Foreword by Editorial Committee (excerpts)

One of the major architects of North American Mennonite Church life in
the twentieth century was Orie O. Miller. Miller was born on an Indiana
farm in 1892. Most of his adult life he lived in Akron, Pennsylvania, the
hometown of his wife, Elta Wolf Miller. From this base he managed a
shoe manufacturing company and administered the increasingly worldwide
program of Mennonite Central Committee.

Although a successful business executive, Orie Miller had a primary
passion of ministering “in the name of Christ,” to quote words used for
almost one hundred years to describe one of the organizations he helped
found, Mennonite Central Committee. This ministry was rooted in local
congregations—Forks Mennonite near Middlebury, Indiana, and Ephrata
Mennonite in Ephrata, Pennsylvania. As a Goshen College student he
heard the call to service in international relief and reconstruction. After
experience in post-World War I Beirut and Constantinople, he was one of
the first North American Mennonites to enter Russia and the Ukraine as a
relief worker in 1920.

With this experience he quickly joined the administrative body of
Mennonite Central Committee, the major involvement of his life for
the next thirty-five years. As a business leader and church administrator
he also accepted responsibilities to the executive committees of two
mission boards, Goshen College, Mennonite World Conference, and a
variety of other church institutions. In retirement he continued to work
on the boards of Mennonite Economic Development Agency (MEDA),
Schowalter Foundation, Mennonite Christian Leadership Foundation
(MCLF), and a number of local involvements. . . .

—Editorial Committee
Robert S. Kreider, North Newton, Kansas
John A. Lapp (chair), Goshen, Indiana
Calvin Redekop, Harrisonburg, Virignia
Morris Sider, Grantham, Pennsylvania