Biography

Rev. Melvin E. Wilson was born in Cape Charles, Virginia. He is the youngest of two sons. He grew up in Norwalk, Connecticut, and received his early childhood and high school education there. His interests were music and academics.

Rev. Wilson received a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting from Central Connecticut State University, New Britain, Connecticut in 1984. He answered God's call to Christian ministry on May 15, 1981, while in college. After graduation from college, he entered Boston University School of Theology, Boston, MA, and graduated with a Master of Divinity (M. Div.) degree in May 1987, majoring in New Testament and Pastoral Counseling. Wilson has done post-graduate work at Regent’s Park College, Oxford University in Oxford, England, and has completed courses in the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for Public Managers program at the Center for Executive Leadership in Government at Rutgers University. He is regularly consulted on issues related to church growth and evangelism and is often invited by churches of all denominations to preach revivals and lead workshops on various topics. His preaching and teaching assignments have taken him across the United States, Europe, the Caribbean, South America, and South and West Africa.

Rev. Wilson is an ordained Itinerant Elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and has served as Pastor of five churches in the First Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church; Bethel A.M.E. Church, Carlisle, PA; Allen A.M.E. Church, Atlantic City, NJ; People's Institutional A.M.E. Church, Brooklyn, NY; St. Luke A.M.E. Church, New York, NY; and St. Paul A.M.E. Church, Cambridge, MA. He has held financial, executive leadership, and educational positions in the corporate and non-profit world.

Rev. Wilson has represented the A.M.E. Church on the Pan-Methodist Commission and was a member of the Mayor’s Clergy Advisory Council of New York City and Mount Vernon, NY. From November 2013 until June 2018, Wilson served as the Presiding Elder of the Brooklyn-Westchester District of the New York Annual Conference A.M.E. Church. On June 16, 2018, he was appointed as the 11th Pastor of St. Matthew A.M.E. Church in Orange, NJ. In the Orange community, Wilson serves as a Chaplain for both the City of Orange Police Department and the Fire Department. He is also a Chaplain for the Essex County Sheriff’s Office and the New Jersey State Police. He is also the New Jersey Area Representative for the International Conference of Police Chaplains and is a member of the Association of Professional Chaplains.

Rev. Wilson is married to Rev. Leslie Marie Watson Wilson, former National Director of Religious Affairs for People for the American Way Foundation. They share three adult daughters; Lauren Alexandra, Adrienne Patryce, and Olivia Symone; and are grandparents to Grayson and Gabriella Woodson, Lexington Wilson-Woods, and Gwendolyn Wilson. He cherishes being a spiritual father/mentor to many others across all denominations. In his leisure time, Rev. Wilson enjoys buying books, traveling, listening to smooth jazz and gospel music, and spending time with close friends. He loves to teach and believes strongly in the words of the Old Testament minor prophet Hosea who wrote in Hosea 4:6a, "my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge..."