WILSON, N.C. — February 8, 2024 — The Center for Vocation and Rural Ministry at Barton College in Wilson is pleased to welcome Bishop Valerie Melvin, Regional Minister for the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in North Carolina, as the featured speaker for the spring 2024 Light of Life Series Lecture.
The event will be held on Tuesday, March 5, in Howard Chapel on campus. Bishop Melvin will address the topic of “Building Community.”
This lecture is open to the public at no charge, and the community is invited to attend. Ministerial leaders who serve in small, rural churches in eastern North Carolina are particularly encouraged to attend.
Bishop Melvin, an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), currently serves as the Regional Minister of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) of North Carolina, headquartered in Wilson.
She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Music Education from Barton College (then Atlantic Christian College). Early in her professional career, she was a music educator, and was later called into ministry. She completed Master of Divinity and Master of Theology degrees at Duke University Divinity School. She is dual ordained in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ, International. Bishop Melvin is a past Associate Minister of the Christian Church (DOC) in North Carolina, and a former pastor of the First Christian Church (DOC) in Reidsville. Bishop Melvin is blessed with the gift of tremendous musical talent, and she continues to allow that gift to be interwoven in her ministry.
Bishop Melvin has served on a number of ministry boards at local, regional, and national levels, including but not limited to the International Association of Certified Church Administrators, Christian Church Extension Board, and the Disciples Home Missions Board. Bishop Melvin also served as a member of the Barton College Board of Trustees from 2019-2023, and currently serves on the Board of the Disciples of Christ Historical Society in Bethany, W.Va. In addition, she is seated as the adjudicatory representative for the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) for the North Carolina Council of Churches in Raleigh.
She has led the Victory is Inevitable Ministries, a mobile Christian education ministry. VIE Ministries brings college and university professors into local venues expanding the professional development of each student. This ministry has provided training for several denominations and reformations including, Disciples of Christ, Full Gospel, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Interdenominational.
In 2014, because of her influential work in ministry, Life Changing Ministries International Fellowship conferred upon the Reverend Melvin the title of Bishop.
In July 2014, she also received the coveted Liberation Award from the National Convocation of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the USA and Canada for her overall work within ministry, promoting justice, liberation, and unity.
In 2022, Bishop Melvin completed The Proclaimers Place® Seminar, an exegetical, hermeneutical, and homiletical intensive program at Oxford University, England.
And, in July 2023, Lexington Theological Seminary called on Bishop Melvin to facilitate their Thrive Peer Cohort for emerging seminary graduates.
For additional information about the Light of Life event, please contact the Reverend Malinda Fillingim, director of the Center for Vocation and Rural Ministry at Barton College, at mdfillingim@barton.edu.
END