2010 Featured Speakers
Rev. Jorge Acevedo
Born in Puerto Rico, Jorge Acevedo moved with his family to the United States where he was raised. He loves Jesus Christ and his Church. Touched by the grace of God at seventeen, he was never the same. Rescued from a life of addictions, his greatest delight is connecting people to Jesus and the Church.
Acevedo is the lead pastor at Grace Church, a multi-site, United Methodist congregation in southwest Florida. This church has grown in its weekend attendance from 400 to over 2600 in the past thirteen years and is recognized as having one of the largest and most effective recovery ministries in America.
He is a 1984 graduate of Asbury College, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree and also a graduate of Asbury Theological Seminary with a Master of Divinity degree. He was the 2001 recipient of the Denman Evangelism Award from the Florida Annual Conference and in 2007 was named the Distinguished Alumni of the Year at Asbury Theological Seminary. The Foundation for Evangelism named Jorge the 2009 Distinguished Evangelist of the United Methodist Church.
Jorge co-authored The Heart of Youth Ministry, and has also written for the United Methodist Publishing House, Circuit Rider magazine, Good News magazine and Our Faith Today. He is one of three featured pastors on the “Keeping the Passion for Ministry Alive” edition of the Willow Creek Association “Defining Moments” CD.
Bishop Bruce Ough
Bishop Bruce R. Ough is the resident bishop of the Ohio West Area of The United Methodist Church, where he is the spiritual leader for nearly 230,000 United Methodists in more than 1,188 congregations in 58 Ohio counties. He has served West Ohio since September, 2000 and was reassigned to the Ohio West Area for the 2005-2008 quadrennium.
Prior to his election and consecration as a bishop in July 2000, Bishop Ough served as the senior pastor of St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, a 2,800-member congregation in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. His previous appointments included five years as district superintendent of the Cedar Rapids District of the Iowa Conference. Bishop Ough also served as Director of the Iowa Conference Council on Ministries for seven years, following three years as Director of Oakwood Spiritual Life Center in the North Indiana Conference. He has also served as Council Director of the Dakotas Area and a camp program director for the North Dakota Conference.
He was ordained Deacon in 1975 and Elder in 1979 in the North Dakota Conference. A 1973 graduate of North Dakota State University, Bishop Ough received the M.Div. degree from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in 1978. In addition, he has done graduate work at Northwestern University and completed the Upper Room’s two-year Academy for Spiritual Formation program, for which he also served on the Leadership Team.
Bishop Ough has served as a member of several jurisdictional and general church agencies and currently serves as president of the General Board of Global Ministries. He also serves presently as president of the Ohio Council of Churches.
Rev. Janet Wolf
After working for 12 years as a community organizer around poverty rights, Rev. Janet Wolf received her M. Div. from Vanderbilt Divinity School and was ordained as an elder in the United Methodist Church.
In 2005, Janet was appointed to American Baptist College where she serves as the Chair of the Faculty as well as a professor and advisor. She has created a collaborative civil rights course with various partners as well as a Biblically based community organizing course and a criminal justice course taught inside state prisons. She is the author of “To See and to Be Seen”, a chapter in “I Was in Prison”: United Methodist Perspectives on Prison Ministry.
She is a partner in the Living Room, a community of folks living on the streets, providing safe space for conversation, community and retreats; and Hobson United Methodist Church, a community connected, multiracial, intentionally inclusive, reconciling congregation in Nashville. Janet has worked with clergy, congregations, seminaries and communities across the U.S. and Canada - preaching, teaching and leading workshops, retreats, pastors' schools and conference events. She has learned from and partnered with congregations and communities in South Africa and Nicaragua and is beginning her ninth year as a partner with the Nehemiah Project, a Methodist community economic development effort in Ivory Park, South Africa.
Bishop Raul Garcia De Ochoa
Rev. Raul Garcia de Ochoa was born in General Teran, state of Nuevo Leon, Mexico. The fifth of ten children, and raised in the Methodist Church, he entered John Wesley Seminary in Monterrey, Mexico being seventeen years old from which he received a BA in theology in 1981. Rev. Garcia received a BA in Communication Sciences from Universidad Valle del Bravo, in Reynosa, Tamps., Mexico, in 1986. Asbury Theological Seminary, in Wilmore, Ky., granted Rev. Garcia the Master in Divinity in 1991. Rev. Garcia also received the Doctor of Ministry degree from Asbury Seminary in the year 2008.
Rev. Garcia has been a pastor in seven different churches and has contributed to establish several congregations both in Mexico as well as in the South Georgia Conference. He served as a District Superintendent for eight years and is currently the bishop in the Conferencia Oriental of the Methodist Church of Mexico.
Rev. Garcia is married to Martha Delia and has two children: Carolina and Raul Israel.
