About our Pastor

Reverend Charlie Cole

Charlie was born on July 8, 1952 in New Paltz, New York, a small college and agricultural community located 65 miles north of New York City.  Some of his fondest childhood memories are of the New Paltz United Methodist Church, where he was baptized and confirmed.  Charlie completed his undergraduate work in religious studies at Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania, receiving his BA in 1974.  Charlie received his Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, NJ in 1977.  Ordained a traditional deacon in 1976 in the New York Annual Conference and an elder in full connection in the same Conference in 1979, Charlie has been in full-time pastoral ministry for 32 years.  He has served a three-point charge of Grand Gorge, Gilboa, and Conesville in the Catskill Mountains of New York; and as an associate pastor to the 1200 member Norwalk United Methodist Church in Norwalk, Connecticut    Charlie transferred to the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference in January 1982. In this conference, he has served the two-point charge of Chestnut Street UMC and Ranshaw UMC in Shamokin, Pennsylvania; the UMC of the Redeemer in Northeast Philadelphia; First United Methodist Church of Fairless Hill, PA and from 2002 to the present, Charlie has served as senior pastor of this congregation, the United Methodist Church of Paoli.

Throughout his ministry, Charlie has been active in educational ministries with children and youth.  He is certified by our United Methodist Board of Discipleship to train people to do ministry with Junior High youth and he has served on the faculty of the Local Pastor’s licensing school in this Conference as the education and youth ministry instructor.  Charlie is currently serving on the Board of Ordained Ministry of the Eastern PA Conference of the United Methodist Church and he chairs its Marital Separation and Divorce Committee.  Charlie has also been active in all the communities he has served.  He started CROP walks in Shamokin and Fairless Hills and also helped establish a teen center in Fairless Hills at the local YMCA.  He has served as a member of the Ethics Committee that works with end-of-life concerns at a local Nursing and Rehabilitation facility, and also was a part of the Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee for Bucks County.  Currently, Charlie is the convener of the Upper Main Line Ministerium, and serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Paoli Business and Professional Association.

During his college years that Charlie met his wife, Lucinda Jennings, who is known to most people as “Cindy”.  They were married August 30, 1975.  Charlie and Cindy are the proud parents of one daughter, Alyssa, who is married to Paul Mages and presented Charlie and Cindy with their first grandchild, Claire Jayne in December of 2007.