On top of living the dream farm life - full of chickens, ducks and a horse - Cathy Bruce is a mother, wife and pastor who went through a thought-provoking journey to get where she is today.

Bruce was in the middle of planting a church in New York City when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Like many NYC residents at the time, she traveled to a less populated area, which for her happened to be Wallkill. Before the pandemic hit, Bruce and her husband, Alistair Bruce, bought a vacation house there. This allowed her and eight of their church-plant congregants at the time to reside there for four months until Bruce could go back to the city.

After that, Bruce commuted to the city for her pastor work because her son began school at Wallkill. On top of being in love with the area, Bruce decided over the summer she was a bit tired of the commuting, so on September 18, she left her city job and moved permanently to Wallkill.

By early October she began her time with the Reformed Church of Shawangunk.

“I found out there was a vacancy at this church around the corner from my home. My passion is to be a present pastor in the community, and I want to be one of those pastors here in Wallkill that is available to people in need; whether it’s spiritual need, emotional need, mental [or] social needs. That’s the type of church I want to lead, and I’m excited because I feel like that’s the type of church role–that’s the type of church community I’m stepping into right now.” said Bruce.

Bruce grew up in Maryland and did attend church, but mentioned her understanding became more clear in high school. “My parents took me to church, but I wouldn’t say that I had a real understanding of who God was until I was in high school. I had–I don’t know how to describe it, like an encounter with God where I really felt like I wanted to give my life to him [and] serve him in some kind of capacity.”

Bruce danced growing up and eventually started to sing and study acting around this time. “I was in the performing arts and it was kind of like, ‘Okay, God, how can I use this for you?’”

Because of this, Bruce began performing in musical theater. She worked in Les Miserables on Broadway for five years after working regionally for a while. Bruce felt a passion for the arts and it’s how she ended up in New York. “I really felt blessed to have been given the opportunity to have a job in the theater in New York and as a Christian, which I was kind of in the minority, but to have Christian faith. I really believe that God gave me that opportunity to work on Broadway,” said Bruce.

Bruce and her husband moved right outside of Atlanta, Georgia when leaving the city for the first time. Down there, she became a canine behavior consultant and opened a brick and mortar dog training school. She explained that this felt like ministry to her because she loved working with animals and people.

“People are at the other end of the leash, so you have to kind of work with both and I was able to really hone my skills of teaching [because] I did a lot of teaching during those years of training people how to get well behaved dogs, understand their dogs and build good relationships. I really found that very life giving [and] that sort of merged my passion for my love for people and my love for animals.”

At this time, around 2016, she served as a worship leader and facilitator at her church in Georgia. She got to be on stage there often and explained that this was the first time in a long time she had been affirmed as a woman to be on stage in a church setting in front of 1,500 people.

After this she started serving as a teaching pastor and a church planter in New York City.

In 2001, after 9/11, Bruce helped assist the plant of the Journey Church. Bruce explained this new church expression experience as transformative. “The churches I grew up in and even had been a part of all the way up to that point were older established churches, so they had their culture and there wasn’t a lot of creation of new things, I guess, or new ways to express our faith,” said Bruce.

Since the church-planting process is from scratch, she has to be very creative. Honing in on this was important for her since she explained she’s a “creative right brain.”

Her 2001 planting experience came full circle years later. It allowed her to get a vision of what it would look like to plant a new expression in New York City with her as the lead pastor, which is what she was doing when the pandemic struck.

Bruce started at the Hope Network of Churches in New York City doing worship pastor and executive pastor functions. When asked about the differences between this and a church in the Hudson Valley, she explained that besides the main ones, like rural versus urban life and fast versus slow paced, there are some generational differences. “New York City is a very young city, so most of the people I was pastoring down there in the last four years were millennials or Gen Z. Up here it’s a much older generation, so there are differences.”

Bruce further explained that this fits right with the Reformed Church. “Their desire is to be a multi-generational church and that’s my heart too. I think all churches should strive for multi-generational [development] because we all learn from each other.”

The journey to becoming a pastor has been a long one for Bruce, and she mentioned that she thinks being a woman could be part of it. “My journey has been longer as a woman to be a full time senior teaching pastor, because a lot of denominations don’t affirm women as preachers.”

Representation for women is really important to her because she mentioned the statistics (which she didn’t know precisely) show that more women are attending church than men. This is why she thinks it’s so important for female church-goers to see women on stage. “One of my passions is equipping women, coming alongside women, helping them explore those gifts and empowering them.”

Bruce and her family are beyond happy to be permanently in Wallkill, which Bruce described as “one of the most beautiful places in the country.”

The Reformed Church of Shawangunk has weekly Sunday worship, and more information can be found on their website and Facebook.