At Pittsburgh Theological Seminary’s 2024 Alumnae/i Days gathering, four alums were honored for their work and recognized as this year’s distinguished alumnae/i or received The Fred Rogers Award for Creative Ministry. In this blog series, meet these alums and discover the ways in which they serve God and neighbor in their communities and across the nation. The 2024 Distinguished Alumna in Pastoral Ministry is the Rev. Dr. Sheila Johnson (Hunt) ’10.
2024 Distinguished Alumna in Pastoral Ministry: the Rev. Dr. Sheila Johnson (Hunt)
The Rev. Dr. Sheila Johnson (Hunt) ’10 is an ordained Baptist minister, accomplished songwriter/arranger, choral conductor, recording artist, professor, nonprofit leader, and mentor. She is the executive pastor and minister of music at First Baptist Church of Penn Hills and currently serves as the president of the Baptist Ministers’ Conference of Pittsburgh and Vicinity—the first woman to hold that role.
Sheila has served in leadership roles at several institutions of higher education, including professor, department chair, and division head, as well as mentoring students in United Theological Seminary’s “A Generational Approach for Today’s Urban Ministry in the Next Normal” Doctor of Ministry group. Her work with women is known throughout Greater Pittsburgh and across Pennsylvania. During her 14-year leadership of the New Choices/New Options Program at the Community College of Allegheny County, she assisted more than 1,500 women in crises to become emotionally and economically self-sufficient. This success was lauded throughout the state by politicians, educators, and social service professionals, and in 2018 the New Pittsburgh Courier recognized her as one of its “Women of Excellence.”
Sheila earned a bachelor’s degree in music and an M.A. in counseling from Western Kentucky University, a Ph.D. in higher education from the University of Pittsburgh, and a D.Min. with urban emphasis from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.
Sheila’s ministry includes preaching, teaching, and facilitating at workshops, conferences, and revivals in the U.S. and abroad. She also serves as the senior manager of special projects for Western Penn Hills Community Action Inc., where she develops rites of passage, career counseling, job readiness programs, a youth fine arts festival, and summer employment for community teens. Sheila and her husband, the Rev. James E. Hunt, senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Penn Hills, Pa., are the first Pittsburgh-area clergy couple of the Allegheny Union Baptist Association (AUBA) in which the pastor’s wife is an ordained minister. They also are the first clergy couple in an African American Baptist church in Pittsburgh and vicinity in which the wife of the senior pastor was elected by the congregation as the executive pastor.
As a musician, Sheila is known throughout the nation and around the world. In 2018, her eighth recording—a single entitled “Freedom”—debuted at #9 on the Billboard Hot Single Sales Chart and held the #1 slot for four consecutive weeks on the international radio chart in England, Nigeria, Sweden, Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland. She has served as a conductor, director, and composer/arranger in residence for numerous citywide, university, and convention choirs, appeared a number of times on Bobby Jones Gospel, toured in Europe, and is a former member of the national faculty of the Gospel Music Workshop of America. Her sound draws on a number of styles, including gospel, rap, choral, anthem, folk, Negro Spiritual, and ballad.
Learn more about Sheila and access her music on her personal webpage: https://www.drsheilaljohnson.com/
Learn more about the Doctor of Ministry program at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary: https://www.pts.edu/doctor-of-ministry
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