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The origin of the Africa Inter-Mennonite Mission goes back to the year 1912 when two small Mennonite groups, the Central Conference of Mennonites and the Defenseless Mennonite Conference, known earlier as the Stucky Amish and the Egly Amish, respectively joined their meager resources to pioneer a venture of faith on the African continent. Much of Africa had only recently been opened to the outside world by the exploratory travels of David Livingstone and H. Morton Stanley. While a variety of European powers was scrambling to stake out claims to colonial empire on that continent, Christians around the world were also organizing to bring a witness to Christ to unknown and uncounted tribes. One of the missions organized during that era was the Congo Inland Mission which is today known as the Africa Inter-Mennonite Mission.

It really is an improbable story. Identified by their founding leaders, Henry Egly and Joseph Stucky, the two groups had departed from the Old Order Amish in behalf of a more progressive and evangelical church life. Their rural membership clustered in Central Illinois and Indiana. By 1910 their total number still did not exceed 3500 people. None among them was well traveled or well educated by today's standards. Africa might as well have been located on the moon as far as any firsthand knowledge was concerned. Caught up as they were, however, in the joy of their new understanding of salvation through grace and the excitement of newly discovered claims of discipleship upon them, they dared to launch a series of cooperative Mennonite endeavors.

But those rural Mennonite Christians were reaching toward still broader horizons. In spite of the conservative, limited background of their Amish experience, they launched home mission efforts in Chicago. Having attempted to respond to the challenge of their Judea and Samaria, they turned their attention to "the uttermost part of the earth." Though several mission workers were sponsored in East Africa during the 1890's, a desire grew to establish their own work in an unreached area of the Congo. By January 23, 1912 in the little rural hamlet of Meadows, Illinois the Congo Inland Mission was officially brought into being. Before that year ran its course, the first little handful of Mennonite missionaries had hacked clearings in the brush beside the Kasai River at Djoko Punda and Kalamba in South Central Congo and the effort to bring a witness to the gospel of Christ in that land was engaged.