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Mennonite Healthcare Fellowship announces first Executive Director 
Mennonite Healthcare Fellowship (MHF) is pleased to announce that the first Executive Director of MHF is Paul D. Leichty of Goshen, Indiana. He began his part-time employment September 1, 2011. MHF was launched June 25th at Laurelville Mennonite Church Center, Mt. Pleasant, Pennsylvania. This new organization of Anabaptist health professionals is an interdisciplinary community, who seeks to nurture the integration of faith and practice, to provide opportunities for dialogue on health related issues and to address needs through education, advocacy and service. Paul’s experience with the issues of health and faith is a result of his past roles in the family and church as well as with various church agencies and community organizations. He describes himself as a long-time advocate of a holistic vision of health in the context of family and community, having paid particular attention to those who have often been marginalized in the community of faith due to physical, sensory, psychiatric, and intellectual disabilities. As the father of two children, one of whom has significant developmental disabilities due to a genetic condition, he has had many years of interaction with a variety of healthcare professionals. In more recent years, Paul has been involved in advocacy work to integrate persons with disabilities into the church and community. For about 16 years, Paul served as a pastor in cross-cultural urban congregations in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Indiana and faced a variety of situations involving disabilities, mental health, and addictions. He also served several other congregations in Indiana as a part-time music minister. Start-ups are not new to Paul. He has helped in the start-up or re-organizational phases for a number of community and church-related organizations. Currently, he is involved in the start-up of the Congregational Accessibility Network (CAN), an independent, international, interfaith disabilities advocacy effort that originally started at Anabaptist Disabilities Network (ADNet), an organization he helped found in 2003. This experience will be valuable in the work of nurturing Mennonite Healthcare Fellowship to be a healthy and thriving contributor to God's missional purposes in the world. Paul has been working part-time for Mennonite.net helping congregations and church-related organizations use the new digital technology in ministry and mission. In the process, he has learned much about communications, marketing, and ways to reach out via the Internet. He will continue his work with Mennonite.net and, for the time being, work primarily out of the Mennonite.net office on the Goshen College campus. Paul lives on the southeast side of Goshen with his wife, Twila Charles Leichty, and is active in music leadership in his home congregation, Berkey Avenue Mennonite Fellowship.
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Mennonite Healthcare Fellowship 2012 |