Rev. Melvin E. Wilson

Reverend Melvin E. Wilson was born in Cape Charles, Virginia, the youngest of two sons, and grew up in Norwalk, Connecticut, where music and academics captured his early interests. He answered God's call to Christian ministry on May 15, 1981, while in college. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Accounting from Central Connecticut State University in 1984, then a Master of Divinity from Boston University School of Theology in 1987, majoring in New Testament and Pastoral Counseling. He has since done postgraduate work at Regent's Park College, Oxford University, and completed the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for Public Managers program at Rutgers University.

An ordained Itinerant Elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Rev. Wilson has pastored five churches across the First Episcopal District: Bethel A.M.E. in Carlisle, PA; Allen A.M.E. in Atlantic City, NJ; People's Institutional A.M.E. in Brooklyn, NY; St. Luke A.M.E. in New York, NY; and St. Paul A.M.E. in Cambridge, MA. He is regularly consulted on church growth and evangelism, and his preaching and teaching have taken him across the United States, Europe, the Caribbean, South America, and South and West Africa.

Rev. Wilson has represented the A.M.E. Church on the Pan-Methodist Commission and served on the Mayor's Clergy Advisory Councils of New York City and Mount Vernon, NY. From November 2013 until June 2018, he served as Presiding Elder of the Brooklyn-Westchester District of the New York Annual Conference. On June 16, 2018, he was appointed the 11th Pastor of Saint Matthew A.M.E. Church in Orange, NJ. In the Orange community he serves as a chaplain to the City of Orange Police and Fire Departments, the Essex County Sheriff's Office, and the New Jersey State Police, and is the New Jersey Area Representative for the International Conference of Police Chaplains.

Rev. Wilson is married to Rev. Leslie Marie Watson Wilson. Together they share three adult daughters, Lauren Alexandra, Adrienne Patryce, and Olivia Symone, and are grandparents to Grayson and Gabriella Woodson, Lexington Wilson-Woods, and Gwendolyn Wilson. He cherishes being a spiritual father and mentor to many across all denominations. In his leisure time he enjoys buying books, traveling, and listening to smooth jazz and gospel music. He loves to teach, holding close the words of the prophet Hosea: "my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge."

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