Headwaters Covenant is a member of the Evangelical Covenant Church. Our Leadership Team is responsible for creating and sustaining the conditions required to nurture the spiritual welfare of the congregation and for directing and overseeing all ministries and business affairs of the church. The Leadership Team Members are elected by Headwaters members at our annual meeting in January and serve for a 3 year term. Want to know more? We would love to fill you in over coffee (or tea)!
Pastor Seth Dombach
At age 19 I found myself working at Glen Eyrie, the Navigators conference center in Colorado Springs. One day while eating lunch I dropped my drugs out of my pocket and thought that I would surely be fired. Instead, one of the chefs shared his testimony with me and told me that they were going to give me a second chance. That was the first time in my life that I had experienced love and grace like that. I began the search of what kind of things would make people act like those I was working with. I ended up meeting with some co-workers in discipleship relationships and then made a commitment to follow and be in relationship with Jesus. That job and those discipleship relationships continued for 4 years.
The Following Years
Following my years at Glen Eyrie I went to a year of Bible School with Torchbearers/Capernwray in Estes Park, Colorado. After that year I joined the staff of a new Torchbearers Bible School called Timberline Lodge in Winter Park, Colorado. That is where I met my wife Rachel and where our first son Isaiah was born. We were on staff at Timberline for just over 4 years when we got the call to go to Seminary. Isaiah was just about to be born and we had no church affiliation so we decided to look at Seminaries close to where our families lived. Lucky enough for me my in-laws lived in Northwest Washington and so I decided to attend Regent College in Vancouver for my MDiv.
My Call to Ministry
I don’t think there is one thing I look back on in the last 25 years and would have dreamed that that is what God had planned for me. I see my whole experience as God doing “exceedingly abundantly above all that I could ask or imagine” (Eph 3:20). I could talk about my call to go to Ravencrest Bible School with no money…and how God provided. Or the call to be a part of a team to plant a new Bible School with zero experience…and how God made it flourish. Or the call to Seminary with no undergraduate degree…and how God opened the door. Or the call to church plant and pastor a church with no prior experience…and how God is continuing to use me of all people.
Seminary
In 2005 Rachel and I took a week to pray about Seminary being the next step that God might have for us. With confirmation from God, family and friends we took the step of faith to move to the Northwest and get ready to attend Regent College. I did not go to Regent or apply for the MDiv program thinking the pastorate as the end goal. But then I read Nehemiah 8 and heard from God that he wanted me to help the ordinary people like me understand His Word. My experience up to that point was all in para-church ministry, so in my mind I was just further equipping myself for that type of ministry. That was until I met Professor/Pastor Darrell Johnson. He was one of many reasons I was excited to go to Regent College. And one summer I took Rachel out on what I thought was an awesome date night to listen to Darrell give a public lecture at Regent.
Afterwards, when I introduced Rachel to Darrell he looked at her and said, “this man is going to make a great pastor.” WHAT DID HE SAY? So then after my first semester at Regent and throughout the next years of school, local ministry and pastoral internships God had confirmed what Darrell said to Rachel that night. Not that I was good pastor, but called to pastor. I would have never imagined that in the midst of all this it would have lead us to partner with the Evangelical Covenant Church or to church plant. On those moments when I wonder about this calling I now pray Ephesians 3:7-12.
Headwaters Covenant in Helena
So then how did we get here to Helena to pastor Headwaters Covenant? And what ways is the Triune God moving in this community after 12 years of serving here? Well imagine hearing a story that can only come together through God’s orchestration while you and I are drinking an amazing beverage. I would love to share more of my story with you as I listen to yours. So let’s connect.
Pastor Iain Boyd
I grew up outside Charlotte, NC, back and forth along the border between North and
South Carolina. Growing up in the bible belt, my experience of Christians was that they were
judgmental, hypocritical, and anti-intellectual. By the time I went to college, I had decided that
biblical Christianity was stupid and untrue. All that began to change when I went to College at
The Citadel and got involved in the Anglican ministry there, St Alban’s. At St Alban’s, I
encountered something I didn’t have any categories for, namely, a community of people who
were thoughtful, gracious, winsome, and who lived with integrity who actually believed that
what the bible said about Jesus was true. After about a year and a half of being in and out of
that ministry, I came back from a retreat where a friend shared the gospel with me and prayed
the first real prayer I’d ever prayed and encountered God in an amazing way. God changed my
life radically, and I began to get more involved in ministry both at St Alban’s and with a college
ministry named Campus Outreach.
At the prompting of several mentors, I began the discernment process for ordination in
The Diocese of South Carolina and was approved for seminary at Nashotah House Theological
Seminary in Nashotah, WI. In the frozen tundra of Wisconsin, I met Shelly, the woman who
would become my wife. We were married in 2006 and moved back to South Carolina to begin
our life in ministry.
After serving as an assistant at Saint Paul’s in Conway, we were called to serve at Trinity
Church Myrtle Beach as an associate pastor to The Reverend Robert Sturdy for four years and
then as the senior pastor of Trinity Church. While serving in Myrtle Beach, our first three
children were born, Josiah, Hannah, and Isaac.
After ten years in the Diocese of South Carolina, serving at St Paul’s in Conway and
Trinity Church Myrtle Beach, Shelly and I followed a call not only to Montana, but out of the
Anglican Church as well. In 2016, we moved our family of almost six (Shelly was pregnant with
our fourth child) to Montana to pastor at Grace Community Fellowship in Helena, MT. That
September, our fourth child, Naomi, was born.
After six years at Grace, and a very difficult season beginning with the COVID epidemic, I
resigned from GCF and took a step back from pastoral ministry while I worked at a local meat
processing company. Shortly after this, we began meeting with a group of people who
eventually formed as Christ the Redeemer. In June of 2024, Christ the Redeemer merged with
Headwaters Covenant Church, and I came on as the Pastor for Adult Discipleship.
After serving the better part of 18 years in ministry, we are excited to be a part of the
church community at Headwater’s. We’ve found them to be genuine hospitable people who
are seeking to see the gospel make a difference in and through them. After all these years, I
continue to marvel at how God took a skeptical young man who thought the church was full of
it and made him into a pastor!