Two years after Cornerstone Community Church’s founding pastor retired, the non-denominational church has finished its search for a new shepherd to lead its congregation.
Pastor Brandon Siwula was installed Sept. 8 as the church’s new daily leader. Siwula, 31, grew up in Broadview and has moved back to the area after more than a decade living in other states and working in youth ministry. Siwula, or Pastor Brandon, as the congregation knows him, said the move back home felt like God’s path for him to continue working in his faith.
Meet Pastor Brandon
Siwula said his relationship with the church began when he started attending Westchester Bible Church in Westchester at the age of 14. A few years later, he began studying computer science at Pensacola Christian College in Pensacola, Florida.
“I found out within about a month that I was not called to be a computer science major, so I switched my major to sports management. I think I wanted to maybe be a coach or just something with kids and youth,” he said in an interview with the Landmark. “It was really towards the end of my freshman year of college that God really got a hold of my heart and showed me that I had been living for myself, and I needed to be living for Him.”
Once he switched paths, the pastor returned to Westchester Bible Church over the summer and offered to help however he could. One of the leaders suggested he could help out with the church’s youth group; from there, a vocation was born.
“By the end of the summer, essentially, I was leading the youth group at the church; the guy that was running it told me, ‘I don’t really know how to prepare a message.’ I said, ‘I know how to prepare a message,’ and what that really meant is I took a speech class at a Christian college,” he said. “I started preaching and teaching to the kids, and I just fell in love with that.”
While Siwula continued to study in Florida, he returned home each summer to intern at the church, which turned into a full-time job once he graduated. After more than five years there, he said, he felt it was time for a switch; in 2020, after losing out on several opportunities, Siwula and his family moved to Raleigh, North Carolina. The pastor didn’t have a job secured, but he began pursuing his master’s degree at Shepherds Theological Seminary.
After a year and a half, the Siwulas moved again when Pastor Brandon found and landed a role as a next generation pastor in Clarkston, Michigan, where he oversaw “all of Christian education from birth through college” while finishing his degree online.
While he enjoyed his post and his family liked the area, Siwula said he felt it was time to move again after two and a half years.
“There was, I think, something in me that was saying — it was the Lord telling me, ‘It’s time to move on. You’ve been doing youth for 12 years,’” he said.
In his search for a new job, Siwula said he stumbled across Cornerstone in Brookfield, not even 10 minutes away from his hometown; Siwula had sought a position at the church three years before, but it didn’t work out because of his impending move to North Carolina.
While he knew he had good reasons to stay in Clarkston, Siwula said, he felt called to at least apply for the church’s open pastor position to see what could happen.
“Over the [application and interview] process, God just showed me clearly that this was the direction that I needed to go,” he said.
Choosing a new pastor
Phil Kolar, an elder at Cornerstone, said the church has been searching on and off for a new full-time pastor since 2022, when the church’s previous pastor — who helped found Cornerstone in 2005 and oversaw its merger with Brookfield Baptist Church in 2006 — retired.
“We were looking for a pastor for a while,” he said. “Without going into details, we had a pastor that we did have. One thing led to another, but he lasted six months, and then he left. So then, we were back to square one.”
When Kolar and other church board members saw Siwula’s application, they remembered him.
“This was the same guy that was given to us about a couple years earlier. He was the first one on our list, but as he said, he was on his way to North Carolina and Michigan, so he said no,” Kolar said. “As he came around the second time, we said, you know what? This seems to be God’s way of bringing it back full-circle to the person that we originally wanted.”
As Siwula progressed through the hiring process and continued to seem like a good fit, Kolar said the church realized “we needed to offer him the job.”
“The whole process took about two years from Pastor Gary to Pastor Brandon. We were looking for a young pastor that could relate. He’s got his background in youth, which we want to get going again, so it was a perfect, God-centered fit for us and for him,” he said. “God doesn’t make mistakes.”
Kolar said Cornerstone also wanted a pastor like Siwula who “we knew would teach the Bible expositorily, would go through a book of the Bible verse by verse and not pick out subjects.”
Terry Young, a deacon at Cornerstone, said the church was prepared to wait even longer than it did for a pastor that fit its needs.
“There has been a shortage of pastors, younger pastors, and other churches in the area have struggled,” he said. One local church took four years to find a new pastor, he added.
“We were anticipating a longer search. We didn’t want to have a longer search, but then it just came together. Ten months after we started talking to Pastor Brandon, we’ve got a pastor,” he said. “Every step of the way, we just felt like the Lord’s hand was working here, and here we are.”
All three men agreed Siwula’s first month with the church went well.
“I would say, so far, so good. I mean, the congregation has been very welcoming. I haven’t gotten the impression that someone’s giving me the side eye,” the pastor said. “Everyone’s been welcoming.”
“From the church’s standpoint, the people received him, welcomed him warmly. It’s hard on a church when the only pastor that you knew for many years now steps down,” Kolar said. “We had an interim pastor, the same one, two different times. He did a great time, but the church needs a full-time shepherd, a full-time pastor, and that really solidifies a church … [Cornerstone] was ready, willing, and was more than happy when Pastor Brandon came, because now we have a shepherd.
