© Mennonite Heritage Centre, Winnipeg, Manitoba (Last updated May 7, 2010)
Peter A. Warkentin, farmer and Mennonite minister, was born 30 October 1889 in the village of Karpowka, southern Russia, to Abram D. Warkentin (1854-1919) and Agatha Fast (1855-1903). From 1911-1914 he served in the forestry service for the Russian state. During World War I he served as a non-combatant in a military medical unit.
Warkentin married Helen Janzen (1898-1987), daughter of Gerhard D. Janzen (1869-1924) and Helena Martens (1873-1954) of the neighbouring village of Memrick on 21 September 1919. Together they produced a family of six daughters and four sons.
Peter Warkentin was baptized upon the confession of his faith in 1909, called and ordained to the ministry in the Mennonite Church on 20 June 1920, and in October 1940, he received a "Minister's Certificate" from the General Conference Mennonite Church of North America, headquartered in Newton, Kansas. He served from 1934 to 1974, as an unsalaried pastor of the Superb Mennonite Church, Superb, Saskatchewan, a small, rural congregation of recent immigrants.
Peter and Helen Warkentin emigrated from Russia to Canada in 1927. After a year in Provost, Alberta, and 6 years on a farm at Luseland, Saskatchewan, they moved to a farm in Superb, Saskatchewan, where they lived for 40 years.
The Superb Mennonite congregation was one of four rural churches that were a part of the Ebenfelder Mennoniten Gemeinde. Warkentin's leadership in the congregation was characterized by being progressive -- "always a bit ahead". This congregation was the first of the four to invite women to participate in the congregational meetings (earlier known as "brotherhood meetings"). Also, having never mastered the English language, he did not hesitate to invite his younger English speaking colleagues to preach, when he realized that most of the younger folk no longer understood the German messages.
Peter A. and Helen Warkentin spent their final years in Saskatoon, where they moved in 1974. Peter died in Saskatoon on 11 January 1988 at the age of 98.
This fonds consists of 493 sermons organized by the following categories: funerals, baptism, Christmas, New Years, Pentecost, Thanksgiving, Missions fests, Advent, Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension Day, pre-Easter, post Epiphany, wedding and anniversaries, communion, Trinitatis, Ten commandments, Matthew, Acts, Romans, I Corinthians, James, catechism . The sermons cover the cycle of the Christian church calendar and the breadth of community life over a 40 year period from the late 1930s to the 1970s.
Inventory file list available
German; some typewritten, a few Gothic handwritten.
Arranged and described by Alf Redekopp, May 7, 2010.
None to access
Anne Warkentin Dyck of Calgary.
Acc. No. 2010-033