The GLAD Alliance Council has appointed Vance Martin to fill the council position which opened when Sharon Hart resigned.
Vance Martin is a native of Los Angeles. He has one brother, two nephews and a niece. He was educated in Los Angeles, with a BA degree in Government from Cal State L.A. (1964).
He has been employed in public assistance with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Service since 1964, and was made Division Chief in 1994. He is presently in charge of community-based offices of the department that provide services to assist CalWORK’s program families to seek and find employment, in compliance with the 1996 Federal Welfare Reform Law.
Vance has been a member of United Christian Church (DOC), Los Angeles, since 1961, having been baptized in one of the two predecessor congregations (East 28th Street Christian Church) in 1954. His late uncle pastored Century Birch Street Christian Church, which was the earliest African American Disciples congregation in Los Angeles, thus giving him long roots within the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
He has attended many Disciple Conventions and Assemblies since 1967, and served as the second vice-moderator of the General Assembly from 1985 through 1987. Vance was a Disciple delegate to the Consultation on Church Union for the 1989 Plenary. He served on the Commission on Theology from 1978 through 1989 and with the Disciples-UCC Partnership Committee in the late 1980’s.
Within the Pacific Southwest Region he has served as the Regional Vice Moderator from 1978-1980 and served as the Moderator from 1980 to 1982. He has been a member of the Christian Social Concerns/Church in Society Committee from the 1970s through 2004, and did notable work on the Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Planning Committee. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Disciples Seminary Foundation at various terms of office from 1985 through 2003.
Ecumenically he has served as a member of the United Ministry at the University of Southern California from 1987 to the present time, and has served as a member of the Board of Trustees of Claremont School of Theology from 1993 to the present, having served as chair of the Academic Affairs Committee. He is currently the secretary of the Board. He also served on the seminary’s Center for Sexuality and Christian Life. In the spring of 2002 he attended the African American Roundtable of the Pacific School of Religion’s Gay and Lesbian Center.
He has interests in book and art collecting including African American cinema posters, Latin American graphics, Afrocentric-themed entertainment and travel posters and advertisements from Europe, and sub-Saharan African masks, as well as 20th Century modern dance.
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