College Mennonite Church

College Mennonite Church (CMC) is a Mennonite Church located in Goshen, Indiana, and a member of the Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference of Mennonite Church USA.

College Mennonite Church (CMC) is so named because it was founded following the creation of Goshen College, formerly the Elkhart Institute. The charter members fought to be organized as a union congregation in 1904; they would hold membership in both Mennonite and Amish Mennonite conferences.

The first preacher was Jonas S. Hartzler.

The congregation first met in Hartzler's home but met in buildings of Goshen College as soon as they were constructed, first the dining hall and then the assembly hall .

The first Sunday school was organized at CMC in 1904. In late 1904 and 1905, CMC commissioned several missionaries (Lydia Schertz, Anna Stalter, and Martin Clifford Lehman) bound for India. Soon after, the church began to support "home missions" in Chicago and Fort Wayne, Indiana. By 1909, College Mennonite had begun a Working Girls Missionary Society and a sewing circle.

In the 1930s, College Mennonite allocated somewhere between 40% and 52% of its budget toward missions efforts.

CMC, along with Goshen College students' Young People's Christian Association, helped begin the Sunday schools that became North Goshen Mennonite Church and East Goshen Mennonite Church.

Goshen College closed for the 1923-24 school year after many students and some faculty left in protest of the appointment of Daniel Kauffman as college president. This conflict carried over into the ranks of CMC, with many members, including Jonas S. Hartzler leaving and joining Eighth Street Mennonite Church, then a part of the General Conference Mennonite Church. Of the 213 members in 1923, only between 15 and 30 remained in the fall of 1924, though accounts differ. Many new faculty and students joined when Goshen College reopened, and the church was reorganized.

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