WHITEWATER, KS (July 14, 2008) \u2013 Services will be held this weekend for retired Evangelical Covenant Church pastor Marie Wiebe, 74, who died Friday.
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\nVisitation will be from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m. Friday at Petersen Funeral Home in Newton, Kansas, with family receiving friends from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. A graveside committal will be at 10 a.m. Saturday at Grace Hill Mennonite Church Cemetery, and a memorial service will follow at 10:30 a.m. at Grace Hill Mennonite Church.<\/p>\n
Wiebe was born May 20, 1934, in Anshun, China, the daughter of missionaries with China Inland Mission. She married Kenneth C. Wiebe on December 22, 1956.<\/p>\n
Wiebe graduated from Wheaton College in 1955 with a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing. She taught nursing at Kansas University Medical School for three years. She was active in church life at Hillcrest Covenant Church in Kansas City. She began attending Simi Valley Covenant Church when the family moved to California.<\/p>\n
She earned her Master of Divinity degree at Fuller Theological Seminary and graduated with her son, Matt, in 1982. They were the first mother and son to graduate from the seminary.<\/p>\n
While in seminary she became an associate pastor at Simi Valley Covenant Church. She was ordained in 1983. She later said, \u201cAt first I thought God was calling me into the ministry in spite of the fact that I am a woman. Now I know it\u2019s because I am a woman.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1984, she became the Covenant\u2019s first ordained woman church planter when she started a congregation in Camarillo, California.<\/p>\n
Wiebe retired from pastoral ministry in 1989 following a stroke but then began an intercessory prayer ministry, praying hours every day. Besides her work in Covenant churches, she also served on the Board of Ordered Ministry, Pacific Southwest Conference Ministerium, and Board of Directors for North Park University.<\/p>\n
Since 2000, Marie was a member of Grace Hill Mennonite Church in Whitewater. In addition to her husband, survivors include a son, Matt Wiebe of Santa Fe, New Mexico; and three daughters, Heidi Wiebe, of Topeka, Kansas; Margo Wiebe and Bekkey Wiebe, both of Denver, Colorado; and five grandchildren.<\/p>\n
Memorials may be sent to Grace Hill Mennonite Church, 10218 SE 12th St., Whitewater, KS 67154.<\/p>\n