The Meserete Kristos Church is the Mennonite affiliated denomination in Ethiopia. The MKC headquarters is in Addis Ababa.
History
The Church has its origins in an American mission of the Lancaster Mennonite Conference in the 1940s. The first church was founded in 1951 in Addis Ababa. Meserete Kristos Church (meaning “Christ is the foundation”, is based on I Cor. 3:11. It was officially planted in 1959. According to the report presented to the General Assembly in 2022, it would have 1160 churches and 370 church planting centers potentially local churches very soon.
Origins
Before Meserete Kristos Church’s inception in 1945, Mennonite missionaries entered Ethiopia in association with the Mennonite Central Committee looking to bring relief to the country a few years after the Italian occupation of 1936-1941. Since the missionaries weren’t granted missionary status by the Ethiopian government, the early Mennonites in Ethiopia focused all of their energy and resources on relief work. They brought a shipment of relief goods and acquired access to an old cotton gin building which they then converted into a local hospital. It wasn’t until June 7th, 1948 that Dorsa Mishler and Daniel Sensening, two mission representatives, obtained permission for permanent mission status from the government, which was an expression of appreciation and complement to their previous relief work. In 1950, the transfer of the mission from the Mennonite Relief Committee to the Eastern Mennonite Board of Missions was completed. Under their new status, mission work could expand into education and evangelism which they immediately took advantage of when, in that same year, they built the first of their many schools in Deder.
One Saturday night on June 16, 1951, a group of ten Ethiopian nationals planned to be the first group of believers baptized by Mennonite missionaries in the country. These ten men and women lived in the “closed” area of Nazareth where missionaries were banned from proselytizing. Therefore, the missionaries brought them to Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, which was an “open” area where missionaries could operate. The missionaries believed they could take the theme to the capital to overcome the hurdles. The ten Ethiopians were baptized and returned to Nazareth; however, the Nazareth governor found out about their trip and scolded the missionaries for their actions. There weren’t any serious repercussions, but the missionaries were made to promise never to baptize people from any “closed” area ever again. Nevertheless, the baptized ones kept baptizing the convert since then, however. The Meserete Kristos Church today marks June 16 as the day when the church officially began, as they celebrated their fifty-year Jubilee in 2001.
Growth
From January 17-19, 1959 the first meeting between national lay leaders and Mennonite missionaries took place at a general council meeting in Nazareth. This date signified the first in a series of steps to transfer church authority from the Mennonite missionaries to Ethiopian lay leaders. Throughout the meetings, lay leaders and missionaries discussed and developed a structure for the various congregations meeting on the missions. The Ethiopian lay leaders eventually took over the missions entirely from the Mennonite Central Committee and Eastern Mennonite Mission including the schools and hospitals in three stages. The first stage, implemented in 1962, allowed Ethiopian nationals to minister to their local congregations in conjunction with the missionaries. Missionaries couldn’t interfere with the administration unless they were elected by the congregations. The second phase began in 1964 to substitute nationals into different posts in mission-run projects. Another event that marked a major transition point in the history of MKC occurred in 1964 when the former mission-directed organization was dissolved and the first church constitution was approved. Finally, the third phase in 1965 declared that Ethiopians serving as assistants be appointed to the executive committee, while the missionaries become assistants. During these meetings, the title Meserete Kristos Church was also proposed. The term “Mennonite” was not included within the name of the church because it was decided that the term “Mennonite” had no significant local meaning and might sound foreign and hinder the message of the good news of Christ for the country who came out of the Italian war. Fortunately, the missionaries never forced the leaders to name the church after Mennonite, rather they encouraged the local name with the understanding of the context.