Church graced with new pastor

When Roy Williams stepped down as the pastor of the Plains First Church of God, not only did he leave a tremendous leadership void, but a personal one as well.

Those are some “big shoes to fill,” Todd Brouilette, First Church’s new pastor, said of Williams’ three decades of service.

According to Brouilette, some of the everyday adjustments can be the hardest. “It’s hard to get everybody’s name together,” he confessed.

Brouilette has been involved with Active Works Ministries, an off-shoot of the First Church of God, for the last 12 years and had already developed relationships with Williams, and many members of his congregation.

“I’ve always been in communication with Roy,” Brouilette said. After learning of his impending retirement plans, Brouilette felt compelled to “at least put my name in the hat. If they picked me, they picked me, if they didn’t that’s fine, but I just needed to do that.”

“I really didn’t necessarily expect to be picked,” Brouilette added. Perhaps even more daunting than replacing a pastor with over 30 years of relational experience in one community was Brouilette’s lack of conventional seminary training.

“All of my experience is basically hands on,” he said. “Which is really the way I learn best.”

Brouilette and his wife, Jeana, assisted a church plant in Columbia Falls, and served the church in quasi-associate pastor roles before becoming youth pastors for the last eight years while Brouilette successfully owned and operated a siding company. Jeana, who also served as  worship leader, has continued that role in Plains.

Despite his lack of conventional training, Brouilette has seen God work in a small community in a short amount of time.

“We basically started out with no facility, we operated out of the pastors home, and really kind of hopped around from place to place,” Brouilette said of his old church’s humble beginnings. “[We’d meet in] restaurants, parks, that sort of thing for probably, five years, and then just had a vision that we needed a facility.”

“I mean to tell you, it was interesting the way he [God] made things happen,” he said of the 15 acres the congregation received in a donation, and of the 6,000 square foot facility they constructed.

Brouilette credits much of his experience to the tuteledge he received under Frank Vargas, the pastor of Active Works Ministries.

Brouilette thinks the relationships he had built with members of the First Church of God in Plains through his time with Active Works Ministry enabled him to compete with others who had seminary degrees.

“I was very honest about it with the interview here,” Brouilette said. “It really doesn’t even seem to make them flinch. I really thought it would.”

Brouilette plans on taking some online courses after he gets settled in Plains, but believes his lack of traditional education can be an advantage, because it keeps him humble. “I don’t ever want to rely on myself, my own abilities to lead and to preach and to share God’s word,” he said.

Brouiette has inherited a relatively older congregation, and feels that his mix of youth and practical experience can be a benefit to his church’s vision of passing it’s experience on to a younger generation.

“When they called me, their fear was that the church was going to end with them,” he said. “We want to bring some younger families in. That’s really kind of the focus.”

Some of their strategies to reach younger families include a face-lift on the Sunday morning worship service, and an impressive youth facility.

“They’ve typically done hymns through the years and now we’re doing half contemporary, and half the hymns,” said Brouilette. “Coming into a new town, I would want, for my family, to find something that really fit our tastes, and something we can really enjoy. That’s what we want to do here. We want to do that without taking out everything that was loved before.”

Brouilette plans to open the facility as an after school hangout on Wednesdays and Fridays. The building includes foosball, pool, video games, and can be utilized as a place for teenages to do homework, hang out in a safe environement, or be mentored by an adult.

With so many changes going on Brouilette was quick to point out that the one thing that has not and will not change about Plains First Church of God is their commitment to preaching God’s word. “I preach pretty much word for word out of the bible and try to make it relevant for us today,” he said. “That’s kind of been my goal, and that’s what they were looking for.”

Personally Brouilette thinks the move has been enriching for both he and his family.

“It’s been a great fit, under the circumstances it’s been a wonderful transition,” he said. “We have an open, great congregation of just mature believers. Roy did a good job of building up a mature congregation, but now we’re ready to pass that knowledge on to the younger generation, so I think we have a lot to offer.”