Community Spotlight
Meet Pastor Joshua Narcisse and Gaithersburg Presbyterian Church
When Pastor Joshua Narcisse first visited Gaithersburg Presbyterian Church (GPC), he was coming to find a reason to say “no.” He sensed a call to this congregation, community, and the people that bring it alive. A native New Yorker who grew up in Queens, Joshua studied at Howard University before attending seminary at Yale Divinity School. From 2019 to 2025 he served in Memphis, Tennessee, as Spiritual Care Director for Church Health, a faith-based nonprofit that conducts an average of 60,000 patient visits a year.
Then he experienced the devastating and unexpected loss of his wife. In the aftermath, Joshua found himself wrestling with a new sense of call, to serve a congregation. He wanted to walk alongside congregants through the good and the bad. He applied to GPC almost on a whim, half expecting nothing to come of it. In October 2025, he arrived as their new pastor and plunged into something already in motion.
Pastor LeAnn Hodges, GPC's transitional pastor at the time, along with other members of GPC had begun a conversation with Rainbow Place, imagining what God could do with the space that housed the former Gaithersburg Presbyterian Preschool and Kindergarten, and which now sat underused. By the time Joshua walked through the door, a Memorandum of Understanding was already being drafted. He had the feeling that God was at work in this situation.
Part of what drew Joshua to GPC in the first place was its long-standing commitment to give 10 percent of its budget to local and global organizations doing good work, and the chance to pastor a congregation that rolls up its sleeves for feeding ministries and hands-on service. Partnering with Rainbow Place is the natural next step in that story: many of the preschool children who once filled that space would be entering young adulthood now, and the rooms that once held them get to hold a new kind of care.
GPC didn't rush this decision, and they didn't make it quietly. The process began with listening. A lay team formed in January 2026, made up of congregation members who would be most directly affected by Rainbow Place moving in. The Lay Team started with listening, engaging the congregation in conversation and letting members ask anything they wanted to ask. From there came a series of town halls in February, March, and April, open conversations about what this partnership could actually look like inside GPC’s walls.
By the end of June, the congregation voted to approve a Letter of Intent. Getting there took a lot of dinner conversations and a lot of coffee. The Session, GPC's governing council, wrestled with the decision faithfully: they sang, they prayed, they sat in silence together. There were tears. There was deep optimism and real skepticism, often in the same room.
There was also a history from which to learn. The preschool had been part of GPC for more than forty years, and its closing was its own kind of loss to mourn. The congregation didn’t want to experience that again, but they also didn't want their grief to overshadow something new that deserved a real chance to succeed. It's a decision with a lot of layers, and GPC sat with all of them.
Volunteers from GPC in Bern, NC serving at a Presbyterian Disaster Assistance site, Summer 2026.
Rainbow Place joins a roster of organizations GPC already supports, including Gaithersburg HELP, Interfaith Works, So Others Might Eat, the Lord's Table Soup Kitchen, Rebuilding Together, KindWorks, and the Gaithersburg Literacy Academy. This is a congregation with a track record of putting its resources where its values are.
Pastor Joshua shared his thoughts about service and religion. "If there's anything that will lead to a revival of places of faith, it will be the congregations that perform acts of service," Joshua says. Worship spurs service, and service becomes a response of worship. His advice to anyone stepping into that work is “don't show up expecting to give something away. Expect to be transformed. You'll be blessed by it, and so will the organization you're serving alongside.”
GPC’s congregation is special. It represents thirty different countries. It's a congregation actively trying to be consequential in Montgomery County, one that would want to be missed if it weren't here. We are excited about this partnership with GPC and the potential to create a launchpad for unhoused young adults in our community!