The Randolph CMC Church was a Chortitzer Mennonite Conference

Chortitzer Mennonite Conference

The Chortitzer Mennonite Conference, or Die Mennonitische Gemeinde zu Chortitz, is a small body of Mennonites in western Canada.-History:The forerunners of this group came to Manitoba from Russia in 1874...

 (CMC) congregation located in the postal district of Randolph (originally known as Chortitz). Established in 1876, it was the first Chortitzer church in Canada and the last to still conduct services in the traditional format: singing with no musical instruments and entirely in the German language

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

.

It also served as the central church of the conference for many years, as it was the home church of the bishop

Bishop

A bishop is an ordained or consecrated member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, in the Assyrian Church of the East, in the Independent Catholic Churches, and in the...

s. However, the congregation's declining numbers led the CMC to close the church in 2010. The CMC has plans to turn the adjacent cemetery into a heritage cemetery.

External links

• Chortitzer Mennonite Conference Official Website
• Randolph Chortitzer Mennonite Church in Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online
• Chortitzer Mennonite Conference in Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online