A warm Neighbors in Religion welcome to the Rev. Dr. T. Glenn Bosley-Mitchell, who is the new pastor at St. John’s United Methodist Church at 4760 Pine Tree Dr. in Miami Beach.

Pastor Glenn, as he likes to be called, is 58 and has been an ordained pastor in the Florida Conference since 1978. He was ordained when he was 24, and is a third-generation Methodist pastor from Florida. He is married to the Rev. Gaye Bosley-Mitchell, an ordained pastor in the United Church of Christ (UCC). She is not currently pastoring a church.

Together the two-pastor clergy couple are the parents of a "blended family" of seven children.

Pastor Glenn has served four years on the National Board of the Methodist Federation of Social Action and said he is "extremely excited about finally being able to be in a reconciling congregation which mobilizes United Methodists to create full inclusion of everyone, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity."

According to a press release from St. John’s, Pastor Glenn has a strong Christian witness devoted to spreading God’s love and salvation. His vision for the church is to find the ways to "change the packaging" of the church and worship without changing the content of the Gospel, so that those who have never known Christ will be open to listening and experiencing Christ’s love. If pushed to label himself, Pastor Glenn would identify himself as a "progressive-liberal/evangelical with a strong bent towards social advocacy."

He said his skills lie in "designing worship that is spiritually relevant and culturally significant as well as providing executive and administrative leadership, specifically within new paradigms. He said his teaching style is participatory rather than simply lecturing or being didactic. He believes that one of his strengths is in analyzing and strategizing the necessary ministries for keeping the church moving forward for this culture.

Pastor Glenn said he also believes strongly that laity and clergy must yoke together in providing congregational care and church leadership, with the pastor directing, under-girding, and developing church members in their gifted or chosen area of ministry.

New priests

On Saturday Archbishop Thomas Wenski ordained two men to the priesthood. It was the archbishop’s first ordination class since being installed to the Archdiocese of Miami.

The men who received the Sacrament of Holy Orders from the archbishop are, Deacon Biju Vells and Deacon Cletus Omode.

Vells, 34, is a first-generation American of Indian descent, who was a social worker until he "felt God calling him to something even better," He is a native of Mount Vernon, N.Y. His parents immigrated to this country from Kerala, India, shortly after they were married.

Vells is a graduate of Palmetto High School and has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in social work from Florida International University. He worked as a medical social worker at Baptist Hospital for two years before entering St. John Vianney College. He spent his pastoral year at St. Andrew Parish in Coral Springs and has served as a deacon at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, also in Coral Springs. He will serve as parochial vicar at his home parish, St. Louis. Vells celebrated his first Mass on Sunday.

Omode, 35, is a native of Nigeria. For most of his life, Omode discarded the faith, but later found a community and a path to Christian growth in the “Neocatechumenal Way.” He is the first Redemptorist Mater seminarian to be ordained for the archdiocese. The seminary, operated according to the principles of the Neocatechumenal Way and aimed at forming missionary priests, opened in South Florida in December 2011, and is an itinerary of Christian formation which began in Spain in the 1960s, and has now spread throughout the world. Omode celebrated his first Mass on Sunday.