Beachburg Mennonite Meetinghouse (Beachburg, Ontario, Canada)
In 1979 several families of the Markham-Waterloo Mennonite Conference group sought to establish a new community. Scouting trips were taken to Manitoba and the Ottawa River Valley in Renfrew County, Ontario. Their ultimate choice was the Beachburg area in the Ottawa Valley. Three families moved to Beachburg in June 1980. By September 1980 the Riverside Parochial School was opened for the children of these families. More families took interest in this daughter settlement; by 1983 there were 10 Markham households in Beachburg. On 28 November 1984 Merlyn Martin was ordained minister and Oscar Martin ordained deacon. On 7 December 1994 Kenneth Martin was also ordained minister for the Beachburg congregation.
From its very beginning the Waterloo area ministry scheduled a minister and deacon to serve the Beachburg community once every three weeks. This schedule has continued until the present and has provided a good variety of ministry in rotation. Since 1994 Beachburg has held church services every Sunday rather than the former schedule of every three weeks.
In the summer of 1983 the Mennonites assumed responsibility for an old union cemetery on Zion Line at the location of the former Zion Line Wesleyan Methodist Church. At the same time they purchased an adjacent lot. They erected some portable buildings on it and used the location for their meetinghouse the following spring. Services previously had been held in an old farm house on Grants Settlement Road which also housed the school. In 1999 the Riverside Parochial School was moved to a new building located on Pappin Road. This location is also used for the youth's midweek baseball games and skating.
The Beachburg community experienced some growing pains as people moved to the community and others left for various reasons. Nonetheless there remained a dedicated core of members that, with support from the mother community, provided a stable settlement. In 2003 the Beachburg community consisted of 19 households, made up of 18 families and one single person.
Bibliography
Martin, Donald, Old Order Mennonites of Ontario : Gelassenheit, Discipleship, Brotherhood. Kitchener, ON : Pandora Press, 2003: 305-306.
Fretz, J. Winfield. The Waterloo Mennonites: A Community in Paradox. Waterloo: WLU Press, 1988: 152.
| Author(s) | Donald Martin |
|---|---|
| Date Published | October 2003 |
Cite This Article
MLA style
Martin, Donald. "Beachburg Mennonite Meetinghouse (Beachburg, Ontario, Canada)." Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. October 2003. Web. 19 Apr 2024. https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Beachburg_Mennonite_Meetinghouse_(Beachburg,_Ontario,_Canada)&oldid=115553.
APA style
Martin, Donald. (October 2003). Beachburg Mennonite Meetinghouse (Beachburg, Ontario, Canada). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved 19 April 2024, from https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Beachburg_Mennonite_Meetinghouse_(Beachburg,_Ontario,_Canada)&oldid=115553.
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