Michele Wright Bartlow, Senior Pastor
Michele has reinvented her life at least a half-dozen times and enjoys people not afraid to embrace change. She has a passion for creating new worship and working with groups, helping people connect, inside and outside the church. Michele is a graduate of Union Seminary in New York. Before coming to FUMCOG as senior pastor in 2005, she was pastor in Reading, PA, and Lancaster County. She has also been on the staff of the United Methodist Church in Eastern Pennsylvania, and has served as District Superintendent. Michele and her spouse, Tom Bartlow, live in East Mt. Airy. They have three young adult children. When not at FUMCOG, Michele loves to walk in the Wissahickon and reads anything and everything. Items now on her bookshelf include a stack of New Yorkers, Jeffrey Sachs’ book The End of Poverty , Diane Ackerman’s novel The Zookeeper’s Wife, and Douglas Brinkley’s The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.. She plays violin and loves all kinds of music.
Irene E. Stroud, Pastoral Assistant
Beth Stroud is the lead teacher for FUMCOG's middle school confirmation program. She also preaches from time to time, and assists with leading worship and with pastoral visitation. She was an ordained minister in the United Methodist Church for seven years, and is the author of "You! A Faith that Fits," the official youth curriculum of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches. She holds an M.Div. degree from Union Theological Seminary and an A.B. in English from Bryn Mawr College. She lives in Germantown with her partner, Chris Paige, and their two-year-old foster daughter.
Kevin O'Malia, Director of Music
Kevin O'Malia, a native of northeastern Pennsylvania, holds B.M and M.M. degrees in Church Music with honors, from Westminster Choir College of Rider University, in Princeton, NJ. Degree concentrations include organ and choral conducting. Kevin has served in a variety of capacities, assisting in directing, playing and in choral accompaniment, most recently at Trinity Church in Princeton, NJ and at Christ & Holy Trinity Church in Westport, CT. He also has served as Music Director at the Episcopal church at Princeton University. Kevin has been heard on National Public Radio's feature "Pipedreams" twice, and has concertized in the United States, Great Britain and France.
You can find information about the music program by clicking HERE
Karen Wambold, Office Manager