members withdrew and were soon called "[[Old Order Amish]]." Oak Grove became Amish Mennonite and later dropped the Amish from the church name. Oak Grove and Pleasant Hill became more progressive with Sunday schools, Young People’s Meetings, and laity participation. Members were involved with the Children’s Home, the Rittman Old People’s Home, and the Orrville and Canton Missions. C. Z. Yoder, an Oak Grove minister, was also active in the publishing of several conference hymnals.
-After the Amish General Conferences were discontinued, the more progressive Amish Mennonites formed three conferences, the Eastern Amish, the [[Indiana-Michigan Amish Mennonite Conference|Indiana-Michigan]], and the [[Western District Amish Mennonite Conference|Western Amish]] conferences. The Oak Grove congregation became a member of the [[Eastern Amish Mennonite Conference|Eastern Amish Mennonite Conference]] in 1937, and until 1947 of the [[Ohio and Eastern Mennonite Conference (MC)|Ohio Mennonite and Eastern Amish Mennonite Joint Conference]]. In 1947 Pleasant Hill became a separate congregation, still under the [[Ohio and Eastern Mennonite Conference (MC)|Ohio and Eastern Mennonite Conference]], while Oak Grove continued as an independent congregation until 1970 when it became an early dually affiliated congregation in the Ohio and Eastern Mennonite Conference of the [[Mennonite Church (MC)|Mennonite Church]] and the Central District Conference of the [[General Conference Mennonite Church (GCM)|General Conference Mennonite Church]]. Under able and progressive leadership the varied background of the Oak Grove congregation led to a fused polity, highly active congregational interest and participation in higher education, missions, and the broader program of the church at large. Though a rural church, less than half the members (numbering 400 in January 1958) were actively employed in agriculture. The bishop was Jacob S. Gerig, with Virgil M. Gerig minister with full pastoral authority in the local congregation.
+After the Amish General Conferences were discontinued, the more progressive Amish Mennonites formed three conferences, the Eastern Amish, the [[Indiana-Michigan Amish Mennonite Conference|Indiana-Michigan]], and the [[Western District Amish Mennonite Conference|Western Amish]] conferences. The Oak Grove congregation became a member of the [[Eastern Amish Mennonite Conference|Eastern Amish Mennonite Conference]] in 1937, and until 1947 of the [[Ohio and Eastern Mennonite Conference (MC)|Ohio Mennonite and Eastern Amish Mennonite Joint Conference]]. In 1947 Pleasant Hill became a separate congregation, still under the [[Ohio and Eastern Mennonite Conference (MC)|Ohio and Eastern Mennonite Conference]], while Oak Grove continued as an independent congregation until 1970 when it became an early dually affiliated congregation in the Ohio and Eastern Mennonite Conference of the [[Mennonite Church (MC)|Mennonite Church]] and the Central District Conference of the [[General Conference Mennonite Church (GCM)|General Conference Mennonite Church]]. Under able and progressive leadership the varied background of the Oak Grove congregation led to a fused polity, highly active congregational interest and participation in higher education, missions, and the broader program of the church at large. A church with a rural heritage, members (numbering 375 in November 2017) were still actively involved in the traditional fields of agriculture, education and business, but also in professions such as law, marketing, medicine, and technology. The pastor in 2017 was Douglas Zehr with associate pastor Miriam Zehr.
 Other leaders serving earlier in addition to the above were John K. Yoder and Benjamin Gerig (bishops), C. K. Yoder, Jonathan Smucker, Christian Kureth (Conrad), John Smiley, Isaac Miller, D. Z. Yoder, S. K. Plank, David Hostetler, Stephen Miller, C. Z. Yoder, Peter Conrad, Albert Hartzler, P. R. Lantz, Peter Baumgartner, J. N. Smucker, Wm. G. Detweiler, Elmer Meyer (ministers and deacons).
-The present church was built in 1905, following the loss of the original building to fire, with additions and remodeling occurring every twenty years or so since. The Fellowship Center was built in 1949. In 1958, more land across the road, north of the church, was purchased for a new cemetery. In 1963 the parsonage was built, and in 1968 an educational wing was added to the church. In 2003 a carport was added, and the interior was totally remodeled.
+During the 20th century, the Oak Grove congregation provided some unusual family and individual leadership on the local and international level. The Gerig family served in ministerial leadership over six decades beginning in 1895 with Benjamin Gerig (1842-1913) and his son Jacob Sebastian (J. S.) Gerig (1877-1964) and ending with Virgil M. Gerig (1918-2006) in 1960.
+The Meyer family left a long educational legacy as Jacob Conrad (J. C.) Meyer (1888-1968) earned a Harvard PhD in history and made a career at Western Reserve University in Cleveland, all the while raising his family in Wayne County and giving strong congregational leadership. His son Albert Meyer (1926- ) became a physics professor at several Mennonite colleges, and for many years served as executive secretary for the [[Mennonite Board of Education (Mennonite Church)|Mennonite Board of Education]] of the [[Mennonite Church (MC)|Mennonite Church]].
+[[Ressler, Lina Zook (1869-1948)|Lina Zook Ressler]] (1869-1948), grew up in the congregation and had a career as a teacher, writer, missionary, and editor. She served at the [[Mennonite Home Mission (Chicago, Illinois, USA)|Chicago Home Mission]] in the 1890s, and at [[Elkhart Institute (Elkhart, Indiana, USA)|Elkhart Institute]] (later [[Goshen College (Goshen, Indiana, USA)|Goshen College]]) from 1901-1903 before leaving for [[India]] as a missionary with [[Ressler, Jacob Andrews (1867-1936)|Jacob A. Ressler]]. Her literary skills well matched those of her editor husband Jacob (known as J. A.), and they moved to [[Scottdale (Pennsylvania, USA)|Scottdale]], [[Pennsylvania (USA)|Pennsylvania]], where for many years they worked with the children's publications ''[[Words of Cheer (Periodical)|Words of Cheer]]'' and ''[[Beams of Light (Periodical)|Beams of Light]]''. She was known to a generation of readers as “Aunt Lina.” Zook Ressler’s daughters Ruth (1906-2001) and Rhoda (1910-2008), long-time mission workers in [[Japan]], returned to [[Orrville (Wayne County, Ohio, USA)|Orrville]], Ohio, and lived their retirement years in their mother’s Oak Grove community
+Orie Benjamin Gerig (1894-1976), son of bishop Jacob S. Gerig and Mary Anne Smucker, grew up in the congregation, studied at Goshen College, and married Mary Magdalene Blosser. After graduate school, he had a distinguished civil service career with the League of Nations during the 1930s and with the U.S. State Department during the 1940s and 1950s, helping to negotiate the transition of colonial territories in [[Africa]] and [[Mennonites in Asia|Asia]] toward independence in a post-colonial world. During the 1940s he was one of the main planners of the United Nations charter in San Francisco. During his final year in the State Department, Gerig served as an adviser to the American UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson. Historian Gerlof D. Homan said, “his unassuming character and personality as manifested in his role as diplomat and chief of the Office of Dependent Affairs were a reflection of his Amish Mennonite upbringing at Oak Grove.” Few of Mennonite origins have served on this level of civil service, and Ben Gerig kept family relations during this time, including coming back to speak at Oak Grove after his retirement in 1962.
+Alvin (A. C.) Ramseyer (1880-1948) was an entrepreneurial farmer, business leader and benefactor who founded the Mara Alva Farm (for wife Mary and Alvin) of purebred Guernseys. By 1932 the Ramseyer family took up potato farming for which A.C. is best remembered as “potato king,” at one time having 1,200 acres in cultivation, the largest potato grower in Ohio. A. C. and Mary Schrock Ramseyer emphasized education and their children attended [[Bluffton University (Bluffton, Ohio, USA)|Bluffton College]] where Ramseyer served on the board of overseers for 20 years; A. C. Ramseyer Auditorium in Bluffton University’s College Hall bears his name.
+Theologian [[Yoder, John Howard (1927-1997)|John Howard Yoder]] (1927-1997) grew up in the Oak Grove congregation where he was baptized and later ordained to the Christian ministry (1974). A brilliant scholar, prolific author, and professor at [[Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary (Elkhart, Indiana, USA)|Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary]] and Notre Dame University, he was an apologist for Christian pacifism and best known for ''The Politics of Jesus'' (1972). By the 1990s, he also became known for his sexual harassment and abuse of women. When Yoder died in 1997, ''The New York Times'' obituary called him “a Mennonite theologian whose writings on Christianity and politics had a major impact on contemporary Christian thinking.”
+During the 1980s and 1990s, two Oak Grove leaders James Schrag and Susan Mark Landis used the congregation as a base from which to move the denomination toward a church merger and a revitalized peace witness. Schrag, the Oak Grove pastor from 1985 to 1994, made the dual affiliated conference congregation an exhibit for the importance of merging the two denominations: [[Mennonite Church (MC)|Mennonite Church]] and [[General Conference Mennonite Church (GCM)|General Conference Mennonite Church]]. Activist Mark Landis worked for the Mennonite Church denomination as peace advocate and as a minister of peace and justice from 1994 to 2011.
+The present church was built in 1905, with additions and remodeling occurring every twenty years or so since. The Fellowship Center was built in 1949. In 1958, more land across the road, north of the church, was purchased for a new cemetery. In 1963 the parsonage was built, and in 1968 an educational wing was added to the church. In 2003 a carport was added, and the interior was totally remodeled.
 The church has been active in relief work in war-torn countries with the [[Mennonite Central Committee (International)|Mennonite Central Committee]] (MCC), as well as financial aid and volunteer time with MCC Connections, the MCC Relief Sale, People to People, Boy’s Village, and Habitat for Humanity. The church has affirmed women in ministry since 1974 as well as having student pastors since 1958. Music, with a cappella hymn singing, choirs, quartets, the praise team, and the yearly Messiah program have been an important part of the church’s worship of God.
 = Bibliography =
-Hege, Christian and Christian Neff. <em>Mennonitisches Lexikon</em>, 4 vols. Frankfurt &amp; Weierhof: Hege; Karlsruhe: Schneider, 1913-1967: v. 3, 282.
+Hege, Christian and Christian Neff. ''Mennonitisches Lexikon'', 4 vols. Frankfurt &amp; Weierhof: Hege; Karlsruhe: Schneider, 1913-1967: v. 3, 282.
+Homan, Gerlof D. "Orie Benjamin Gerig: Mennonite Rebel, Peace Activist, International Civil Servant, and American Diplomat, 1894-1976." ''Mennonite Quarterly Review'' 73, no. 4 (October 1999): 751-782. Web. 22 January 2018. https://www.goshen.edu/mqr/1999/06/october-1999-homan/
-Lehman, James O. <em>Creative Congregationalism: the History of the Oak Grove Mennonite Church in Wayne County, Ohio.</em> Smithville, OH: The Church, 1978.
+Lehman, James O. ''Creative Congregationalism: the History of the Oak Grove Mennonite Church in Wayne County, Ohio.'' Smithville, OH: The Church, 1978.
 "Oak Grove Mennonite Church." Wikipedia. 21 June 2013. Web. 1 December 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_Grove_Mennonite_Church.
@@ Line 32: / Line 48: @@
 "Oak Grove Mennonite Church, 2007: Oak Grove History." Oak Grove Mennonite Church. 2007. Web. 1 December 2013. http://oakgrovemc.org/about/history/.
-Umble, John S. <em>Ohio Mennonite Sunday Schools</em>.  Goshen, IN: Mennonite Historical Society, 1941: 209-231.
+Umble, John S. ''Ohio Mennonite Sunday Schools''.  Goshen, IN: Mennonite Historical Society, 1941: 209-231.
 = Additional Information =
 '''Address''': 7843 Smucker Road, Smithville, OH 44677 (coordinates: 40.85863, -81.83148 [N 40 51' 31" W 81 49' 53"])
@@ Line 102: / Line 118: @@
 | Benjamin Gerig || align="right" | 1895-1913
 |-
-| J. S. Gerig || align="right" | 1896-1925
+| Jacob S. Gerig || align="right" | 1896-1955
 |-
 | [[Yoder, Christian Z. (1845-1939)|Christian Z. Yoder]] || align="right" | 1904-1939
@@ Line 108: / Line 124: @@
 | Peter R. Lantz || align="right" | 1909-1927
 |-
-| Jesse N. Smucker || align="right" | 1931-1936
+| Jesse N. Smucker || align="right" | 1916-1936
 |-
 | [[Detweiler, William Gehman (1903-1956)|William G. Detweiler]] || align="right" | 1938-1947
@@ Line 124: / Line 140: @@
 | Dennis Schmidt || align="right" | 1994-1996
 |-
-| Norma Duerkson || align="right" | 1993-2008
+| Norma Duerkson || align="right" | 1997-2008
 |-
 | Will Shertzer || align="right" | 2008-2009
@@ Line 133: / Line 149: @@
 = Map =
 [[Map:Oak Grove Mennonite Church, Smithville, Wayne County, Ohio, USA]]
-{{GAMEO_footer|hp=Vol. 4, p. 1-2|date=1958|a1_last=Gerig|a1_first=Virgil M|a2_last= |a2_first= }}
+{{GAMEO_footer|hp=Vol. 4, p. 1-2|date=January 2018|a1_last=Gerig|a1_first=Virgil M.|a2_last=Miller|a2_first=Levi}}
 [[Category:Churches]]
 [[Category:Eastern Amish Mennonite Conference Congregations]]

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