A Brief History of Mid America Friends

“The attention of Friends (Ohio and Indiana) was first turned to Kansas in connection with Indian Missionary activity” (Sheldon Jackson, A Short History….).  This attention was given action in 1836 by the construction of a boarding school a “meeting house”, stables and a meat house to the southwest of what is now Kansas City.  So began what has become Evangelical Friends Church- Mid America Yearly Meeting.  By 1872 the territories had opened their doors to many settlers, among who were a significant number of Friends who established Friends Churches in various places.  Indiana Friends were in agreement to establish Kansas Friends their own Yearly Meeting with headquarters in Lawrence, Kansas.

Post-Civil War migrations saw a great influx of Friends settling in the Midwest.  Soon churches were established in Oklahoma and Texas so that by 1925 the membership of Friends in Kansas Yearly Meeting had reached just over 10,000.  This was the year that the headquarters was officially moved from Lawrence to Wichita.

In the intervening years, Kansas Yearly Meeting changed its name to more appropriately reflect its constituency, first to Mid-America Yearly Meeting, then in 2000, to Evangelical Friends Church – Mid America Yearly Meeting.  Those years also saw the formation of Friends University, Friends Bible College (now Barclay College) and Camp Quaker Haven.

Heeding the call to “go into the world”, Mid America Friends launched the Friends Africa Gospel Mission in Burundi Africa in 1934.  The church grew and developed until it is now one of the largest groups of Evangelical Friends in the world.  Partnership with Evangelical Friends Mission now occupies the missionary vision and calling.

Mid America Friends have been planting churches throughout the region and encouraging its people to enter into the communities of our world with the good news of Christ and being the incarnation of Christ to the ones who have yet to believe.

We hold the following Core Values: Every person is valuable to God and to us, The world is our mission field, Each Christian is a minister, Each Christian is a steward of God’s resources, The church is Christ’s vehicle for ministry and evangelism, and The Scriptures are our trustworthy source for faith and living.

Our Vision reflects these values and involves God’s call to us: To reproduce the church in the towns and cities of our region, and To extend the church across the geographical and cultural borders of the world This vision is manifested through our Purpose: To utilize our collective resources to assist our local churches to meet the spiritual needs of the people in their communities. The Friends Church Ministry Center in Wichita serves the participating churches, working to fulfill Jesus’ Great Commandment to mobilize, equip and send workers to spread the love of Jesus.

Reflecting our values, our vision and our purpose, we will achieve the following Objectives: We will plant Evangelical Friends churches throughout our region. We will assist in the planting of Evangelical Friends Churches in other countries of our world. We will develop new leaders to meet the increasing demands of new ministries. We will recruit and mobilize students for ministry.

These objectives will be achieved through the following Strategies: We will employ the services of a Church Planting Director to motivate, train and engage church planters We will engage the Evangelical Friends Mission as our primary sending agency and support the fields that we jointly approve. We will utilize the Church Leadership Institute for Ministry as a means of training people for the ministry of the gospel. We will forge a relationship with Barclay College as our primary institution to prepare and equip students for leadership ministries.