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An interview with the Rev. Dr. Scott Sherwood ’92, Northwest Illinois District superintendent for the Church of the Nazarene and chairman of Olivet’s Board of Trustees How did you first come to be a student at Olivet? By the time I started thinking about college, Olivet already felt like home. I remember Dr. Ted Lee ’68 eating bologna and tomato sandwiches around our kitchen table after preaching at our church, regaling us with story after story as only he could. I remember Olivet PR groups singing, playing softball and praying at altars every year at camp. I remember John Mongerson ’78/’88 M.A. walking on his hands across the campground and Tony Fightmaster ’79/’12 M.O.L. calling me by name year after year. I remember Phil Shomo ’85 and Doug Ward ’87 doing their pastoral field training at our church and modeling very magnetically what it looked like to be a young man of God. I remember attending Homecoming basketball games in Birchard, participating in Celebrate Life, receiving mail addressed directly to me and watching my older brother, John, experience student life at Olivet. It also didn’t hurt that my parents told me I could go to any school I wanted, but they would only help pay for Olivet.
Is there a key memory that stands out in your mind from your time as an Olivet student? One of the memories I am most thankful for — and remember most clearly — is standing in the lobby of Ludwig the first time Sherry (Fortado) ’91 asked me out on a date. She remembers that 14 OLIVET.EDU
conversation differently and incorrectly, by the way. I also very vividly remember walking into the library my freshman year to work on my first college research paper. In the late ’80s, the card catalog was the closest thing we had to the internet. As I pulled open the card catalog drawer and looked at all the other drawers, it dawned on me that in this one building, with the ability to read and reason, I could learn almost anything about anything. Throughout my college career, I would go on to ‘waste’ hour upon hour in Benner Library, chasing curiosities through the card catalog and journal stacks rather than maintaining focus on my assigned research topics. Any school I attended would have had a library, but it was the relationships, chapel services and personal attention of the faculty at Olivet that steered me toward the wise and loving use of knowledge for a Christian purpose. How were you first called into pastoral ministry? I first felt a call at 5 and I accepted the call at 16. My parents, my church and my pastor all supported me in that call and allowed me to serve and lead long before they should have.
Tell us about your wife, Sherry, and her very important work. Sherry is the CEO of Living Alternatives Pregnancy Resource Center, a network of 12 pregnancy centers across Illinois and Indiana. Over the last 16 years of Sherry’s leadership, the ministry has converted to a medical model, adding ultrasound services, building a 16-bed residential facility for women and adding a mobile medical clinic. They have added programs for those who are grieving their pregnancy loss