Bread New Mexico Blog: Celebrating Donna McNiel

A meeting with congressional candidate Marty Chavez

When Rev. Donna McNiel was hired as director of the New Mexico Conference of Churches six years ago, she stepped into some big shoes. She had to carry on the great work that Rev. Wally Ford and Rev. Barbara Dua had started in this community.

She succeeded in a big way, expanding on the solid foundation that was already here. Under Donna's watch, the NMCC worked with the Ecumenical Institute for Ministry and other organizations to promote ecumenical connections among churches in the state, providing resources for growth (through the congregational vitality series).

She also helped facilitate connections with interfaith organizations that worked on very important issues, including immigration and refugees, climate change and the environment, hunger and poverty, and peacemaking (at the local and global levels). Part of this work included advocacy. And she worked hard to promote relationships between Christian congregations and other faith communities. Donna left her own footprint in our community (and the accomplishments that we mention in this post are just a small cross-section of her work here). Now it's time for someone else to step into her shoes.