About

History

The district goes back to a small group of Swedish Baptist immigrants in Rock Island, Illinois, which then spread to other cities along the Mississippi River in Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota, as well as the still-fledgling city of Chicago. The churches soon organized into a conference—which in those days literally meant an annual conference for the purpose of providing training to the pastors, who did not have the advantage of a seminary education.

As the number of churches grew, the organization was divided into regional districts. The denomination which resulted became known as the Swedish Baptist Conference, reaching out to Swedish immigrants. Most of its churches conducted services in Swedish for many years. By World War II, the predominance of Swedish heritage remained, but English was standard. In 1945, the denomination changed its name to the present-day Baptist General Conference.

The MidAmerica Baptist Conference, which descends directly from the Illinois Conference, can make the claim as the oldest of BGC's 13 districts, since the first church consisted of a handful of believers in Rock Island, Illinois.