The Fellowship of Evangelical Bible Churches (FEBC) is a small evangelical Christian denomination with an Anabaptist Mennonite heritage. Most of the denomination's approximately 5000 members are in congregations located in the U.S. and Canada.
Background
The Fellowship of Evangelical Bible Churches was founded at Mountain Lake, Minnesota on October 14, 1889 as the ' (Conference of United Mennonite Brethren in North America). This body originated among Russian Mennonite immigrants that came to Canada and the United States from Russia around 1874. Their desire was to place greater evangelical emphasis on such doctrines as repentance, conversion, scriptural discipline and non-conformity to the world. Instrumental in the founding of the conference were Elder Isaac Peters of the Ebenezer Church in Henderson, Nebraska and Elder Aaron Wall, founder of the Brudertaler Church in Mountain Lake.
For many years member congregations used the name "Brudertaler," probably under the influence of the Mountain Lake founding church, and the conference itself was popularly called the Brudertaler (Bruderthaler) Conference. In 1914 the name was officially changed to The Defenceless Mennonite Brethren in Christ of North America. Then, in 1937 the name was formally changed to Evangelical Mennonite Brethren (EMB).
The Evangelical Mennonite Brethren Conference changed its name to the Fellowship of Evangelical Bible Churches on July 16, 1987. At that time the conference consisted of 36 congregations with a membership of 4583 (of which 1981 members in 20 congregations were in Canada and 423 members were in South America). as well as 5 churches in Argentina and Paraguay. The Fellowship Focus is a bi-monthly magazine published by the FEBC. The conference headquarters are located in Omaha, Nebraska, having been moved there from Mountain Lake, Minnesota in 1956. They hold membership in the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (org. 1964), and the Mennonite World Conference, and until January, 2023, they had held membership with the National Association of Evangelicals (USA, org. 1942).
In 2013, there were 44 congregations included on the FEBC rolls. Most of the churches were in the U.S. and Canada, with one being in Paraguay.