Jonathan Neufeld has been hired as Mennonite Church Canada’s Indigenous relations coordinator, a role that will seek to coordinate and resource the regional churches in their relationship-building with Indigenous communities. Growing up in Landmark, Man., and Abbotsford, B.C., Neufeld studied and served as pastor in Winnipeg in the 1990s and 2000s. Most recently, he spent nearly 15 years as pastor of community ministry and just peace at Seattle (Wash.) Mennonite Church. Over the past decade he has been involved in forming the Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery Coalition, a movement of Anabaptist people of faith “to address the extinction, enslavement and extraction done in the name of Christ on Indigenous lands” to Indigenous people. “In my work, I have witnessed the mutual transformation that is possible through respectful relationship when people of faith support Indigenous self-determination,” says Neufeld. He was pastor of youth and young adults at Bethel Mennonite Church in Winnipeg from 1995 to 2002, and led Sunday services and VBS at Matheson Island and Pine Dock, Man., where he was mentored by Neill and Edith von Gunten, who formerly served MC Canada as Native Ministries workers for many years. Neufeld has a master of divinity degree from Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Ind., and degrees in religious studies and theology from the University of Winnipeg and Canadian Mennonite University, respectively.
—MC Canada
Jonathan Neufeld has been hired as Mennonite Church Canada’s Indigenous relations coordinator.
