Janet Miller became the new pastor of First Presbyterian Church in May and, since then, has been getting to know the congregation and its needs, and those of the church’s building, which serves the wider community in myriad capacities. Miller is a former U.S. Air Force member and engineer, and a “lifelong Presbyterian” who has served in a number of roles within the Presbytery of the Miami Valley. (Photo by Lauren "Chuck" Shows)
Janet Miller settles in as new First Presbyterian pastor
- Published: October 11, 2026
When Pastor Janet Miller started getting to know the congregation at First Presbyterian Church in May this year, she started with the church’s fellowship time after Sunday worship. Over plates of cheese, crackers and vegetables, Miller sat down to hear about members’ families, their work, the work they’d done before retirement. In speaking with the News last month, Miller said she expects to spend the months ahead gleaning more and more about the lives of her congregants, every week.
“The first year, all you’re doing is learning — learning about the congregation, learning how they work, and even then, I want everyone to be part of it,” she said. “I’m not a general; I’m not a downward director sort of person.”
As pastor of the Xenia Avenue church, Miller succeeds the Rev. Daria Schaffnit, who left last fall for a position at Southminster Presbyterian Church in Dayton. Miller clarified that she’s a commissioned ruling elder within the church, trained and authorized to serve in a pastoral role, and is called “Pastor” rather than “Reverend,” and though she also carries the title of “doctor,” her doctorate is in human factors and industrial engineering from Ohio State University.
A lifelong Presbyterian, Miller grew up on a farm outside Pittsburgh, where she said Presbyterian churches were plentiful and her mother served on the church’s governing body. She later served in the U.S. Air Force as both a military member and a civilian employee. Since retiring, she’s taken on a number of roles at Bath Presbyterian Church and within the Presbytery of the Miami Valley, including pastoral outreach to retired ministers. She also completed training in older adult ministries and clinical pastoral education, which included work in a hospital and at Trinity Community in Beavercreek.
In those settings, Miller said, she learned to begin conversations by asking people what brings them joy — conversations that gave her room to think about questions different from those she had faced in engineering, and consider broadening her work in the ecclesiastical realm.
“To get away from the physical world, the engineering, and then start thinking about the spirit — it just kind of all came together,” she said.
Miller said she initially had little interest in leading a congregation, but as she became more involved in church work, and kept having conversations with congregants she served, she leaned into the idea of spending more time at the helm of a single congregation. The presbytery told her about several smaller churches seeking part-time leadership, and Yellow Springs, with an 18-hour-per-week position available, appealed to her.
“I just like the small town,” she said.
Having lived in the Dayton area since 1989 and having visited before, Miller said she was already acquainted with the village, as her husband used to spend time on the bike path in town; they later gained a more personal connection to Yellow Springs.
“My grandson lives here,” she said with a smile. “He’s over at Mills Lawn — he’s now one of the ‘big kids’ there, since he’s in fourth grade.”
The congregation Miller joins has a substantial building to care for, and by Miller’s estimate, typically draws about 12 to 20 people to worship. As the News has reported in the past, the large, historic building has contended with bats in the last few years, raising money in late 2024 to undergo state-regulated bat abatement. Leading the News on a walk through the church, she completed a customary inspection of the altar in the church’s sanctuary, looking for bat droppings, but found none — ongoing evidence that the church remains bat-free.
Elsewhere in the building, work connected to the church’s kitchen through a grant from the YS Community Foundation is currently underway — the church announced last week that its annual fall Apple Festival will be forestalled this year while the kitchen is under repair.
Miller spoke candidly about the strain small congregations face when fewer people are available to do the work of keeping a church going. Of course, the church would always welcome a growing membership, but Miller said she doesn’t see attendance alone as the measure of First Presbyterian’s place in Yellow Springs.
“Jesus was never about having large crowds,” she said. “It’s not about the number of people there. It’s being a witness and taking that elsewhere. … How do we take this witness and show our light out there, show our love out there?”
She added that a similar stance informs her view of social justice, which she summed up in a short statement of principle: “Love your neighbors, no exceptions.”
The building already hosts people for reasons beyond Sunday worship — free monthly meals from the Beloved Community Project, chamber music concerts, theater productions, small group meetings. Miller said she hopes the building will continue to be a place where people feel welcome, including those who may never join the congregation.
“They still have good feelings for the church, the building, the community, and so we’re still being a witness in that way,” she said.
Miller’s own witness, she said, has spread beyond her immediate communities; before the pandemic, she led Habitat for Humanity trips to build homes in about a dozen places, including Vietnam, Guatemala, Poland and Malawi. She said meeting the families who would live in the homes deepened her understanding of the places, and circumstances, in which they lived.
“It’s nice to read. It’s nice to watch. But then you meet the people,” she said, adding that meeting and working with new people is a sure-fire way to flex one’s empathy muscle.
“You get to really see the person, which these days is sometimes very difficult, right?” she said. “Sometimes that can feel more challenging than I think it really is.”
Here in Yellow Springs, Pastor Miller said she’s finding joy in more clearly seeing the people in the congregation she’s settling into, and in learning how First Presbyterian can continue to serve the village around it.
“If we can just make a little effect on one person, who knows where it goes out from there?” she said.
First Presbyterian Church of Yellow Springs holds Sunday worship at 10:30 a.m. each week. For more information about the church’s services and activities, contact the church office at firpys@gmail.com or 937-767-7751. Pastor Miller will be away the next two Sundays, returning to the pulpit Oct. 18.
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