Rev. Stephanie Scovell-Lead Pastor
Pastor Stephanie has been serving Good Shepherd Church since July 2020 when she, her husband Jason, and their two dogs moved to the Cleveland area from Texas for Jason to begin his residency program at Cleveland Clinic.
Stephanie received her Bachelor of Arts in Religion, with a minor in Child and Family Studies, at Baylor University before attending Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University where she obtained her Master of Divinity.
Prior to serving Good Shepherd, Stephanie served for five years as Associate Pastor at Bering Memorial United Methodist Church in Houston, Texas. Her role there began on staff the year before she was appointed when she was brought on board to restart their children’s ministry and their young adult ministry. When she was commissioned (provisionally ordained), the church created an associate role for her to continue and to grow her role. Over those next five years, she had the opportunity to continue leading the ministries she began, while also overseeing local and national missions, overseeing their young adult ministry programming, writing liturgy for worship, leading in worship, starting a dinner church service, and whatever else came her way.
Since she has been at Good Shepherd, Stephanie and Jason have welcomed two little girls, Hannah and Chloe. They look forward to raising them in the Good Shepherd family.
Dr. Allan Georgia-Associate Pastor
Background and Call
I have followed God’s call on my life in truly “deep and wide”
fashion. That calling has taken me to lots of different places and
into lots of different kinds of work. I was born in Southern California and grew up in South Florida, into a UMC family––my
grandfather was a convert from Judaism who became a UMC elder, and my great grandmother was a Methodist Episcopal
suffragette. I did a lot of school and in a very diverse group of
settings, trusting in God’s guidance that all people are agents of
grace in the world. So I attended the evangelical Taylor University in Indiana and then the Methodist Theological School in Ohio (MTSO) in preparation for ministry. I also stuck around MTSO for an additional masters degree in preparation for doing a PhD in Theology at Fordham University in New York City, where I also met my wife, who grew up in South Euclid. I’ve now been in
Northeast Ohio for 11 years, and I’ve come to deeply appreciate
this place and the people in it. My pastoral experience also has involved lots of different places and people. I did ministerial internships at Methodist churches in Florida and Ohio, and I brought a lot of that work into my teaching in universities. But my pathway to this ministry came in being hired as a religious educator at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Shaker Heights, Ohio. I found myself in a role that matched my ministry and academic experiences as two UU congregations merge into one. In my time there since 2018, the congregation has had four senior ministers, which has compelled me to adapt and evolve new pastoral skills to support others and provide leadership in collaborative ways. In all of that work, I had a faithful sense that God was pulling me toward even more works of grace in my own United Methodist tradition.
Personal Information
My great joy comes from being married to my wife Clare with
whom I get to make a wonderful home in Cleveland Heights with
our wizened old dachshund, Dexter. I read a lot of old, thick
books, but I also love comic books and graphic novels. I play guitar and mandolin, and eat more noodles and drink more coffee than I probably should. I have a religious devotion to having meaningful conversations with friends, new and old, over whatever warm or cold drinks we are ready to enjoy. I am happy to put on my professor hat and teach authoritatively when I need
to, but I also relish the chance to break some of our habits of formality and try to connect with others as people when we learn
and worship. I am also that imperfect vessel that hopes, one day,
to have all my cracks smoothed out –– sometimes I am more
quick to frustration than I wish I was and I don’t always see my
neighbor as myself, like I intend to do. Mostly, I try to see the
whole world and everyone in it for the immense blessing it is to
exist in this miracle of creation, and I try to lean into that with
joy and an enduring hopefulness for what we can do when we
cultivate a fearless, reckless love for one another.
