The story of Christ Proclamation Church begins in a small town in Vermont in 2000, when both Steve and Linda Thiel came to faith. Our passion is to grow a gospel-driven church, in both quantity and quality, in the region between Hartford, Connecticut and Springfield, Massachusetts that has a passion to minister the historic, biblical gospel to the people of Greater Hartford.
Steve is a native of Wisconsin and has been a fan of the Green Bay Packers since he was a kid. In high school, he played football, basketball, baseball, and golf. Steve went on to Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri where he graduated in 1999 with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering. The next transition took him out to Vermont to work for IBM, where he met several christians who invited him to a men's breakfast and then to church. At the time, Linda was an Electrical Engineer at IBM. As their relationship grew, their desire for God grew as well. They started looking for a church together. In the spring of 2000, both Steve and Linda heard the gospel for the first time, were convicted of their sin, and came to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. They were then married on November 4, 2000 and faithfully served their local church.
In 2004, with two young kids, Steve and Linda made the decision for Steve to leave his lucrative engineering position at IBM in order to take a Youth Pastor position in their local church. Steve felt called to the ministry and wanted to be faithful to the Lord's leading. As their desire to serve grew, Steve recognized the need for formal theological training. They moved to Kentucky in 2008 for three years while Steve completed his Masters of Divinity at Southern Seminary. After graduation in 2011, the Thiels returned to Vermont to serve the local church where they had come to faith and put things in place in order to move to Connecticut to plant a new church. The next two years strengthened their family, their faith, and Steve's ministry skills, while preparing them for the rigors of church planting in New England.
In 2004, with two young kids, Steve and Linda made the decision for Steve to leave his lucrative engineering position at IBM in order to take a Youth Pastor position in their local church. Steve felt called to the ministry and wanted to be faithful to the Lord's leading. As their desire to serve grew, Steve recognized the need for formal theological training. They moved to Kentucky in 2008 for three years while Steve completed his Masters of Divinity at Southern Seminary. After graduation in 2011, the Thiels returned to Vermont to serve the local church where they had come to faith and put things in place in order to move to Connecticut to plant a new church. The next two years strengthened their family, their faith, and Steve's ministry skills, while preparing them for the rigors of church planting in New England.
Steve and Linda moved to Connecticut in August 2013 along with their four wonderful kids: Gabriela, Samuel, Juliana, and Jeremiah. Their desire was to start a new church on the I-91 corridor between Hartford and Springfield. They determined that Windsor was the location and moved to that community in February of 2014. After much recruiting, fundraising, evangelism, and hard work, Christ Proclamation Church was launched on October 5, 2014 in a Windsor CREC school. Steve and Linda still live in Windsor, Connecticut where they are actively involved in the community and where the church continues to grow.
Their heart's desire and prayer continues to be that God might use them and Christ Proclamation Church to start a church planting movement in the Connecticut River Valley. Steve is actively recruiting new pastors, church planters, and revitalizers to Connecticut so that the gospel might be faithfully proclaimed in more places and that sinners might be saved and saints might be sanctified. By God's grace, the Kingdom of God might grow in Connecticut through their faithful service to the Lord!"
Did you know? Connecticut is one of the least religious states in the United States, with the seventh lowest percentage of evangelicals. And Greater Hartford is one of its least religious regions; it is the third least Bible-minded and has the second lowest percentage of evangelicals. If we are ever going to reach these people with the glorious good news of the gospel, we need not only one church, but hundreds of churches dotting the landscape faithfully preaching the saving message of Christ.