David Dyck, a tireless church builder

by Harold Jantz

Few people exemplified the spirit of the young Mennonite Brethren movement better than David Dyck. Called to lead the church in no fewer than seven places, he kept on responding to opportunities to witness to his Saviour wherever they arose - and for him they never seemed to cease.

He is best-known as the early leader of the Winkler Church and the first moderator of the Northern District (later the Canadian M.B. Conference), which he was for 13 years. But more than anything he was a tireless itinerant minister at conference request. He certainly slept in hundreds of beds during a long life of ministry.

Dyck was born in Nieder Chortitza, in the Old Colony, on 25 January 1846. The winds of spiritual renewal awaft in the Mennonite colonies touched David early. He heard about the conversion of others, including some cousins, when he was a young teenager. He has a personal encounter with the Saviour at the age of 16.

On 17 September 1867 he was married to Helena Rempel of Rosenthal, a marriage that lasted over 65 years and brought 15 children into the world, nine sons and six daughters. Three children died in infancy. During these first years of marriage he struggled with the question of sin and trust in Christ. The turningpoint came after a cholera outbreak. In 1873, both David and Helena were baptized and joined the young Mennonite Brethren church.

A few years later, in the summer of 1876, the Dycks joined the movement to America, arriving in New York aboard the Anchovia on 19 July [Hiebert, 295] to begin a new life. Only a few Mennonite families were on that ship, but they included the Bernard Pauls family, who became partners in the work of the church for years to come. David was 30, his wife 28, and their three children under 10, ready to face the challenges of their new life.

Like many of their fellow Russian Mennonite immigrants they started out in Kansas. After a winter in Marion County, they moved a hundred miles east to Woodson County, where land was cheaper, and there started a church. About 20 families moved with them, built a schoolhouse, and in 1878 Dyck and Pauls were elected as ministers. At Woodson, Pauls, who was Dyck's senior by 13 years, was the presiding minister and Dyck his assistant. David writes that the church prospered, all but one of the adult children of the families were converted. In 1881 Elder Abraham Schellenberg visited the Woodson church and ordained Dyck as minister.

Though he was in America only a few years, David wanted training for church work. He decided in 1883 to go to the Baptist Seminary in Rochester, N.Y., but after just six weeks there he was called back home when his eldest daughter was bitten by a rabid dog. Happily she survived, his studies however never resumed. Though Dyck had a lively and inquiring mind, he seems to have taken the experience as a sign that his first duty was to his family.

Dyck's family was growing but the Woodson settlement wasn't doing very well and in 1884 the Dycks accepted an invitation to come to the Goessel area where a group of ten families out of the Alexanderwohl Mennonite settlement had formed a Mennonite Brethren group under the leadership of Cornelius P. Wedel and Abraham Schellenberg [Friesen, II, 14]. The gifted evangelist missionary Peter Wedel came from that family as did Cornelius H. Wedel, who became president of Bethel College. Dyck was asked to take charge of a group in Lehigh where some of the Alexanderwohl members had settled. A church was built the same year. Dyck was ordained an elder by Abraham Schellenberg in 1884.

Bernard Pauls followed Dyck to Lehigh a year later. In 1883 Dyck was the first person assigned by Mennonite Brethren in America to collect and publish reports about the work done by the churches [Harms, 263]. A year later his work was taken over by John F. Harms, who became editor of the Zionsbote until 1906 and played a very large role in given cohesion to the conference through his publishing activity.

The Lehigh church had the distinction of being the first Mennonite Brethren church in North America to be located in a town. For Dyck as church leader, the years at Lehigh were the happiest, he wrote at the end of his life. As a practical necessity, however, Dyck always had to think about land for his children. In 1888 he had taken a look at lower California, but decided it was too far from other Mennonites.

So it was in 1892 that Dyck followed a group who had already made a move to eastern Colorado where new land was being opened up. The group became the Kirk Mennonite Brethren Church and Dyck its leader. Again they built aa meetingplace and experience vigorous growth, notably after an evangelistic visit by Peter Wedel. But poor crops, especially in 1894, put a lot of pressure on the church and on the Dycks too. Their time in Kirk lasted only three years.

In 1895 he accepted the urgent request of the Winkler Church to come to Canada to give leadership within the growing Canadian Mennonite Brethren Church. They loaded nine of their children onto wagons and drove to Winkler, arriving there on 17 July 1895, after a two-month journey. Some of the family were already there.

Dyck was no stranger to Manitoba or Canada. He had been asked as much as a dozen years earlier to visit Manitoba in an itinerant ministry and in 1884 he and Heinrich Voth had come to the West Reserve to survey the needs. They found, as they said, "devout and seeking souls" [Unruh, 491]. Helena Dyck's own parents, the Rempels, lived there, and the man who would become the heart of the Manitoba Mennonite Brethren after Dyck moved on, was a teacher in Hoffnungsfeld where Heinrich Voth did some of his most effective evangelistic work when he returned following the initial visit. His name was Johann Warkentin and he too came from Nieder Chortitza [Neufeld, 33]. He will certainly have known Dyck from the old homeland.

When the Dycks arrived in Winkler, the church was still out at Burwalde, a few miles north of town. Membership stood at 84. Three years later, in 1898, it was moved into town and in preparation for the convention which would take place in Winkler that year, a new much roomier building was erected. When the Dycks moved on to Saskatchewan 11 years after coming, the membership of the church stood at 225.

The years in Winkler were important to Dyck's ministry in several ways. First, he brought gifted people into work of the church. A few months after coming he ordained Johann Warkentin to the ministry, and when he left Warkentin would begin a 25-year very fruitful ministry as leader in Winkler.

Secondly, it was during those years in Winkler that Dyck really began his itinerant ministry. He had often been asked before, but probably because of his family needs and more local responsibilities, he declined. But now he agreed. He travelled widely in southern Manitoba, Saskatchewan, into the Dakotas, and elsewhere. His reports appeared frequently in the conference paper, the Zionsbote, beginning with the first report in the 15 April 1896 issue.

One gets the impression of a person who gladly accepted the rigours of difficult travel, strange beds, and inconveniences to share the gospel he had come to hold so dearly among people he truly loved. His reports are filled with expressions of affection. On a trip to the Rosthern area he comments that as he stepped from the train "I spotted several familiar faces as soon as I disembarked, ones I had come to love ..." When he sees little children peering through train windows to see if they recognize a familiar face, he says, "How the human heart longs for reunion with those one grieved to leave." And as he celebrated communion with the brothers and sisters before leaving, he expressed the hope that they could fulfill the Apostle's wish, "Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace."

He could enjoy himself with people in a variety of ways. He describes how he went down to the North Saskatchewan to join others fishing and caught two sturgeon, one a 33 pounder and the other 17 pounds. When the weather turned bad as he was fishing, he went to the Peter Hoeppners where they enjoyed a good fish fry together.

During the trip, which began June 20 and ended July 5, with 12 days in the Rosthern area, he conducted nine services and made at least 15 visits and appears to have slept in four different beds. He made a point of visiting the bishop of the Rosenorter Mennonite Church, Peter Regier, as well.

In a report which describes the beginning of Dyck's itinerant witness after arriving in Winkler, he reviews the work he did between mid-November, 1895 and the end of February, 1896. During that time he made extended visits to Plum Coulee, the Blumstein-Hoffnungsfeld area close to Winkler during Christmas and the prayer week, Morden and places south of it, and finally the East Reserve.

He says that during this time he experienced many opportunities to be strengthened in the faith with the other believers and was met with much "friendliness and support." He commends those whose work preceded his.

It was this kind of work, usually involving conversation around the spiritual experiences of people, singing, study of the Bible and prayer, that Dyck carried on all the years of his stay in Winkler. Most of it was done in homes. It laid the foundation for Mennonite Brethren churches that grew up around Winkler and in northern and southern Saskatchewan.

In addition, he was active in the leadership of the conference. From 1903 to 1906 he was a member of the first constitutionally structured Board of Foreign Missions. He was part of the group that began the work which led to the formation of three district conferences, a Southern, Central, and Northern District, and which opened the way to vigorous expansion of the churches. When the reorganization process was completed in 1909, Dyck began his 13-year stint as Northern District moderator.

After 11 years in Winkler, Dyck was ready for another move. In 1906 the Dyck family moved to Borden, Saskatchewan. There he was instrumental in the formation of another congregation. Dyck was 60 years of age. A few years later he moved to Brotherfield, Saskatchewan, and again gave leadership to the church there.

In 1917 Helena and David celebrated their 50^th wedding anniversary. In 1918 they moved into the town of Waldheim, Saskatchewan where he became leader of another new congregation in the town, the third town congregation he began after Lehigh and Winkler.

Yet it is interesting that in July, 1921, Dyck was the spokesperson for a group who had met in the Rosthern area to discuss what they ought to do about Mennonite brothers who were trying to flee Russia in the wake of the revolution. Their decision was not to support a group already in Constantinople who had fled Russia, not to lend financial or material support nor support an effort being made to send a delegation to Ottawa who would negotiate for opportunities to immigrate to Canada [Epp, 72]. He clearly cannot have sensed the desperate struggle many brothers and sisters in Russia were enduring and the importance of working together to bring them to safety. When the first immigrants came in 1923, the Mennonite Brethren were at first conspicuous for their absence from the lists of those who welcomed the newcomers into their homes [Epp, 143].

Dyck's last years were lived in Waldheim and there he died on 6 January 1933, at the ripe age of 87. He left a good legacy, despite his shortsightedness toward his Russian brothers and sisters. His tireless church building - both of the living body and the meetingplaces to house them - was a testimony to his conviction that people could come to new life in Christ and become lively, witnessing communities of believers. His sermon notes reveal a preacher who loved to lay a good foundation for faith and who could address the practical struggles which believers encountered. He preached a strong message of the grace of God and of the work of the Holy Spirit. He deserves a good deal of the credit for setting Mennonite Brethren in Canada onto a path of sturdy and healthy growth.

Primary Sources:

David Dyck, brief autobiographical account, written in 1933.

Sermon notebooks 1 and 2 of David Dyck.

Books and periodicals:

A.H. Unruh, Die Geschichte der Mennoniten-Brüdergemeinde, Hillsboro, KS, Mennonite Brethren Church of North America, 1955.

J.A. Toews, A History of the Mennonite Brethren Church, Fresno, CA, Board of Christian Literature, General Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches, 1975.

A.J. Klassen, et al, The Church in Mission, Fresno, CA, Board of Christian Literature, Mennonite Brethren Church, 1967.

Frank H. Epp, Mennonite Exodus, Altona, MB, Canadian Mennonite Relief and Immigration Council, 1962.

William Neufeld, From Faith to Faith, Winnipeg, MB, Kindred Press, 1989.

William J. Ratzlaff, et al, Waldheim Remembers the Past, Waldheim, SK, Waldheim History Committee, 1981.

G.W. Peters, The Growth of Foreign Missions in the Mennonite Brethren Church, Hillsboro, KS, Board of Foreign Missions, Conference of Mennonite Brethren Church of North America, 1952.

John H. Lohrenz, The Mennonite Brethren Church, Hillsboro, KS, Board of Foreign Missions, Conference of the Mennonite Brethren Church of North America, 1950.

Clarence Hiebert, Brothers in Deed to Brothers in Need, Newton, KS, self-published, 1974.

P.M. Friesen, Alt-Evangelische Mennonitische Bruderschaft in Russland, Halbstadt, Taurien, Russia, Raduga, 1911.

J.F. Harms, Geschichte der Mennoniten Brüdergemeinde, 1860-1924, Hillsboro, KS, Jubiläums-Komitees, Mennonite Brethren Publishing House, 1924.

Zionsbote, denominational publication of the Mennonite Brethren churches of United States and Canada, Hillsboro, KS.

Die Mennonitische Rundschau, periodical of the Mennonites of Russian background, published in United States, and later in Winnipeg, Canada.