Poetry Reading: Reflections from a Vibrant Past by Reverend Gregory Smith

The Reverend Gregory S. Smith was born April 4, 1964 in Long Beach California. In 1971 his mother married Rev. Leon Gipson, who served as pastor of Mount Pisgah AME Church in Princeton. The blended family assimilated into the church parsonage on Maclean Street. The members of Mount Pisgah and the Witherspoon Jackson “village” became an integral part of Gregory’s social and spiritual development. As a young boy, Gregory received support from his close friends and the community, which helped offer him a sense of purpose and meaning. He found that he was well liked, especially among the older people and began to make lots of friendships in the community. Gregory worked as a paper boy and at a local grocery store (Food Mart) on Witherspoon Street. It was through these combined initiatives that he began the art of observing the “characters” in the community. After graduating from high school in 1982, Gregory attended Rutgers University where he received his bachelor and master’s degrees in social work. He returned to Princeton and began working as a Social Worker at Penn Medicine, Princeton (formerly the Medical Center at Princeton). As an avid creative writer, somehow, he began writing poems, a gift he inherited from his maternal grandmother. He was often asked to write poetry at funerals for local community icons.

 

Gregory always felt he had a special calling on his life and finally accepted the call to pastoral ministry in 2006. He graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary in 2015. He has pastored several AME, United Methodist and Baptist congregations in Pennington, Willingboro, Hopewell, Mount Holly, and Birmingham Alabama. He currently serves as pastor of Fisk Chapel AME Church in Fair Haven, New Jersey. Gregory is married and has five children, four grandchildren, and a host of surrogate and godchildren alike.