Jesse & Brigitte Cook - Pastor and wife
Jesse and Brigitte both are natives to Sciotoville, and they are high school sweethearts. They are both graduates of East High School and were married shortly after graduation. After marriage, they both attended Ohio Christian University with a desire to serve God in the ministry although they were not exactly sure on what this looked like at the time.
Jesse & Brigitte both served with the North American Mission Board (NAMB) in the realm of church planting and church revitalization. Before joining with Berean, Jesse and Brigitte helped start Missional Community Baptist Church in Lucasville, OH with a desire to help people Follow Christ, Grow in Christ, and Go on Mission with Christ. It is with this passion that the Missional Community Baptist Church body joined with Berean here in Sciotoville. They hope to continue the mission that God has given the church.
Jesse and Brigitte have two wonderful, but very rotten, kids at home: Nehemiah and Julia. When they are not spending time with their kids, Brigitte is a professional photographer and loves capturing all of life’s moments. Jesse enjoys sitting down with a good book. Although it is hard to narrow down our favorite verse, one passage that they continue to hold onto in this life is 1 Corinthians 4:16-18 - “Therefore we do not give up. Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day. For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. So, we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
Phil & Christiana Minich – Youth & Family Pastor and Wife
Phil Minich grew up in a suburb of Chicago called Naperville, Illinois. Christiana was born in Bristol, England. Phil graduated from Cedarville University in the spring of 2016 and started studies at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary that fall. At the same time, Christiana was studying Biblical counseling at the undergrad at the seminary, and their paths crossed while working at Chick-fil-A. You can count on it: Good chicken brings people together. They were married on June 22, 2019 and shortly thereafter moved to Vermont to gain church planting and church revitalization experience in an internship with the New England Training and Sending Center (NETS). They moved to Sciotoville in 2020 with the desire to serve as church members and are delighted to now have the opportunity to serve the church and the community even more in this role!
Phil and Christiana are adventurous to the core and love hiking, city day-trips, and longboarding. They also enjoy recreational woodworking and painting as well as strategy board games. One of their shared passions is inviting people to their house for food and fellowship, so you can expect an invitation to come your way at some point! It is difficult to identify a favorite verse out of a Book whose every verse is a treasure, but the sweet, simple Gospel of Romans 5:8-9 stands out: “…But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since therefore, we have been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.”
Deacons
We have five serving deacons, dedicated to serving our congregation and community.
Ron Fankell
Tom Johnson
Mickey O’Brien
Paul Seeley
Bob Yuenger