John Ongman

John Ongman (November 15, 1844 – February 28, 1931) was a Swedish Baptist pastor and founder of the Örebro Missionary Society and Örebro Missionary School. He also was the first pastor of the First Swedish Baptist Church in Saint Paul, Minnesota and also a pastor of the First Swedish Baptist Church in Chicago. He was an energetic evangelist and influential leader of the Swedish Baptists both in America and Sweden.

Upbringing He was the fourth of six siblings and grew up in a Christian home. His father, Nils Sköld, was a soldier by profession and his mother, Maria Laurentia Sten, came from a blacksmith family with roots in Norway. Ongman went to school for four years and at the age of 17 he traditionally enlisted as a soldier in the Jämtland Ranger Corps to follow in his father's footsteps. It was in the military that he was given the name Ångman (possibly because at the age of 18 he lived in Ångmon /Ångron ), which was later rewritten in English as Ongman.

Conversion and work In 1864, he visited his friend Karl Hansson, who was newly saved, and Ongman also accepted salvation at the age of eighteen. He was baptized in Myssjö Baptist Church in Kövra, Sweden, on March 4 (or March 1) in an opening in frozen Lake Storsjön and soon began to preach. In 1866 he began full-time preaching and traveling, and on May 14, 1868, he traveled to the United States for the first time. He first worked as pastor in Red Wing, Minnesota as well as for the American Baptist Home Mission Society.