2018 BUSTH Distinguished Alums Announced
We are delighted to announce the 2018 Boston University School of Theology Distinguished Alumni/ae:
Reverend Laura Jaquith Bartlett (STH 1988, M.S.M.; STH 1990, S.T.M.)
Reverend Dr. Jerome K. Del Pino (STH 1971, Th.M.; GRS 1980, Ph.D.)
Reverend Odette Lockwood-Stewart (STH 1978, M.Div.)
In the category of Emerging Leader:
Dr. David Scott (STH 2007, M.T.S.; GRS 2013, Ph.D.)
Reverend Laura Jaquith Bartlett
The Reverend Laura Jaquith Bartlett is passionate about creative worship that engages the whole people of God, inspiring and deepening Christian discipleship. Rev. Bartlett is a deacon in the Oregon-Idaho Conference who has served in music ministry in local churches and has also led workshops on congregational song, global praise, and worship design in a variety of settings across the country. She is the immediate past national president of The Fellowship of United Methodists in Music & Worship Arts, and was selected as the 2016 General Conference director of music and worship. She headed Oregon-Idaho’s General Conference delegation in 2012, and served as vice-chair of the jurisdictional Committee on the Episcopacy.
Reverend Bartlett loves to design liturgy that incorporates the creative arts in a way that forms community and shapes disciples who are propelled outside the doors of the sanctuary to work to bring about the reign of God on earth. She has written for a number of publications, including yearly contributions to the Abingdon Worship Annual, edited by her former BUSTh classmates, Mary Scifres and B.J. Beu.
A member of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada, she founded and still leads the “Great Hymns of the Faith” series, now in its 10th year at a United Methodist retreat center in Oregon. She currently works with a Discipleship Ministries group vetting contemporary worship music for singability and Wesleyan theology.
Reverend Bartlett lives in a suburb of Portland, Oregon, with her spouse, Todd, who is the executive director of camp & retreat ministry for the Oregon-Idaho Annual Conference. She is appointed as the conference secretary for Oregon-Idaho. They have two young adult daughters, Hannah and Megan.
Reverend Dr. Jerome K. Del Pino
The Reverend Dr. Jerome King Del Pino is a pastor, teacher, and leader in church and society. As ordained elder in the New England Conference of the United Methodist Church, he retired in October 2010 as General Secretary (CEO) of the General Board of Higher Education in Ministry (GBHEM) of the United Methodist Church, an agency whose mission is to build capacity for United Methodist lay and clergy leaders to discover, claim, and flourish in Christ’s calling in their lives, by creating national and global connections and providing resources to aid in recruitment, education, professional development and spiritual formation. For a decade he represented the Board in national and international higher education and ministry arenas, including serving as director or trustee of several policy-making boards, among them Educational & Institutional Insurance Administrators (EIAA), an agency founded originally to self-fund insurance for United Methodist-related historic black colleges and universities when they were denied coverage by commercial carriers during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, American University (Washington, DC), Meharry Medical College (Nashville, TN) the first medical school founded by the, then, Methodist Church, to educate black physicians and dentists, and Africa University in Mutare, Zimbabwe. In partnership with the GBHEM-founded International Association of Schools, Colleges and Universities, comprised of over 700 institutions world-wide, and committed to extending John Wesley’s vision of “an educated clergy and laity” equipped to “love God with one’s mind,” Dr. Del Pino led the Board in developing sustainable capacity and infrastructure that would serve a global church in educating leaders. Thus, his travels over a decade took him multiple times to Scandinavia, Europe, Asia, Africa, Central and South America, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as all 50 states.
He holds a B.A. degree from Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, MN and a Th.M. degree from Boston University School of Theology and a Ph.D. degree in Church History from the Boston University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Gustavus Adolphus College awarded him a First Decade Alumni Award for Outstanding Record of Achievement among Men Graduates and the Sesquicentennial Award for his service as a trustee of the institution. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from Florida Southern College and an International Afrobras Award from the country of Brazil for his role in founding the first university in Brazil dedicated to the education of Brazilian women and men of African heritage.
Prior to his election as General Secretary, Dr. Del Pino spent 33 years of active ministry as a Clergy Member of the New England Annual Conference where he served churches in Boston, Worcester, Springfield, and Winchester, and was superintendent of both the Central Massachusetts and Metropolitan-Boston South Districts. He served as Chairperson of the NEC Rules Committee during the historic merger of the Maine, New Hampshire, and Southern New England Conferences and was elected delegate to every General and Jurisdictional Conference (Northeastern) from 1976 to 2000. He served on the United Methodist Book of Worship Committee and was a nominee for the episcopacy at a meeting of Northeast Jurisdiction. In collaboration with the Revs. Scott Campbell, Tom Porter, & Gary Nettleton, Dr. Del Pino helped to develop a plan to implement The Resolution on Racial Inclusiveness of the New England Conference.
Jerome is married to Joyce Marie, a special education teacher, and they reside in Franklin, TN. He has two children, Jerome Curtis and Emily Kathleen. Jerome, together with Joyce who brought four children to their marriage in 2000, are proud grandparents of twelve – six girls and six boys – ranging in age from 18 months to 13 years.
Reverend Odette Lockwood-Stewart
The Reverend Odette Lockwood-Stewart has led congregations and campus ministries for forty-one years as an elder in the United Methodist Church until her retirement in 2017.
She has given professional leadership at international, national, regional, and local levels of denominational and ecumenical associations, including serving as a Director of the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry and as President of the National Campus Ministry Association.
She has served as Senior Pastor of three United Methodist Congregations, as Chair of the Order of Elders, and first elected clergy delegate and co-chair of delegations to the General Conference of 2008 and 2012 for the California-Nevada Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. She received the inaugural Francis Asbury Award for Contributions to Ministries in Higher Education in California-Nevada where she also led a conference-wide mission strategy for development of new and renewed ministries in higher education.
She has directed campus ministry programs at University of California, Los Angeles, University of California, Berkeley, San Diego State University and University of California, San Francisco.
Reverend Lockwood-Stewart has founded and re-vitalized ministries in health sciences, higher education, and community service programs as well as served as the founding director of the Contextual Learning Program at Pacific School of Religion, where she taught for nine years.
She was founding student director of the Anna Howard Shaw Center at Boston University School of Theology, founding Director of the Landberg Center for Health and Ministry at the University of California, San Francisco, and re-developed the Wesley Foundation at the University of California, Berkeley into a full-time campus ministry as its Director.
Rev. Lockwood-Stewart is currently serving for one year as Visiting Pastor on the staff of the American Church in Paris, where she and her husband, Rev. James Lockwood-Stewart are living until returning to Berkeley, California in April, 2019. Odette and Jim have four grown children, Josh, Betsy, Andrew and Mary, and eight grandchildren living in California, Maryland and Oklahoma.
In the category of Emerging Leader:
Dr. David Scott
Dr. David W. Scott (STH ’07, GRS ’13) is the Director of Mission Theology for the General Board of Global Ministries of The United Methodist Church. In this role, he teaches missionaries, agency staff, and students around the world and is coordinating the 200th anniversary commemoration of Methodist mission. Previously, he taught history of religion, world religions, and leadership at Ripon College in Ripon, WI. He is editor of the influential blog UM & Global (www.umglobal.org), which is dedicated to fostering conversations about the global nature of The United Methodist Church. His first book, Mission as Globalization: Methodist in Southeast Asia at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, was published in 2016 by Lexington Books. His second book, tentatively titled Crossing Boundaries: Sharing God’s Good News Through Mission, is due out by the end of 2018. In addition, he has published multiple scholarly articles on mission and has chapters in a couple of edited volumes. He holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Boston University.