Our History

1930's: The First Seeds are Planted

Our church community began in the 1930’s, during the depression, when young Mennonite women started to come to Calgary to find employment as domestic workers in some of the homes of wealthier Calgarians.  At the time, they began to gather at the home of Peter B. Epps, a carpenter who had settled in Calgary in 1931.  If a minister came through the city on Sunday, he would on occasion conduct a worship service for the girls who met at the Epp home. 

1940's: Support and Leadership

Gradually, more families from Mennonite communities began to settle in the area in and around Calgary and gather together to worship.  It became apparent that a private home was no longer adequate for the group that was gathering there, nor was the haphazard arrangement of their worship services.  In response, the Mission Boards of the Canadian and Alberta Conferences stepped in to support the growing community.  They arranged for the rental of a small hall between Eighth and Ninth avenues in downtown Calgary, and Rev. J. J. Sawatzky from the Bergthal Mennonite community in Carstairs was commissioned to travel in to the city each Sunday to conduct worship services.  The hall was quickly outgrown and so in 1946, the old Scarboro United Church on Seventeenth Avenue was purchased by the Conferences and we began to call our gathering, "Scarboro Mennonite Church."

1950's: Growing Numbers

Between 1948 and 1952 the population of our congregation grew from increased urbanization and from a stream of European Mennonite refugees welcomed into Canada after World War II.  Many of these first immigrants were young women and widows who eventually sought work in domestic services in Calgary.  When Rev. Sawatzky and his wife Maria were encouraged by the Conferences to move to Calgary permanently, they decided to help these newcomers by building a "Maedchenheim" (a home for girls) as part of their personal residence.  The Scarboro building where we were gathering quickly became too small, so we purchased a corner lot on Richmond Road and 25th Street and began the construction of a new building.  Through the fifties, the Sunday School developed and grew, large choirs filled the front of the sanctuary every Sunday, and various groups were active.  And when we moved into our new building in 1957, we changed our name to "First Mennonite Church."

1960's: German or English?

As the 1950's led to the 1960's, we faced times of internal conflict primarily over the language used in worship and Sunday School.  Our older, original members were interested in making a transition to English whereas our members who were post-World War II immigrants wanted to retain the German.  When we opted to maintain the German language for worship, many of our members who preferred English decided to join Foothills Mennonite Church in the early 1960's.  But the questions about language use were not quickly resolved.  In 1969, we ended up adding an additional English-speaking service to follow the German-speaking one on Sunday mornings.  Soon, that German service was the only time German was spoken.

 

Meanwhile, in the mid-1960's, Jacob Wiebe became our first hired pastor, while we still had a large contingent of lay pastors from the congregation that were included in the ministerial team.  One of those lay pastors, Peter Heidebrecht, was later ordained as "Ältester"  ("elder" or "bishop"), a role that would eventually cease to function with changes in Mennonite Church polity over the following decade.

1970's: Reaching Out

The 1970’s was a time of building and growth, as young families grew and urbanization continued in Alberta.  Many programs were started in the congregation including different choirs, clubs, auxiliaries, and bible studies that made the church the centre of our worshipping life as well as the centre of our social and community life.  It wasn't long before the practice of having brotherhood meetings was changed to congregational meetings so that women had equal participation. 

 

During this decade, the church was looking for ways to reach out to the neighbourhood, city, and even the world to be a part of God’s peace.  Just north on 25th avenue, the congregation built a seniors residence called "Menno Gardens."  We joined Foothills Mennonite Church in establishing a third General Conference congregation in North East Calgary called Pineridge Christian Fellowship.  And since so many of our families were refugees from war, we responded to the devastating war in Vietnam by sponsoring refugees from Southeast Asia.  A total of fifteen family groups from Southeast Asia were sponsored by different groups in our church during this time.

1980's: Recession

We continued to invest in new outreach programs and building projects in the early 1980’s: a second seniors residence, “Menno Court,” was opened; Menno Simons Christian School began after years of visioning; and eventually the Calgary Mennonite Centre for Newcomers was opened to further support refugees and immigrants to Calgary.  We hired Bruce Baergen as our first youth pastor.  After Bruce resigned years later, Grant Sawatzky was hired to fill the role of associate/youth pastor.  We continued to support the refugees from South Asia as they formed a worshipping community that was eventually named “Lao Community Mennonite Church.”  And with our sanctuary filled to capacity every Sunday, we commissioned some of our congregants in 1983 to start a fourth Mennonite congregation in South Calgary, which was soon known as Trinity Mennonite Church.

 

But the recession hit Calgary hard in the mid 1980’s and we were certainly impacted.  Much of our worship and programming continued, but we had to let go of many of the dreams we had for the future.  As the decade was coming to a close, shifts were beginning to emerge between different generations within our congregation - similar shifts to what was being felt within Christian churches across much of North America.

1990's: Difficult Changes

In 1990, we celebrated 25 years in ministry for our pastor Jake and Elsie Wiebe.  And only a few years later, in 1993, Jake sensed the call to resign as our pastor.  Grant Sawatzky, our associate and youth pastor, had also resigned the year before.  For a number of years after, there was quite a bit of turn-over in our ministers.  David Bergen took on the position of associate pastor while Herman Walde served an interim position until George Janzen was called to lead our congregation as pastor on a two-year term.  

 

We celebrated our 50th anniversary in 1996 under the theme “Come and see what God has done,” based on Psalm 66:5.  It was a time of reminiscing and story-telling of where we had come from and how God had led us.  However, there was an undercurrent of disharmony in our congregation.  When George Janzen’s term was up as lead pastor, he did not reapply, mostly due to the congregational unrest. There was little joy among us and we knew we needed help.  Ken Bechtel came to us as a trained mediator intending to lead us into reconciled and healed relationships.  He spent three years leading our congregation through a painful, yet important listening process, as well as guiding us through a tumultuous chapter in our Alberta conference.