Pastor Paul and his wife engage in deep prayer at the recent service where they told their congregation of their plans to depart.

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EDWARDSVILLE - For three-plus decades, Rev. Paul Westbrook has been the Senior Pastor at Metro Community Church in Edwardsville. In that time, he has touched thousands of lives. This past weekend at a Metro Community Church service, he announced with great emotion with his wife, Melody, that they will be leaving the congregation.

Paul has accepted a position with the State Baptist Association and will be working all over Illinois to start new churches.

“This is right up my alley,” he said of the new position.

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Paul and his wife, Melody, co-founded Metro Community Church in 1991. Melody has played a critical role in starting and leading women’s groups over the years. Paul and Melody have three sons - Caleb, Luke, and Joshua.

“God is leading us into a new season, into a new chapter of our lives,” he told the congregation on Sunday. “One of my life's greatest honors and pleasures has been being a part of Metro for 31 years.; being a part of seeing God do some amazing things. After a lot of prayer and soul searching though, I feel like God is leading us on to something else. We will be resigning from Metro. After a couple of months of praying and feeling there was something else for us, she came into the same sense. We didn’t know what that was, but I understood my passion for starting and planting churches."

"I will be working with churches all across the state; a passion I have always had. I have been focused on one church all this time and now will have 900 churches. I am excited but very torn stepping away from the church family."

Melody said there were a lot of God moments in making the church and this decision. We have been here 31 years. We moved up here with a 3-year-old, while pregnant with a second one. We watched all of our kids use this church to bring them to Christ. One of the things Paul and I always said is that this church has never been ours and never will be; that it has always been God’s and always will be. That has given us indescribable peace. It is not us who carries this church, it is God.

“God has moved us and continued to move us. I started writing a letter of what I would want to say to you, the church body, today. We texted our boys and our youngest son said probably what he would say was it has been an amazing 30-plus years of the spiritual birth and growth of thousands of people and the Lord has been with you and will be with you tonight, and in the coming weeks.

"I think what he's saying is that God has used us as instruments to bring people to him. We are so blessed to call you family.”

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