MIND leadership
The MIND steering committee, elected annually at the September general meeting, meets five or six times a year to set strateguc direction and plan programming for the organization.
Dr. Dorothee Benz, chair
Rev. Scott Summerville, treasurer
Rev. Scott Summerville has been a clergy member of the New York Annual Conference since 1976. He has served churches in Kingston, NY, Stamford, CT, and Brooklyn and is serving currently as the pastor of Asbury United Methodist Church in Yonkers, a reconciling congregation. Scott is married to Rev. Mary Ellen Summerville, who is also a NYAC clergy member and who works as a hospice chaplain. They have two adult children, Meredith and Thomas. In addition to parish duties and his work for MIND Scott is a trainer and consultant in congregational conflict and mediation. He is also a trainer in the New York Annual Conference in boundaries and sexual ethics for clergy.
Marilyn VanTine, secretary
Marilyn VanTine, a retired school psychologist, has been a member of Valhalla UMC since 1966, where she is working with the pastor to increase awareness of the reconciling movement. She became more deeply involved in reconciling work after the Reconciling Ministries Network (RMN) 2005 Convocation at Lake Junaluska, where she was among those from New York who sent NYAC Bishop Jeremiah Park a letter in response to his absence from the bishops offering words of support to the gathering. That decision set in motion a series of actions that led to MIND’s founding a year later. Marilyn is also active in the Parents' Reconciling Network (PRN).
Helen Andrew
Helen Andrew is active in reconciling ministry on the local, conference and national level. She is a member of Memorial UMC , a reconciling congregation in White Plains, NY, and has served on the steering committee of the national Parents' Reconciling Network (PRN) since 2005. She is currently also one of two parent representatives to the board of the Reconciling Ministries Network (RMN). Helen is the parent of a daughter who identifies as bi-sexual and is in a committed lesbian relationship. She considers her journey into reconciling activism a blessing that has made her even more aware of God's wonderfully diverse creation and given her the opportunity to work, witness and worship with an amazing group of faithful, dedicated people.
Jayson Dobney
Jayson Dobney has been active in reconciling work through Reconciling Ministries Network (RMN) for many years. Originally from South Dakota, he moved to New York in 2007, where he is the associate curator and administrator for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Musical Instruments. He joined the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew, a reconciling congregation, and joined MIND as soon as he got to New York, and continued his reconciling activism without missing a beat.
Alfida Figueroa
Alfida Figueroa is a member of Grace UMC – Spanish in Manhattan, where she is deeply involved in community work. She is an active member of the conference’s Hispanic-American Council.
Rev. Wongee Joh
Rev. Wongee Joh received her M.Div. degree from Drew Theological School in 2008 and serves as the pastor of Holmes UMC in Holmes, NY. She also serves as an associate chaplain at Vassar Brothers Medical Center in Poughkeepsie. As a Korean-American woman pastor, she encounters challenges in ministerial contexts that require critical reflection on how Biblical authority is abused and misused to legitimate injustices as well as active engagement in order to transform them.
Rev. Lucy Jones
Lucy Jones is a clergy member of the New York Annual Conference serving two churches in the Catskill mountains of New York state. She is a member of the Methodist Federation for Social Action-New York Chapter steering committee and joined the MIND steering committee in 2010. Lucy came to Methodism and church involvement after visiting Park Slope UMC in 1989 while working at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The hypocrisy of the institutional church had been very disturbing to her throughout her adolescent and early adult life. The welcoming sign at PSUMC and its radical hospitality spelled out in its stance on the UMC’s struggle with homosexuality made a huge difference in her search to find a meaningful, honest and justice-oriented spiritual home. Eventually, she went to Union Theological Seminary and graduated with an M.Div. in 1998. The bottom line for her is that the world needs all the love it can get. The church should be about fostering that love rather than denying it and excluding anyone. It’s a great disappointment that the church is not leading but lagging behind on correcting the social injustice of heterosexism.
Rev. Sara Lamar-Sterling
Rev. Sara Lamar-Sterling is the pastor at First & Summerfield UMC, a reconciling congregation in New Haven. She is a graduate of Union Theological Seminary and holds an M.A. in music history from CUNY Graduate School and University Center as well as a B.A. in music, with minors in French and drama, from Hofstra University. Before her appointment to First & Summerfield in July 2007, she served as associate pastor at Park Avenue UMC (NYC) and Nichols UMC in Trumbull, CT. Sara serves on the boards of Interfaith Cooperative Ministries, Greater New Haven, and “Real Life. Real Talk,” a program that equips parents to speak with their children and teens in age-appropriate, medically accurate ways about human sexuality. She is currently chairperson of NYAC’s Personnel Committee and an ex-officio member of the Commission on Higher Education and Campus Ministry. Sara is also on the board of the Conference Board of Church and Society.
Nehemiah Luckett
Nehemiah Luckett is the associate minister of music at Asbury United Methodist Church, a reconciling congregation, where he is also the co-chair of the church’s Reconciling Committee. He has his family roots in Alabama, where his father is a United Methodist pastor. From an early age Nehemiah was playing the piano, performing and directing choirs for his father’s church. But as a teenager, when he came out to himself and his friends, his father’s advocacy of “traditional family values” and vocal opposition to gay rights was a source of profound agony, and he faced the choice of leaving the church and father he loved or living a life of lies. He came north to attend college at Sarah Lawrence, and found welcome and reconnection to the church at Asbury. At Asbury, Nehemiah works with both the Junior and Senior Choirs, composes music for liturgies, and even wrote and directed a contemporary mass, which premiered at Asbury Church. He also composed the music for “Brick by Brick,” a musical based on the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, which premiered at Sarah Lawrence College in April 2007.
Rev. Richard Parker
Dick Parker is a retired pastor in The New York Annual Conference. Since 1952 he served churches in several parts of the conference, and was district superintendent of the Long Island West District in the 1970s. He served on several national agencies of the church, including Church and Society in the '80s; and from 1972 to 2004 he was a General or Jurisdictional Conference Member. Over the years he has been a strong advocate in the general church, the annual conference, and local churches for the full inclusion of all persons in the life and ministry of the church. After retirement in 1997 he served several interim appointments, and remains active in a number of social action agencies.
Charlotte Patton
Charlotte Patton is an actor and member of the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew, a reconciling congregation on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. She grew up United Methodist and left the church for a few years to explore other spiritual paths. When she returned to the church she was reluctant to join because of the UMC’s prejudice against lesbian and gay people; she was and remains especially offended by the clause in the in the Book of Discipline that states “homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” She decided that the only way she could re-join the UMC was to do everything in her power to change that clause. MIND is the most effective way she has found to carry out that pledge to herself. She has appeared in a number of theatres in New York, L.A. and regional theatres where she has become quite adept at playing alcoholics and drug addicts. She has appeared in soaps, commercials, voice-overs and in her one-woman cabaret show. She co-starred in an episode of the NBC drama "Mercy" in 2010.
Rev. Hector Rivera
Hector Rivera came to the Church of the Village, a reconciling in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village with a strong ministry to the neighborhood’s LGBT population, in July 2008. He shares the ministerial duties with Bishop Johnson and leads the Spanish language worship, Bible Study and outreach. Previously, he served as the minister of St. Stephens Spanish United Methodist Church in the Bronx. He received his M.Div. degree from Drew University.
Rev. Sara Thompson Tweedy
Rev. Sara Thompson Tweedy lives with her spouse, Kris Marcell. Together, they are renovating a home; raising their most precious son, Maximillian Frederic Tweedy-Marcell; walking Samson the dog; feeding Delilah the cat; and living life to the fullest. After graduating from Yale Divinity School, Sara followed in her mother's and uncle’s footsteps as a minister. She served as the pastor of The Federated Church of Kerhonkson in Kerhonkson, NY for seven years before moving on to Sullivan County Community College. At SCCC, Sara works full-time in the Department of Learning and Student Development Services as a counselor and academic advisor. She is also the head women’s basketball coach. Sara is the co-founder of Sanctuary, a spiritual gathering devoted to the GLBTQ community and its supporters. This is part of the larger inclusive ministry of Memorial UMC, a reconciling congregation in White Plains, NY. In addition to these and many other things, she is an interior certified firefighter, recording secretary, and chaplain in the all-volunteer Kerhonkson Fire Department; an angler; outdoorswoman; political junkie; and cosmopolitan connoisseur.
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