The Rev. Dr. John R. Norwood

Pastor, Missiologist, Former Tribal Leader | Ujima Village Christian Church of Ewing

Rev. Dr. Norwood has served as the senior pastor of the Ujima Village Christian Church of Ewing, New Jersey since 1992, and is the founder and director of the Christian Mission School of Theology. Between 2004 and 2019, Dr. Norwood also served the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation as an elected Tribal Councilman, the first Principal Justice of the Tribal Supreme Court, and minister to the tribal Christian Prayer Circle Fellowship Ministry. He is the founder of “1st Light Mission” Christian tribal outreach, the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape delegate to the National Congress of American Indians and General Secretary of the Alliance of Colonial Era Tribes.
He is a post-doctoral researcher with the Department of Ecclesiology at North-West University, Potchefstroom, SA, and has lectured at various academic institutions on Theology, American Indian history, culture and current concerns, and testified before the United States Congress.
His publications and research papers include: We are Still Here – The Tribal Saga of New Jersey’s Nanticoke and Lenape Indians (2007); The Historical Impact and Current Challenges of Christian Ministry Among the Aboriginal People of the Delaware Bay Region (2015); Contextualized Worship Among the Nanticoke-Lenape American Indians (2017 in the peer reviewed academic journal, In die Skriflig).
Dr. Norwood has been featured in several documentaries including: The Seven Ages of Britain (2010); Philadelphia: The Great Experiment (2014); Promised Land (2016), The King’s Highway (2016); and, Bicentennial City (2019).