Reverend John Parille is our Senior Pastor and oversees the Bethel United Methodist Church and the Long Ridge United Methodist Church. Pastor John comes to us with years of business, sales and marketing experience. This experience coupled with his depth of spirituality, passion for bringing Christ to the world and his love for people, offers a major contribution to our our ministry team here at BUMC.
Pastor John began his pastoral ministry by serving as an Associate Pastor at New Life UMC in New Fairfield CT in 2010. Since that time, Pastor John as served at the Gaylordsville UMC from 2013 until 2016. He has been the Senior Pastor at the Bethel UMC as well as the Long Ridge UMC since 2016. Pastor John is also the Parish Leader for the Western Frontier Parish groups which consists of 6 local Methodist churches.
In addition to handling the normal pastoral duties of preaching, teaching and visitation— Pastor John helps our church by putting a face to our church out in the community. He develops strategies to help fulfill the segment of our mission to make Jesus known beyond our four walls.
This includes reaching local families who are unchurched, developing evangelism teams, working closely with our leaders and members to provide instruction on evangelism, follow-up of visitors and developing marketing strategies to make our ministry known in the Greater Bethel area.
Pastor John is married to his wife Maria and they have four daughters as well as a grandson named Jack.
