SENIOR PASTOR
ELWOOD J. MCDOWELL

Rev. Elwood J. McDowell hails from Vicksburg, Mississippi. He is married to Shirley J.McDowell and the father of five children and seven grandchildren. He holds a B.A. degree in philosophy from Divine Word College in Iowa and an M.A. in philosophy from the University of New Mexico. He did further graduate study in philosophy and religious studies at the University of Oklahoma. He holds an M.A. degree in Clinical Psychology from Fielding Graduate

University. He has taught as an adjunct at the University of New Mexico, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Arizona in the fields of African-American Studies and Religious Studies. He was a Core Trainer at the National Drug Education Center at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in the early 1970’s after working for Bernalillo County Mental Health Center running an adolescent drug abuse center in Albuquerque. He was chosen to be on a panel at Oxford University in England called the Oxford Round Table.  And best of all, he is pastor of Trinity Missionary Baptist Church in Tucson where he has served for thirty-six years, including serving as District Baptist Moderator, President of the State Congress

of Christian Education, and a member of the Board of the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc. In his role as Education Domain Leader for the predominantly African American Ministers’ Alliance, he has helped to advocate for significant changes that help African American children in grades k-12, including a reading improvement program. Through his church, he has sponsored a Rites of Passage Program for adolescent African American males for ten years and is now instituting one for adolescent girls. He has taught a course on the Theology of Dr. King, as well as a course on Malcolm and Martin at the University of Arizona.