People Don't Care What You Know Until They Know You Care
- Pastor Thomas C. Pesci
To serve the Lord and His flock as the pastor here at First Baptist Church of Monroeville is both a privilege and a blessing to me. God has taken me through an ecumenical path to this point, as I was raised in the Roman Catholic Church, saved in a United Church of Christ, graduated from an Episcopal seminary, and now am serving as an American Baptist minister.
Prior to my call to ministry, I was a regional sales manager for the Zale Corporation where I enjoyed much of what life had to offer. We were a typical middle-class family in which Denise, my wife of 38 years, and I shared the privilege of raising two wonderful children. Both Rachel and David now have families of their own and have blessed us with five beautiful grandchildren.
It was in the midst of my employment at Zales that I felt an emptiness in my life. I realized that God was the missing ingredient in our lives and that without Him everything seemed "meaningless." While the later journey to ordained ministry was a long and sometimes difficult road, it all began with a single step when I asked Jesus into my heart during a church service in 1995. I was truly on fire for the Lord and began reading everything I could get my hands on in an effort to know more about my Savior.
As time passed, God revealed to me ways that I could serve Him - as a Sunday School teacher, trustee, and eventually in lay ministry. Ultimately, however, I had the sense that He was calling me into ministry, and after much prayer and discernment, I answered His call and began five years of seminary. It was during those five years I began my ministry at East Brady Baptist Church as a student minister. There I was ordained in 2004 and continued to serve until October of 2009. God blessed both my family and our ministry during the nine years we served in East Brady, as we grew from a church of about 15 to a church of 60-70. However, Denise and I both felt strongly that God was calling us to a new ministry, so after almost 8 months of prayer and discernment, we answered the call to Monroeville.
Upon my call to Monroeville in October of 2009, Denise and I immediately began to pray about what God had in store for us here. Our desire has always been to faithfully serve hand in hand with this congregation as a means of drawing others to Jesus. With this in mind, we continue to prayerfully seek new ways to utilize the gifts and talents of all of our members so that others might be blessed through them. In the midst of our ministry at First Baptist, we have been presented with many blessings and challenges, including a pandemic, but through it all we have felt God’s guiding hand.
God has given us the special gift of one another, making us family - His family. We seek to share the love of Jesus with everyone who walks through our doors, understanding that "people do not care what you know until they know that you care." We pray that all who gather in this church building will share in the peace and joy that God desires all of His children to possess, so that together we can take the message of God's love and share it with a lost and hurting world.
- Pastor Thomas C. Pesci
To serve the Lord and His flock as the pastor here at First Baptist Church of Monroeville is both a privilege and a blessing to me. God has taken me through an ecumenical path to this point, as I was raised in the Roman Catholic Church, saved in a United Church of Christ, graduated from an Episcopal seminary, and now am serving as an American Baptist minister.
Prior to my call to ministry, I was a regional sales manager for the Zale Corporation where I enjoyed much of what life had to offer. We were a typical middle-class family in which Denise, my wife of 38 years, and I shared the privilege of raising two wonderful children. Both Rachel and David now have families of their own and have blessed us with five beautiful grandchildren.
It was in the midst of my employment at Zales that I felt an emptiness in my life. I realized that God was the missing ingredient in our lives and that without Him everything seemed "meaningless." While the later journey to ordained ministry was a long and sometimes difficult road, it all began with a single step when I asked Jesus into my heart during a church service in 1995. I was truly on fire for the Lord and began reading everything I could get my hands on in an effort to know more about my Savior.
As time passed, God revealed to me ways that I could serve Him - as a Sunday School teacher, trustee, and eventually in lay ministry. Ultimately, however, I had the sense that He was calling me into ministry, and after much prayer and discernment, I answered His call and began five years of seminary. It was during those five years I began my ministry at East Brady Baptist Church as a student minister. There I was ordained in 2004 and continued to serve until October of 2009. God blessed both my family and our ministry during the nine years we served in East Brady, as we grew from a church of about 15 to a church of 60-70. However, Denise and I both felt strongly that God was calling us to a new ministry, so after almost 8 months of prayer and discernment, we answered the call to Monroeville.
Upon my call to Monroeville in October of 2009, Denise and I immediately began to pray about what God had in store for us here. Our desire has always been to faithfully serve hand in hand with this congregation as a means of drawing others to Jesus. With this in mind, we continue to prayerfully seek new ways to utilize the gifts and talents of all of our members so that others might be blessed through them. In the midst of our ministry at First Baptist, we have been presented with many blessings and challenges, including a pandemic, but through it all we have felt God’s guiding hand.
God has given us the special gift of one another, making us family - His family. We seek to share the love of Jesus with everyone who walks through our doors, understanding that "people do not care what you know until they know that you care." We pray that all who gather in this church building will share in the peace and joy that God desires all of His children to possess, so that together we can take the message of God's love and share it with a lost and hurting world.
