Joe Sawatzky, PhD
Global Leadership Collaborative Project Specialist
Joe Sawatzky began in August 2020 as Global Leadership Collaborative Project Specialist for AMBS, serving as an international education liaison for both AMBS and Mennonite Mission Network in Elkhart, Indiana.
Through a partnership between the two organizations, Joe serves one-third of his time as a Church Relations Representative with Mission Network with AMBS, helping to develop the seminary’s Global Anabaptist Education initiative. He represents AMBS in connecting with Anabaptist-related educational institutions across the world as part of a partnership between AMBS and Mennonite World Conference (MWC).
According to Joe in an October 2020 article written by Laurie Oswald Robinson, the role integrates his two biggest passions — mission and theological education. After earning a Master of Divinity in Mission and Evangelism from AMBS in 2005, he served in South Africa (2006–14) with his family as a mission worker/teacher/administrator for Bethany Bible School, based in the city of Mthatha. The itinerant, nonresidential, biblical and theological education program was geared toward African Initiated Churches in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Robinson wrote that through fraternal support, occasional workshops, and preaching, Joe also interacted with other Anabaptist-related bodies in the region, such as Grace Community Church (a member of MWC) and the emerging Anabaptist Network in South Africa.