There is a new lead pastor at Christ’s Church of Fountain Hills but his face will be familiar to the parishioners.

Keith Pavia, formerly the executive pastor at Christ’s Church, is taking over the lead role from Trent Renner.

Pavia began his journey with Christ 15 years ago.

“In 2005 I accepted Christ,” Pavia said. “Different things had happened; my wife now challenged me to go to church. Then I was a coach at Peoria High and Sunrise Mountain High School and one of my players was shot and killed at ASU. There were a whole lot of things that happened where I just dug in and accepted Christ.”

Before taking up ministry work, Pavia was a teacher and had not considered changing vocations until Renner asked him about it.

“I had never really thought about it,” Pavia said. “Trent and I were driving to a Bible study and he asked if I would ever leave teaching. ‘For what,’ I asked, and he said to be in ministry. That day I went to my principal and asked him if I could take a leave of absences to do full-time ministry work and I have never looked back.”

Now being the lead pastor Pavia and his team all agree that they want to make serving Fountain Hills their first priority.

“We really want to focus on the town,” Pavia said. “We started picking up a lot of missions here in town. So we upped giving to the food bank, we support the Boys & Girls Club, we support the schools. We are a church for this town and we want to make sure that we cover that first.”

While Pavia is more than happy to take on the responsibilities of being the lead pastor, he emphasizes that the work Christ’s Church does is a team effort.

“For me the biggest thing is that we are a family and a team,” Pavia said. It is not just one person. I am the lead and I’ll take the heat of things, but the team is so important.”