This year Pittsburgh Seminary honors Dale Sewall as our Distinguished Alumnus in Mission.

Retired in 2010 from 40 years of pastoral ministry, the Rev. Delmar (Dale) Sewall ’70 is president and CEO of Union University of California and sponsor for the Black Prisoners’ Caucus at Clallum Bay Correctional Facility. His ministerial career includes serving as executive director of the North Hills Youth Ministry in Pittsburgh; associate pastor for youth, family, and community ministries at Westminster PC, Grand Rapids; senior pastor of First PC, Brainerd, Minn.; and for 23 years senior pastor at Mercer Island PC, Wash. Along the way he was also a founding member of the Heartside Neighborhood Association, addressing urban issues in downtown Grand Rapids, and founder and chairman of Dwelling Place Non-Profit Housing Corporation.

As Clergy Association president in Brainerd, Dale helped establish the Crow Wing County Jail Chaplaincy Program. He also established the first support relationship between a Christian church and the Mid-Minnesota Women’s Shelter. Later, in Seattle, he chaired the board of the Center for Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence (now Faith Trust Institute) and established a long-term partnership between Emerald City Outreach Ministry (now Urban Impact) and Mercer Island PC.

As a young adult during the Vietnam War, Dale developed an emotional bond with the people of Vietnam and Southeast Asia that turned into a calling to express the love of Jesus to Southeast Asian people in life changing ways. Toward that end, he served as a board member of the Prosthetics Outreach Foundation, which provides prosthetic limbs for Vietnamese war veterans and the general population at its clinic in Hanoi. With Commissioned Lay Pastor Binh Nguyen, a former prisoner in the Vietnam reeducation camps, Dale established the Vietnam Ministry of Seattle Presbytery (now South East Asia Ministry), through which he also supported house churches in Vietnam to become the United Presbyterian Church of Vietnam.

He has also chaired the board of the Vietnamese Theological College; created the International Student Scholarship Fund of Mercer Island PC, which sponsors 300 students mostly in Southeast Asia; linked Seattle Pacific University and Duy Tanh University in Danang, Vietnam; sponsored medical teams to teach emergency medicine at the Hue Medical School in central Vietnam; worked in funding the establishment of the International Justice Mission’s Northern Thailand Office; and supported IJM’s anti-trafficking work in Cambodia.

Dale earned his bachelor’s from Westminster College, New Wilmington, Pa., (1966) and master of divinity from PTS (magna cum laude). His honorary degrees include a doctor of divinity from Union University of California and doctor of letters from Apollos University, Huntington Beach, Calif.

In 2009 Dale founded and for two years directed Exmenda, a non-profit corporation dealing with traumagenic systems. Dale and his wife, Jinny, have three daughters and live in Mercer Island, Wash.

This year Pittsburgh Seminary honors Dale Sewall as our Distinguished Alumnus in Mission.

Retired in 2010 from 40 years of pastoral ministry, the Rev. Delmar (Dale) Sewall ’70 is president and CEO of Union University of California and sponsor for the Black Prisoners’ Caucus at Clallum Bay Correctional Facility. His ministerial career includes serving as executive director of the North Hills Youth Ministry in Pittsburgh; associate pastor for youth, family, and community ministries at Westminster PC, Grand Rapids; senior pastor of First PC, Brainerd, Minn.; and for 23 years senior pastor at Mercer Island PC, Wash. Along the way he was also a founding member of the Heartside Neighborhood Association, addressing urban issues in downtown Grand Rapids, and founder and chairman of Dwelling Place Non-Profit Housing Corporation.

As Clergy Association president in Brainerd, Dale helped establish the Crow Wing County Jail Chaplaincy Program. He also established the first support relationship between a Christian church and the Mid-Minnesota Women’s Shelter. Later, in Seattle, he chaired the board of the Center for Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence (now Faith Trust Institute) and established a long-term partnership between Emerald City Outreach Ministry (now Urban Impact) and Mercer Island PC.

As a young adult during the Vietnam War, Dale developed an emotional bond with the people of Vietnam and Southeast Asia that turned into a calling to express the love of Jesus to Southeast Asian people in life changing ways. Toward that end, he served as a board member of the Prosthetics Outreach Foundation, which provides prosthetic limbs for Vietnamese war veterans and the general population at its clinic in Hanoi. With Commissioned Lay Pastor Binh Nguyen, a former prisoner in the Vietnam reeducation camps, Dale established the Vietnam Ministry of Seattle Presbytery (now South East Asia Ministry), through which he also supported house churches in Vietnam to become the United Presbyterian Church of Vietnam.

He has also chaired the board of the Vietnamese Theological College; created the International Student Scholarship Fund of Mercer Island PC, which sponsors 300 students mostly in Southeast Asia; linked Seattle Pacific University and Duy Tanh University in Danang, Vietnam; sponsored medical teams to teach emergency medicine at the Hue Medical School in central Vietnam; worked in funding the establishment of the International Justice Mission’s Northern Thailand Office; and supported IJM’s anti-trafficking work in Cambodia.

Dale earned his bachelor’s from Westminster College, New Wilmington, Pa., (1966) and master of divinity from PTS (magna cum laude). His honorary degrees include a doctor of divinity from Union University of California and doctor of letters from Apollos University, Huntington Beach, Calif.

In 2009 Dale founded and for two years directed Exmenda, a non-profit corporation dealing with traumagenic systems. Dale and his wife, Jinny, have three daughters and live in Mercer Island, Wash.