Rev. John & Rev. Claudia Polsgrove
The Lord appointed seventy others, and sent them on ahead of him, two by two…to heal the sick and say to them, "The kingdom of God has come near." - Luke 10:1, 9
This is the kind of discipleship John and Claudia feel called to live out. They hope the United Church of Christ in Paducah can be experienced as a part of the Kingdom of God, a vehicle through which each person can identify and live out their ways of following Jesus and knowing him as their Savior.
Claudia was born in Houston, TX, and grew up in that area before moving to Murray, KY in 1965. She graduated from Murray State University with a BIS in Cultural Anthropology.
John, a native of Union City, attended GA Tech on a football scholarship and is a retired electrical engineer from Westvaco in Wickliffe, KY. Prior to Westvaco, he was employed by McDonnell-Douglas Astronautics (St. Louis, MO), General Dynamics (Ft. Worth, TX), and LTV Temco Electrosystems (Greenville, TX).
Both John and Claudia are ordained ministers in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), sister denomination to the UCC. After discovering the UCP, they attended a weekend sponsored by both UCC and CCDoC to share the basics of the two denominations. They are both recognized by the UCC as ordained ministers.
John has been involved in some form of pulpit ministry since the early 1980's - as a lay reader in the Episcopal church, a licensed minister, and an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Claudia spent her first fifty years in the Episcopal Church and is into the second fifty in the CCDoC and UCC.
John and Claudia married after graduating from the Episcopal Theological Seminary in KY in 1989. They served as co-pastors at Wickliffe First Christian Church for 16 years. They also served five years concurrently with Bardwell FCC, and Claudia served two interims with UCP. After retiring from Wickliffe FCC, they served Union City FCC TN for 18 months, then Mayfield FCC for nine months.
Claudia has five sons and nine grandchildren. John has three children and two grandchildren.
John and Claudia have a special fondness for the interim ministry, and United Church of Paducah is so blessed to have them as our interim co-pastors!
