About Us

Aylmer Evangelical Mennonite Mission Church is a member of the EMMC family of churches. Our congregation has been worshiping in Aylmer, Ontario since our founding in 1965. Learn more about our history here

Our Four Pillars

Worship

Our God is an awesome God who alone is worthy of our praise, our worship, and our faithfulness. (EMMC Confession)

For the disciple of Jesus, worship is not just a corporate gathering or a time of daily personal devotions, nor does it happen only when we are singing or in the right mood. For the disciple of Jesus, all of life is worship (Rom. 12:1-2; 1 Cor. 10:31). Whether we are eating, drinking, working, playing, making music, raising children, or doing anything else, we are to do all of these things to the glory of God.

“Where God is at the center of things, worship inevitably follows. Where there is no spirit of worship, there God has been dethroned and displaced.”

– Sinclair B. Ferguson

Community Life

We believe that the Church is the visible body of believers, the global community of those who have placed their faith in Jesus Christ. Members of this body are covenanted together in local congregations and participate in the ordinances of water baptism and the Lord’s Supper. (EMMC Confession)

As disciples of the same Master, we are commanded to seek fellowship with other disciples (Heb. 10:25). We gather together with this community of believers to worship God, bear each other’s burdens, confess our sins, pray for one another, rejoice together, weep together, and to hold each other accountable to our confession of faith.

“The Christian community is a community of the cross, for it has been brought into being by the cross, and the focus of its worship is the Lamb once slain, now glorified.” – John Stott

Missions

We believe that the mission of the Church is to make disciples in all the world by proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ in evangelism and compassionate ministries. Jesus gave the Spirit to his disciples for continuing his mission in the world (John 20:22). (EMMC Confession)

It is good to be reminded that, “Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t.” Our goal in this world is to worship God and bring others to know and worship him. We do this by proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ in whatever place God has called us to be. We may be called to evangelize our home community or we may be called to a foreign mission field, but evangelism is not optional; it is the call of every disciple of Jesus Christ (Matt. 28:16-20).

“If there be any one point in which the Christian church ought to keep its fervor at a white heat, it is concerning missions. If there be anything about which we cannot tolerate lukewarmness, it is in the matter of sending the gospel to a dying world.”

- Charles Spurgeon

Discipleship

We believe that following Jesus as Lord in all of life means that the Christian life is characterized by love, integrity, purity, and simplicity. (EMMC Confession)

A disciple is one who embraces and assists in spreading the teachings of another. As disciples of Jesus, we embrace and obey his commands and teach others to do the same. In doing this, we become more like our master (Luke 6:40; 14:26-33).

“Christianity without the living Christ is inevitably Christianity without discipleship, and Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.”

– Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Our History

In the early 1960s a young man named Isaac Peters moved from Mexico to Aylmer, Ontario. Needing work and finding none in the area, he moved to Manitoba. While in Manitoba he became a born-again believer and began to think about his family back in Aylmer who also needed to hear the gospel and become believers.

So he mailed them recordings of a Low German radio broadcast by a preacher named John D. Friesen. These recordings had the intended effect, and before long they were being broadcast by a radio station in Tillsonburg, Ontario. This planted many seeds in the Aylmer area.

In 1965 a group of families in Aylmer invited this preacher from Manitoba, John D. Friesen, to conduct services here. Later that same year Mr. Friesen returned again, along with his brother David Friesen, to conduct more services. These services were packed, and many people made commitments to Christ. A building was purchased so that these new believers had a gathering place.

In December of 1965 David Friesen and his wife Helen came to lead this thriving group of new believers in the Aylmer area. Soon more space was needed, and to address the issue a facility was built at 50619 Talbot Line—our current location. It was, of course, much smaller than the building you see today. In fact, what was the sanctuary at that time is today our foyer.

But all of what you see today came to be because God called one young believer to plant a seed, preachers to water those seeds, and others to build a building and build the church through teaching and prayer. The result was a harvest of people who were hungry for God’s word, who applied their faith in God to efforts to build his church.

All these many years later, we can see that God has been faithful—even when we have not. And so today, still building on the original foundation of faith, we are a thriving local church of people who are hungry for God and committed to studying and obeying his word.