After John and Salome Funk moved from Chicago to Elkhart in 1867, the city became a major center for the Mennonite church. In 1871 he became the founding pastor of Prairie Street Mennonite Church at this location. His Mennonite Publishing Company connected Mennonites across North America and exercised wide influence through its books, periodicals, and Sunday school materials. In the 1870s he gave crucial assistance to 18,000 Russian Mennonite immigrants who settled on the Great Plains. Funk and the people he recruited established key Mennonite institutions, including forerunners of Mennonite Church USA, Mennonite Mission Network, Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, and Goshen College, originally the Elkhart Institute on Prairie Street.