by Lucy Jefferys

After an eighteen-month search, the Windsor Baptist Church in Uwchlan has welcomed the Reverend Paul E. Chaya as its new pastor. Chaya, 50, came to Windsor from Olney Baptist Church in Philadelphia, where he had served as pastor since 1981.
Born and raised in Hazelton, Chaya earned a 1973 bachelor of science degree in health and physical science from East Stroudsburg University. He began working as Physical Director at the central Branch YMCA in Philadelphia and as a teacher at Penn Center Academy, housed in the YMCA; but his career took a new direction when he was called to the ministry in 1977 and entered Eastern Theological Seminary the following year. He received a master of divinity degree from Eastern in 1981, and was ordained as an American Baptist Minister in May of that year.

Windsor’s rural setting is a sharp contrast to the new pastor’s former milieu.

“In Chester County, I see growth,” said Chaya. “In Philadelphia, I saw deterioration”

He expects Windsor “to grow as Chester County grows.” The church presently has about four hundred members and, as well, houses the Windsor Christian Academy, a kindergarten and elementary school with approximately one hundred students.

Chaya brings a broad background of experience to Windsor, and said his “special gifts ” are in the areas of administration and building.

He described Olney Baptist as a “multi-cultural church” which was, in his view, a vibrant presence in its community. The local high school, he said, had forty-seven different language groups.

“The integration of that congregation to a nine-cultural body of believers was quite a feat,” he said.

Working closely with the public school, the church housed an after-school program of tutoring, music, arts and crafts, and conflict resolution to serve the poor children of the community; and also provided in-service teacher training “to help teachers manage classroom behavior,” he said. The church also had a “mission partnership” with the Esperanza Health Center, setting up internship programs for high school students “to gain experience as urban missionaries.”

Chaya was involved in the Greater Philadelphia Renewal Ministries, a prayer and renewal ministry for pastors and their wives, which grew out of the Billy Graham Crusade and was based at Olney Baptist.

“The hardest job in the church is thepastor’s wife,” he said, nothing that the role lacks a support system. He would like to see the availability of free counseling for pastors and their wives.

“The success of a pastor depends on the relationship with his wife,” he said.

Chaya met his own wife, Jean, as a fellow student at East Stroudsburg. It was she, in fact, who “brought me to Christ. I compared my life with hers, and asked why she seemed to have it all together.”

They married in 1974 and raised two daughters: Jennifer, 20, a junior at Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts, majoring in vocal performance; and Sarah, 18, an accomplished violinist, who will enter Messiah College, Grantham, in the fall as a sports medicine major.

Jean Chaya brings her own talents to Windsor. She has been a choir director, an administrator and a teacher of music, art, gym and gymnastics. She was a state champion gymnast in college.

Although in his youth, Pastor Chaya’s hobbies were physically active – running,  biking and fishing – he now tends to read in his spare time. He mused that, with much unpacking still to be done at the Chayas’ new home in Coatesville, “Somewhere in my boxes is my stamp collection.”