Build a home from black plastic and rope. Kill a chicken for dinner.

These aren’t part of the job description for Mary Jo Gould, the new pastor at Thorn Creek United Methodist Church and Emory Chapel United Methodist Church, but she could do those things if she had to.

Both were part of training she had when she was 20 and with New Tribes Mission, a nondenominational and international church-planting organization.

“I always thought I was supposed to be a missionary,” Gould said.

She didn’t expect to become a pastor. That came about three decades later.

While providing medical care, community development and literacy education, New Tribes Mission’s 2,500 missionaries share Bible lessons in remote locations in Africa, Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region.

It turned out Gould wasn’t quite ready in the 1980s. Instead, she ended up working with medical insurance and as a secretary.

“In 1999, God was leading me back to New Tribes so I went as a short-term missionary for two years in a country I never wanted to go to — Papua New Guinea — but it was the best thing,” Gould said.

A single parent, she took her 12-year-old son along and became the secretary to the leadership of New Tribes Mission in the country’s highlands region.

When she returned to the United States, she met her husband, Jerry, and with his help she earned an associate degree from the Community College of Beaver County and became a registered nurse.

For the next 10 years she worked primarily in skilled nursing homes.

It wasn’t until 2013 that she began training to be a pastor through a United Methodist Church licensing school near Kittanning.

“This is my first assignment,” Gould said. “I never thought at 55 that I’d be starting a new career.”

Gould is a licensed local pastor in the Butler District. She continues her theological studies online with the school and has an ordained United Methodist minister as a mentor.

“With the OK of the bishop, I can do everything that a pastor can do in that district,” Gould said.

She started at Thorn Creek United Methodist Church, 142 Rockdale Road, at the beginning of the year. The district leadership asked her to work with Emory Chapel soon after.

Debbie Treshok of Sarver didn’t expect the Rev. Kurt Knoble, her former pastor, to leave at the end of December. He had served Thorn Creek, Emory Chapel and Connoquenessing United Methodist Church for about seven years.

Treshok, chairwoman of the board of council at Emory Chapel at Ekastown Road and Sarver Road in Sarver, said the congregations had about a month’s notice.

Bernie Elder, chairman of the administrative council at Thorn Creek and chairman of pastor parish relations for Thorn Creek and Emory Chapel, said he was surprised the congregations got a pastor in her first appointment. This also is the first woman pastor the churches have had.

“(Gould) is just a perfect fit for Emory Chapel and Thorn Creek,” Elder said. “It feels like she’s been doing it for years.”

“We can’t ask for a better transition,” Treshok said.

“She’s been very good with listening,” Elder said. “Being a minister is not just Sunday morning. It’s all week, all day.”

It takes 20 minutes to drive the nine miles between the two churches. Sunday worship at Emory Chapel is at 8:30 a.m. The Sunday service starts at Thorn Creek at 9:45 a.m.

Elder, who travels with Gould to each church on Sundays, said the two church services are not the same.

The music, hymns, Communion, bulletin and procedures are different.

“Pastors are alone. They do everything by themselves,” Elder said. “There’s a lot of work.”

Treshok likes Gould’s way of including the Old Testament, the New Testament and everyday life in sermons.

“She’s teaching while she’s doing the sermons,” Treshok said. “I think she does a very good job.”

“She’s a very gifted preacher,” Elder said.

Gould said, “(The) ritual is traditional, but we are very down to earth. I realize I’m like everyone else in that congregation but God called me to a different position.”

“There’s a lot of potential here at Thorn Creek. We have the ballfield in the back. We have the shelter. We have the volleyball court. One of the goals is to open that up to the county and the towns,” Gould said.

“My main goal for both churches is that they learn to have a stronger relationship with God,” Gould said.

Gould was enthusiastic about Emory Chapel’s most recent hymn sing. The participants sang old hymns between local performers.

“We had 63 people in that church,” Gould said. “It was awesome. Then there’s always the pie afterward.”

She said there will be more hymn sings and perhaps other events.

“I love both churches,” Gould said. “This is where God wants me.”