Meet our Staff
Rev. Jesse Kearns
Jesse is the Senior Pastor at FCC Chico. He came to Chico in December of 2007 after serving nine years as the Associate Regional Minister for the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Virginia. Pastor Jesse has a passion for camps and outdoor ministry. In his thirty-plus years of experience in outdoor ministry, he once calculated that he spent around two years and two months of his life at a camp facility. He developed healthy clergy boundary training programs for both the Virginia and Northern California-Nevada regions of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). He is the past Board President of the Shalom Free Clinic in Chico, current Vice President of the Chico Area Interfaith Council and is the third-Friday host of the Peace and Social Justice Program at our local public radio station, KZFR. Pastor Jesse enjoys kayaking, caving, hiking, and anything that gets him outdoors. His wife Mary is also an ordained Disciples pastor as well as an ACP certified chaplain.
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Pastor Jesse studied at Emmanuel School of Religion in Johnson City, Tennessee where he received his M.Div. He is an alumi of Northwest Christian College where he received his B.A. in religious education.
Administrative Assistant Briony Gniechwitz
Briony has worked at First Christian Church Chico as an Administrative Assistant since June 2008. Her family moved to the Chico area in late 1996 to be closer to her grandfather. She received her B.S. at CSU, Chico and ran her own retail yarn shop for three years. She lives in Oroville, in the house her grandparents built with her husband and two dogs. Her hobbies include voracious reading (roughly 100 books a year), gaming, and various crafts including knitting.
Additional Staff
Custodian Connor Kearns
​Custodian Sherrie Wells
Custodian Scott Hall
Nancy Thompson, Organist, and Pianist
Joshua Hegg, Pianist
Marie Grandeen, Bookkeeper