History

Elbing, the Hanseatic city on the Baltic Sea, inspired the name of Elbing, Kansas when, in 1883, a group of Mennonites came migrated from the Vistula and Nogat river delta   In the 16th Century Flemish, Dutch, and Frisian Mennonites settled in and around Elbing, and in 1590 built one of the first tolerated Mennonite meeting houses (or prayer houses, as they were called), in Europe, shown above.  Today Zion carries on the legacy of a Mennonite church in Elbing.

The first meeting place of the Zion Church, built in 1883, (top), was a mile north of Elbing, in the prairie countryside.  The second house of worship, below, was built in 1922 in Elbing.  The current church was built in the 1960s, and remodeled in the 1990s.

 Zion has many histories: its ancestry, its place, its people.   The congregation today includes members raised in most Mennonite denominations, and some of non-Mennonite origin.   We are conscious of our Anabaptist roots and identity as a congregation.  Charter members in 1883 came from Emmaus near Whitewater, Tiegenhagen, Ladekopp, and Heubuden in West Prussia.