page_title: Mennonites
section_title: Organization worldwide
hierarchical_section_title: Mennonites / Membership / Organization worldwide
caption_attribution_description: English: Bethesda Mennonite Church in Henderson, Nebraska; seen from the southwest.
context_page_description: The Mennonites are members of certain Christian groups belonging to the church communities of Anabaptist denominations named after Menno Simons of Friesland. Through his writings, Simons articulated and formalized the teachings of earlier Swiss founders. The early teachings of the Mennonites were founded on the belief in both the mission and ministry of Jesus, which the original Anabaptist followers held to with great conviction despite persecution by the various Roman Catholic and Protestant states. An early set of Mennonite beliefs was codified in the Dordrecht Confession of Faith in 1632, but the various groups do not hold to a common confession or creed. Rather than fight, the majority of these followers survived by fleeing to neighboring states where ruling families were tolerant of their belief in believer's baptism. Over the years, Mennonites have become known as one of the historic peace churches because of their commitment to pacifism.
  In contemporary 21st-century society, Mennonites are described either only as a religious denomination with members of different ethnic origins or as both an ethnic group and a religious denomination.
context_section_description: The most basic unit of organization among Mennonites is the church. There are hundreds or thousands of Mennonite churches and groups, many of which are separate from all others. Some churches are members of regional or area conferences. And some regional or area conferences are affiliated with larger national or international conferences. Thus, there is no single authorized organization that includes all Mennonite peoples worldwide.
  For the most part, there is a host of independent Mennonite churches along with a myriad of separate conferences with no particular responsibility to any other group. Independent churches can contain as few as fifty members or as many as 20,000 members. Similar size differences occur among separate conferences. Worship, church discipline and lifestyles vary widely between progressive, moderate, conservative, Old Order and orthodox Mennonites in a vast panoply of distinct, independent, and widely dispersed classifications. For these reasons, no single group of Mennonites anywhere can credibly claim to represent, speak for, or lead all Mennonites worldwide.
  The twelve largest Mennonite/Anabaptist groups are:
  Mennonite Brethren (426,581 members on six continents worldwide)
  Old Order Amish (300,000 in North America)
  Meserete Kristos Church in Ethiopia (120,600 members; 126,000 more followers attending alike churches)
  Old Colony Mennonite Church (120,000 in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Bolivia, Paraguay, Belize and Argentina)
  Communauté Mennonite au Congo 87,000 members
  Mennonite Church USA with 78,892 members in the United States
  Old Order Mennonites with 60,000 to 80,000 members in the U.S., Canada and Belize
  Kanisa La Mennonite Tanzania with 50,000 members in 240 congregations
  Arbeitsgemeinschaft Mennonitischer Gemeinden in Deutschland or Deutsche Mennonitengemeinden with 40,000 members in Germany
  Mennonite Church Canada with 31,000 members in 225 congregations across Canada
  Conservative Mennonites with 30,000 members in over 500 U.S. churches
  Church of God in Christ, Mennonite with 24,400 members, of whom 14,804 (2013 data) were in United States, 5,081 in Canada, and the remainder being found in various countries of Africa, Asia, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Europe.
  The Mennonite World Conference is a global community of 95 Mennonite and Brethren in Christ Mennonite national churches from 51 countries on six continents. It exists to "facilitate community between Anabaptist-related churches worldwide, and relate to other Christian world communions and organizations", but it is not a governing body of any kind. It is a voluntary community of faith whose decisions are not binding on member churches. The member churches of Mennonite World Conference include the Mennonite Brethren, the Mennonite Church USA, and the Mennonite Church Canada, with a combined total membership of at least 400,000, or about 30% of Mennonites worldwide.
caption: Bethesda Mennonite Church in Henderson, Nebraska, U.S.
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