Our Pastor
Reverend Dr. Frederick Jerome “Jerry” Streets, Senior Pastor
In 2011, the Reverend Dr. Frederick J. Streets returned to the Dixwell Avenue Congregational United Church of Christ to become its Acting Pastor. In 2013, he was installed as Senior Pastor, becoming the 25th Pastor in the Church’s approaching 200-year history. Reverend Streets is a son of Dixwell, having completed his Yale Divinity School Internship under the pastorate of the Reverend Dr. Edwin R. Edmonds.
As Senior Pastor of the Mount Aery Baptist Church in Bridgeport, Connecticut from 1975-1992, Reverend Streets led the congregation in significant growth, building a new church edifice and developing many social outreach programs and ministries. He was the first African American to serve as the Yale University Chaplain and Senior Pastor of the Church of Christ in Yale from 1992-2007. There, he established a model of multi-faith campus ministry. In honor of Yale’s tercentennial, Yale University Press published his (2005) Preaching in the New Millennium. He was also Acting Head of Trumbull College, one of the residential colleges at Yale.
Dr. Streets has served as an adjunct Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology at Yale University Divinity School since 1987. He is also an adjunct Professor at the Columbia University School of Social Work and was a Visiting Professor in the Spirituality, Mind Body Institute in the Department of Clinical Psychology and Education, Teachers’ College, Columbia University. He was a Senior Fulbright Scholar at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, where he taught in the Department of Practical Theology and returned to South Africa twice as a Senior Fulbright Specialist to assess and assist in the transition of the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein in becoming a multicultural and multi-ethnic institution following the fall of apartheid.
He is a member of the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma through which he trains mental health professionals across disciplines, religions and cultures in providing mental health services to those throughout the world who have been traumatized by war and natural disasters. He has served on the board of the Fund for Theological Education and Accreditation Commission of the Association of Theological Schools (ATS), the Iranian Human Rights Documentation Center, and was a Fellow of the Connecticut Health Foundation. Reverend Streets is also a member of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Reverend Dr. Streets is a graduate of Ottawa (Kansas) University, Yale University Divinity School and the Wurzweiler School of Social Work, where he served as the Carl and Dorothy Bennett Professor in Pastoral Counseling. A native of Chicago, IL, he has been nurtured by the American Baptist Convention, Progressive National Baptist Convention and United Church of Christ denominations. He is a published author and recipient of numerous honors and awards for his work in theology, clinical social work, humanitarian outreach, and community activism.
Pastor Streets is devoted husband, father, and grandfather to his loving family.
