RUMFORD – Kelly Harvell hasn’t always pastored a church. But she knows she has chosen the right vocation.

Harvell, of Merrimack, N.H., is the new pastor at the United Methodist Church is Rumford. She replaced the Rev. Frank Haines in July.

For more than 20 years, she was a computer programmer, a job she once loved. But during her last few years on that job, she felt called to enter the ministry.

“I was being more and more drawn to church,” she said.

As a military brat, as she called herself, who grew up in many places around the country, she was never rooted in any one denomination.

But at the time her mother got cancer, was successfully treated for it, and decided she wanted to return to church, Harvell felt the same pull, and more.

“I felt like I was ripped out and told you will go back to church.’ God gets your attention,” she said.

As she became more and more involved in a New Hampshire Methodist Church, she began to feel that she wanted more. She wanted to preach.

First, she attended lay speaker school, then she decided to go further.

Now, she is about one-third through a master’s degree program in divinity at Andover-Newton Theological School in Massachusetts. She is a student pastor at the Rumford church. Besides having a first-time pastor, the United Methodist Church is Rumford is undergoing major changes. In July, it reduced pastoral services from full time, to half time, a transition that can be very difficult for congregations that are accustomed to a full-time minister.

But, said Harvell, the Rumford church did a lot of planning before the reduction in services took effect. Duties that had traditionally been a part of a pastor’s duties were taken up by the congregation, under the guidance of a retired Methodist pastor, the Rev. Robert Plummer.

Harvell is getting to know the congregation and the area. She spends four days a week in Rumford and three attending the seminary.

“They are a terrific group of people,” she said of her new congregation.

As she learns more about the area and its people, she hopes to draw in more younger people and perhaps offer more contemporary programs and music.

She thinks an additional service, offered at a time other than Sunday morning, might appeal to some who can’t attend services during the traditional worship time.