Dear Members and Friends,

It was a great blessing to get the call from Nancy Cushman several months ago, with the news that I was being asked to serve as your Pastor, beginning on July 1st. It was wonderful to meet with your Staff Parish Committee several weeks later, to discover the many ministries of Glendale First, and to hear about some new directions the congregation is interested in exploring. I look forward to getting started in just a few weeks!

One of the things that the Conference suggested I do was to provide a little information about me and my background, etc., that I could share with you before my arrival. In the next few paragraphs, I'll try to give an outline. I hope you’ll ask questions about any area where you’d like more information.

I was born in Beloit, Wisconsin on April 25th, 1958, and spent my early childhood first in Chicago, then in Ann Arbor Michigan. When I was 8, my family headed west, first to Deming, New Mexico, then to Tucson, where I spent the rest of my childhood, youth, and college years. I began attending St. James United Methodist in Tucson at the age of 18 and began my relationship with Christ there. Several years later, while at the University of Arizona, I moved my membership to nearby Catalina United Methodist. At the U of A, I began my studies in Electrical Engineering but finished with Bachelor’s Degrees in History and Music.

While I was at Catalina, I felt the call to ministry. It took a while, but with God’s persistent invitation, I began the journey to ordination. I entered Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington D.C. in 1990, and over the next five years, earned Master’s Degrees in Divinity and Youth Ministry, while serving as the Director of Youth and Family Ministries at the United Christian Parish in Reston, Virginia. In 1995, I returned to our Desert Southwest Conference and began my service at Trinity Heights in Flagstaff. From there, I moved to Los Arcos in Scottsdale in 1998, St. Marks in Tucson in 2005, New Song in Surprise in 2006, Heritage in Las Vegas in 2010, University in Las Vegas in 2013, First in Yuma in 2014, and to Patagonia Community United Methodist in 2016.

During my years of ministry, I’ve always enjoyed working with youth groups. I’ve deaned and served camps at Mingus Mountain, Pine Canyon, and Potosi Pines, and have helped plan and lead many district and conference youth events over the last 35 years. I also feel a strong calling to work on social issues, have served on the local church and Conference boards of Church and Society, and have worked with interfaith organizations all over our Conference.

On a personal level, I enjoy spending time with family and friends, reading history, literature, and technical subjects, watching movies and traveling. Music has been and is a lifelong interest and pleasure. I love virtually all kinds of music and enjoy singing and playing the guitar. When time and resources permit, I also have hobbies of working on old radios, TV’s, phonographs, recorders, etc., transferring and remastering old recordings, and crawling under the occasional vintage auto.

What’s your story? I’d love to hear! Let’s get together and compare our journeys! I look forward to meeting all of you by whatever means is practical initially, and then face to face, when that becomes possible.

Looking forward to meeting all of you soon! With best wishes for staying safe and well...

God bless,

Tom Jelinek

Dear Church Family,
We need one another and it’s important to stay in touch. Even though we can’t gather physically, we can still gather spiritually. This is the sixteenth in a series of weekly devotions focused on faith, hope and strength during hard times. We hope you find them meaningful. This week's installment was written by Rev. Tom Wick.

Do you have a story to tell? If you would like to submit a devotion, please email Rebecca.


Several years ago, I was invited to a conference in Washington, DC. Unable to book a room close to the event, I stayed a few miles from the Convention Center and early the next morning found myself on the Metro heading toward DuPont Circle, where the event was to be held.

I struck up a conversation with the man sitting next to me, a gentleman in his eighties. He told me he was a psychiatrist who had been in practice for almost sixty years. As we talked that morning, I asked him what was the greatest change he had seen in mental health care during his long career. Without the slightest hesitation, he said it was, "medications; medications that had given countless people their lives back."

He went on to say that many of the people he had treated through the years would not have needed him if they had simply looked beyond themselves and found a place to love and serve others. He added, “that’s why churches and synagogues are so important; they connect people with a God who loves them and with a community that needs them.”

The words of Jesus, “love one another as I have loved you,” are timeless. We find meaning and purpose in life by looking beyond ourselves, and loving and serving others.

Prayer: Wonderful God, as I step into this new day that you have given me, help me to see you in every face and be Jesus to everyone I meet. Amen.