Dorcas Circle, Carson Mennonite Brethren Church

The Dorcas Circle, organized in Cottonwood County's Carson Township in 1936 and later known as the Women’s Mission Society (WMS), served as the backbone of the Carson Mennonite Brethren Church’s strong missions program. Working in supportive capacities, members of the circle impacted church and community life without taking on pastoral roles.

Women’s roles in the Carson Mennonite Brethren Church evolved over its 130-year history. Initially, men held leadership positions and made decisions while women served the family at home and provided supportive roles in the church.

Records of the church’s October 1907 business meeting show the first reference to women members: a plea for “sisters” to teach in mission schools in India. Mary Epp Voth and her husband, John H. Voth, responded by accepting a conference appointment to become missionaries. They left for India in 1907.

Prior to this time, however, women in the congregation had already served as missionaries. Maria Ewert Enns served as the first woman missionary from the newly formed Bingham Lake Mennonite Brethren Church (known later as Carson Mennonite Brethren Church) in 1896. She died, along with her husband Heinrich and infant son, one year after being sent to Cameroon, where the family was buried. Susanna Wiebe Hiebert and her husband, Nicholas N. Herbert, went to India in 1899 in response to a call for missionaries from Elder Heinrich Voth. When Nicholas became ill a year later, the couple returned to Minnesota and advocated for mission work in the Mennonite Brethren Conference.

Although Mennonite Brethren congregations do not ordain women as pastors, the Carson Mennonite Brethren Church did conduct ordination ceremonies for women church members who served as missionaries. Elizabeth Dickman-Janzen, trained for medical work, received ordination on September 4, 1910.Her husband, Frank A. Janzen, was ordained with her, and they both traveled to India. After Frank died, Elizabeth came back home to Minnesota for a time and then returned to India in 1938. She remained there until 1946.

Viola Bergthold, who had been raised in India as the child of missionary D. F. Bergthold and set down roots in the Carson Mennonite Brethren Church, married John A. Wiebe in 1926. They both received ordination for service to India on June 19, 1927. The ordination of John N. C. Hiebert and his wife, Ann Hiebert, took place on July 7, 1929.

On November 12, 1936, Mrs. Lydia Balzer, President; Rosella Flaming, Vice President; Mrs. Sam Dick, Secretary; Esther Wiens, Treasurer; Martha Wiebe, Committee Member founded the Dorcas Circle, a women’s organization designed to foster spiritual growth and to support the missions program of the church. Members met monthly to sew blankets and layettes for relief, write letters, and provide prayer support for missionaries supported by the church. They annually auctioned off women’s hand-made projects at a Fourth of July Missions celebration to raise funds for missions. The organization’s name became the Women’s Missionary Society in the 1980s, but its mission remained the same. It remained active until the church closed in 2005.

Encouraged to get advanced degrees, many young women from the congregation and all members of the Dorcas Society or Women’s Missionary Society, as it was later known, studied at Tabor College in Hillsboro, Kansas, and in other institutions of higher learning. Many became educators and nurses. Others married pastors and missionaries, including Susanna Ewert Wiebe, Linda Ewert Braun, Margaret Ewert Flaming, Berdina Balzer Emmert, Marlys Bartsch Friesen, Vera Lepp McDonald, Lucille Schultz Neufeld, Monica Espenson Totman, Carol Eytzen Janke, and Susan Orloske LeBoutillier. Susan Kroeker delivered the first message by a woman on April 10, 2005, and received ordination as a minister on April 5, 2011, through the Baptist denomination.

A ladies’ chorus formed in the early 1900s and continued through the 60s, performing monthly for Sunday worship services. A ladies’ sextet formed in the 1960s and sang together for many years.

As culture changed in the mid-to-late twentieth century, the church included women at every level of its operations except the clergy. They served as choir directors, Sunday School teachers, members of the Church Council, and deaconesses.