[1] The conference was formed in 1860 when congregations in Iowa invited North American Mennonites to join together in order to pursue common goals such as higher education and mission work.

[2] This group tended to separate from their neighbors because of refusal to participate in the American Revolution, opposition to public education and rejection of religious revivalism.

[3] In the first half of the 19th century new waves of emigration and migration brought thousands of Mennonites to Pennsylvania, Ontario, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.

A concern arose independently among these congregations for a way to connect and organize families that were scattered from Ontario to the American frontier.

At a subsequent conference session Oberholtzer proposed a set of guidelines, a minimal constitution, for the organization and suggested that minutes of meetings be recorded so that decisions would be documented.

He began publishing Der Religiöse Botschafter (the Religious Messenger) with a circulation of 400, the first successful Mennonite periodical in North America.

He proposed a union based on a basic set of ideals: the doctrine of salvation in Christ, the sacraments, good works and freedom in externals.

At their 1859 conference meeting a resolution was adopted to invite North American Mennonites to join this union in order to promote home and foreign missions.

Daniel Hege was appointed to travel among Mennonite communities in the United States and Canada to promote cooperation for mission work and education.

Wadsworth was the first Mennonite institution of higher learning in North America and trained a generation of church leaders.

The conference had several other competing concerns, including supporting mission work and resettling thousands of Mennonite immigrants from Russia who started arriving in the 1870s.

Originally planned as two separate institutions sharing common facilities, the seminary functioned in practice as a single school after the first decade.

[citation needed] The first mission worker, Samuel S. Haury, was sent to Darlington and Cantonment in Indian Territory (later Oklahoma) in 1880 to work among the Arapaho.

[18] Rudolphe Petter spent fifteen years in Indian Territory and then worked with the Cheyenne in Montana for the rest of his life.

[19] The first mission workers sent overseas were Elizabeth and Peter A. Penner of Mountain Lake, Minnesota along with J. F. and Susanna Kroeker, arriving in Bombay 9 December 1900,[20] to start work in India.

Funk returned home on her first furlough in 1912 on RMS Titanic, losing her life when she gave up her seat on the last lifeboat to a mother with children.

Later areas of work included Taiwan, Japan, Zaire, Colombia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, and Costa Rica.

[citation needed] Another aspect of outreach was home missions, which began among scattered Mennonite communities in North America that were without pastoral leadership.

Strong support for schools continued through the history of the conference, which by the 1990s included these additional schools: Canadian Mennonite Bible College (Winnipeg, Manitoba), Columbia Bible College (Abbotsford, British Columbia), Conrad Grebel University College (Waterloo, Ontario), Swift Current Bible Institute (Swift Current, Saskatchewan), United Mennonite Education Institute (Leamington, Ontario) and Westgate Mennonite Collegiate (Winnipeg, Manitoba).

Conscientious objectors from Canadian congregations were serving in Alternative Service projects, primarily in western Canada and then later closer to home on farms and in industry.

In the United States, 828 men (almost 50 percent of those drafted) from General Conference churches served in Civilian Public Service (CPS).

The CPS experience created a generation of church leaders and continued an ongoing process of inter-Mennonite cooperation.

[citation needed] Throughout its history, the General Conference Mennonite Church organizational structure was divided among various committees and boards.

Around 1970 the boards were reorganized into commissions, including Commission on Education to oversee various educational activities and interests, Commission on Home Ministries which worked with mission activities in North America such as church planting and helping other Mennonite groups in Central and South America, Commission on Overseas Mission which dealt with overseas mission activities, Higher Education Council which worked with Mennonite colleges, Faith & Life Press which was the publishing and printing agency of the conference, Ministerial Leadership Services which worked with ministerial leadership and congregations and Division of General Services which oversaw the financial and business aspects of running the conference.

[citation needed] One of the first Mennonites to become politically involved was Peter Jansen (1852–1923) a sheep rancher from rural Beatrice, Nebraska.

[citation needed] One reason for early alignment with the Republican Party was self-interest in keeping commodity prices high.

As with other Mennonite farmers, Unruh's sons became strong supporters of high tariffs favored by the Republican Party.

As cooperation between the two groups increased, overlapping area conferences began looking at ways to work together and plan for an inevitable merger.

By 1989 an intentional effort was underway to devise a plan for merging the two organizations, which culminated in a 1999 delegate session where a new joint structure was approved.

The camp is located on 174 acres in Upper Bucks County, PA. Open year round, camp facilities include 11 cabins housing up to 16 campers each, a dormitory, swimming pool, lake, paddle boats and canoes, challenge course, water slide, gymnasium, and an environmentally planned trail system.