Credentials

The Clergy Support Memorial Church Board was in full agreement to certify the Rev. Heidi De Jonge to the Office of Ordained Minister– Emotional Support Ministry on April 11, 2025. Rev. Heidi’s background, outreach work, and multi-faceted pastoral care activities speak for themselves. She comes across as a genuine, thoughtful, and kind humanitarian, with a firm belief that we are all connected in creation, sharing the Spirit of God within us all. She and her husband believe in a team approach as they share many passions for faith, ministry, and the life of service and devotion to God in serving humanity, creation, and one another.

Academic Credentials

• Doctor of Ministry, Western Theological Seminary – Holland, Michigan, 2021
• Master of Divinity, Calvin Theological Seminary – Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2005
• Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Psychology, Dordt University – Sioux Center, Iowa, 1999

Pastoral Care

Rev. Heidi loves people and their stories. In her work as a chaplain in a long-term care home and at the Office of Faith and Spiritual Life at Queen’s University, she stewards the stories of her residents and students by deeply listening to them and helping them to make connections with God, with others, and with the various parts of themselves. Rev. Heidi brings her 14 years of previous experience as a parish pastor to her relationships, helping people to navigate the challenges, celebrations, and transitions of life.

Grief and Loss

Grief and loss are threads that run through Rev. Heidi’s life and work. Her experiences of becoming a widow in her early 20s and losing her mom to cancer in 2020 have broken her heart open in many ways. She publishes a monthly blog, often focusing on the intersection of death, grief and spirituality. In addition to leading a weekly grief group at Queen’s for bereaved students, she offers pastoral care to those in her community who are grieving, and she treasures the opportunity to lead funeral and memorial services for residents in the long-term care home where she serves.

Because Rev. Heidi has a heart broken open to grief, she also has the capacity to help people navigate other difficult intersections of life and relationship. She is trained in restorative practice and facilitates healing circles for people in the midst of conflict. Her doctoral project was based on a structured experience of intentionally-engaged conflict, and her dissertation is titled: “Truthing in Love: Engaging Conflict with the Disarming Love of God”.

Heidi believes that God – who is love – is present in our broken-open hearts.

Spiritual Community

Rev. Heidi is grateful for the network of individuals and communities that sustain her. She receives regular and frequent spiritual direction and therapy, reads widely, and relies on the disciplines of walking and journaling to pace and record her days. Heidi nurtures strong relationships with her husband, her three teenage daughters, her father and siblings, and several precious friends. After preaching weekly for nearly fourteen years, Rev. Heidi is enjoying the simplicity of participation in her new church family, Next Church in Kingston, where she helps out with teaching and worship leading from time to time.

Hobbies and Joys

Heidi loves to play piano, walk her dog, and go for long rides on her road bike. Her favourite moments are the bookends of her days. In the morning, she makes a cup of coffee and shares video messages with her sister, reading and listening to entries from the daily diary her late mom kept from 1963 until 2020. In the evening, after dinner, her family shares their “thankfulnesses and unthankfulnesses,” (aka “roses and thorns”). Afterward, she and her husband walk together and reflect on their days. These practices anchor her and fill her with gratitude for the life she’s been given.