Reverend Dr. Candace M. Lewis will serve as the speaker on Wednesday, December 11, 2019 at 7 p.m. at Gertrude Heyn Chapel for the fall 2019 Service of Consecration. Rev. Dr. Candace M. Lewis currently serves as District Superintendent for the Gulf Central District in the Florida Annual Conference. Prior to her return to Florida she served as an Associate General Secretary in the New Church Starts Division and as Executive Director of Path1 New Church Starts at the General Board of Discipleship in Nashville, TN. Her work includes serving as a chief visionary and relentless advocate for creating new places for new people through planting new churches and new faith communities. As Executive Director she manages a team of thirteen who work full and part time serving in each jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church. She also serves as a consultant, coach, and resource person to Bishops, Conference Developers, and Church Planters in starting and maintaining New Churches.

She is an Ordained Elder in the Florida Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church and the founding Pastor of the New Life Community UMC, where she served from 1997 – 2009 in Jacksonville, Florida.

Rev. Lewis received her undergraduate degree from the University of Florida majoring in Speech Communications in 1990. Upon graduation, she was awarded the Distinguished Outstanding Female Student Leader Award for excellent service in leadership while at the University of Florida.

The call to ministry came when she was twenty-two years old and she obediently followed God, accepted the call and enrolled in Gammon Theological Seminary in Atlanta, Georgia to begin preparation. Four years later, she received the Master of Divinity degree with a concentration in Pastoral Care and Counseling. In June 2000, she graduated from the Harvard Divinity School’s Summer Leadership Institute on Faith based Community Economic Development. In 2004 and 2008 she was elected by her peers to serve as a delegate to the General and Southeastern Jurisdictional Conferences of the United Methodist Church. She has traveled extensively in mission and ministry to countries including South Africa, Zimbabwe, England, Hong Kong, China and Ghana, South Korea and Germany.

Doctor Lewis has been in full time ministry for nineteen years and is an excellent teacher and preacher of God’s word. She completed her Doctorate in Ministry degree in Church Leadership Excellence at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. graduating in May 2014. Candace enjoys spending time with family and friends, reading, walking, jogging and participating in Fitbit challenges and 5k and 10k races to push herself, listening to music, travel and meeting new people. God has given to her a powerful message to the body of Christ, which she delivers under the power and anointing of the Holy Spirit. She is currently writing her first church leadership resource book to be published in the near future.