Eastern Mennonite Missions is an Anabaptist mission agency supported primarily by approximately 170 congregations in Lancaster Conference of the Mennonite Church. Other churches, conferences, and agencies in North America also participate in the mission, including approximately 100 other churches from Good News Fellowship, and Atlantic Coast, Franklin, and New York Mennonite conferences.

EMM partners with an international network of Anabaptist-oriented churches and regional mission centers on six continents. EMM is also one of the four founding members of the International Missions Association (IMA), a group of Anabaptist mission agencies/churches from Asia, Africa, North America, and Latin America

Our mission begins with the world, ministering among those who do not yet know the good news. As new groups of believers spring up, we work to strengthen churches and empower leaders. Then, as new mission societies emerge from these circles of churches, our relationship culminates in a collaborative partnership to send more workers.

The seven core commitments that advance this mission are:

• To bring glory to God
• To form Christ-centered churches at home in their cultures
• To unite word, deed, and being in one seamless whole
• To be constant in prayer
• To be filled with the Spirit
• To be ‘strangers and pilgrims’ within this world
• To be founded on the Word of God

The beginnings
In September 1894, a group of 12 young men met in a farmhouse east of Lancaster, Pa., with the goal of promoting missions. They named their organization “Home Mission Advocates”, which was officially incorporated in 1916 as Eastern Mennonite Board of Missions and Charities; the popular name Eastern Mennonite Missions was adopted in 1993. The work was largely local in the beginning; the first overseas missionary went to Tanzania in 1934.

Today
A 12- to 14-member board guides the work of 59 staff and over 300 workers* in global witness and service in over 35 countries. In addition, a representative council serves in an advisory role to the Board and in an advocacy, resourcing, and informative role to the various constituencies and stakeholders of EMM."

*This figure includes workers appointed by both EMM and another agency.