Welcome to North United Methodist Church
North Church is committed to providing:
- WORSHIP which is inspiring, challenging, and relevant to daily life.
- Opportunities for hands-on INVOLVEMENT IN MISSION which makes a difference in our community and in our world.
- EDUCATION and nurture in faith for all ages.
- Opportunities for SPIRITUAL GROWTH through Bible studies, retreats, and small groups.
- A CARING COMMUNITY of mutual support.
Our Leadership
2009 NOMINATIONS for Year 2010About Our Pastor
Pastor/Scholar the Reverend Laurel E Scott is “on a mission from God” as the House of Blues wall hanging in her office announces. The mission as she interprets it is to love the whole creation, but most especially the people of God who are in need. In need of love, in need of knowledge, in need of wisdom, in need of power – whatever the need.
Reverend Scott's call to ordained ministry was gradual, coming over a lifetime of participation in various households of faith in her native Barbados and in New York City where she lived for most of her life. This call was fully acknowledged while she was a member of the St. Mark’s United Methodist Church in Brooklyn New York, where she volunteered as Communications Director and Bible Study Instructor. Pastor Scott received her Master of Divinity degree with a concentration in Liturgical Studies from Boston University School of Theology, where she is a candidate for the degree of Doctor of Theology. Her area of research is Immigration and the Church and the title of her dissertation is: “To Welcome the Stranger at the Door: Reception of and Responses to Ghanaian immigrants in the United Methodist Church in the Northeastern USA.”
Her current stance as an activist minister reflects a lifetime of work with the poor, the disenfranchised, the voiceless and those at the margins of society. A former Special and Executive Assistant to the Commissioner of Human Resources Administration in New York City, she was responsible for special projects involving the Public Assistance population, Youth in Foster Care, the elderly, the homeless and victims of rape, sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse. For two years, she directed an innovative job training program for homeless adults at LaGuardia Community College in Queens New York and worked as a College Prep instructor at New York City’s prison for women on Riker’s Island. She completed basic CPE requirements working with the New Orleans, LA Police Department as a summer chaplain in 2001.
Reverend Scott became intensely involved in the worker justice movement while she was pastor-in-charge of Old West United Methodist church in Boston, Massachusetts. Approached by the janitors’ union for permission to use the church building to launch their campaign for higher wages and improved working conditions, she then joined them on the picket line, speaking out on their behalf. She has continued to speak out on behalf of the working poor and is one of Inter Faith Worker Justice’s 100 Religious Spokespersons for the Employee Free Choice Act. She is currently a member of the New England Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church’s Committee on Church and Society as spokesperson for Labor Justice.
She serves the larger church in other ways -- as Vice-President of the National Association of Commissions on Equitable Compensation (NACEC) as clergy jurisdictional representative to NACEC, and as Conference Chairperson on Equitable Compensation. Reverend Scott is a delegate to the Northeastern Jurisdiction 2008 Conference; Chair of the Program and Worship Committee for the 2012 Jurisdictional Conference and a member of the 2006-2011 World Methodist Council.
A recipient of numerous awards for community service and scholarship, Pastor Scott is the Anna Howard Shaw Scholar at Boston University School of Theology 2003-2010, during which time she was one of three researchers to complete a study on immigrant women. Her wide-ranging interests include politics, world affairs, women’s issues, genealogy and legacy and Jewish-Christian relations.