Gene Giguere has been the Sr. Pastor and primary teaching Elder of Harvest Community Church – a committed, non-denominational, evangelical inner-city ministry in Woonsocket, Rhode Island – since 2000.
He was born in Woonsocket and was raised in Blackstone, Massachusetts. After serving a hitch in the United States Navy, Gene received a call to full-time Christian ministry in 1989.
He served as a teacher and as the Vice-principal of New England Christian Academy from 1991-94 and as the director of New England Bible Institute from 1994-99. He also served as the Missions Director and as an Associate Pastor at Grace Gospel Church in Swansea, Massachusetts. He was ordained as a Minister of the Gospel in December of 1995.
He and his family served as missionaries in Thessaloniki, Greece, where they lived throughout much of 1996-99. During that time, Gene worked with O Kalos Poimenas (Ο ΚΑΛΟΣ ΠΟΙΜΕΝΑΣ) Evangelical Christian Church in Thessaloniki. He taught a heavy schedule of biblical and theological courses, regularly engaged in outdoor evangelism with the Church and with his family, and led visiting groups from Massachusetts in humanitarian cross-border missions where the Gospel was presented as physical needs were met. During the Kosovo crisis, Gene led a team into Skopje, Macedonia, offering humanitarian support along with evangelistic outreach.
In 2000, he began meeting with a small core group of believers in Woonsocket in what would soon become Harvest Community Church. Two years later, Harvest moved to its own building at 60 North Main St., where it currently resides.
In December of 2002, Gene led Harvest in launching its Sanctuary Ministry, a men’s emergency homeless shelter which provides a clean, warm place for as many as twenty-five guests per night, 7 nights a week, throughout the cold months of November to April. As of February, 2026, Harvest’s Sanctuary Ministry had provided more than 75,000 bed nights to the city’s homeless population throughout its 24 years of operation. A ‘bed night’ is one bed for one person for one night.
When a flood devastated the city of Prague in the Czech Republic in August of 2002, Gene led a team of 27 Church members who traveled at their own expense to help the citizens of Prague dig the mud out of their homes and to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They would do the same when flood waters ravaged Warwick, Rhode Island.
Gene has served on the leadership board of the Woonsocket Prevention Coalition and as a coalition member of the Woonsocket Neighborhood Development Corporation.
Harvest Community Church’s work has been acknowledged by the secular community on both state and city levels. Former Governor Donald Carcieri honored the church with a 2003 Partners-in-Housing Award for opening their doors to the homeless. The following year the Board of Directors and Staff of Family Resources Community Action presented the Church with their Partners-in-Housing award. In 2005, the Board of Directors and Staff of Family Resources Community Action presented Gene with its prestigious Paul H. Dempster Award. In 2006, The Rotary Foundation named Gene a Paul Harris Fellow, in appreciation for ‘the significant assistance he’d given for the furtherance of better understanding and friendly relations among peoples of the world.’
The Christian community has also acknowledged the Church’s work: The Rhode Island Council of Churches honored Harvest in 2005 with its Walking the Talk Award.
Co-laboring with Haiti’s Child (formerly the Haiti Charity Hope Foundation), in 2007 Gene participated in a leadership trip to Haiti and, in 2008, served with a team of 20 members of our congregation on a 14-day construction/humanitarian project to Lamothe, Haiti. Harvest members continue to participate in regular mission trips to Haiti when it is safe to do so.
In 2012, Gene, along with an incredibly dedicated team of believers, launched a new initiative to reach kids in inner-city Woonsocket. CLUB J-ROCK (Jesus, Reaching Out Calling Kids), met at the Morin Heights housing complex each Saturday morning to evangelize and disciple pre-teen children in that community until 2018.
In 2022, Gene led the Church in a new evangelistic outreach called Get The Word Out, which focused on reaching the lost of our community with the Gospel of Jesus Christ in creative ways. This initiative is now in its third phase. In 2022, the Church distributed 5,000 New Testaments on the streets of Woonsocket (GTWO 1.0). In 2023 & 2024, the Church distributed The Jesus Film on DVD to every household in the city – some 17,000+ residences (GTWO 2.0). And since 2025, Harvest has used the city’s civic calendar of events to be a presence at major social gatherings to distribute Bibles, tracts, DVDs and other Gospel materials to our community (GTWO 3.0). Get The Word Out continues to this day.
Gene and his wife Mary are the parents of two married daughters, Allison and Amy. Both are walking with the Lord and faithfully attend Harvest. Allison and her husband Casey have given them three grandchildren – Lily Ann, Connor Joseph and Grace Dawn. Amy and her husband Ryan have given them two grandchildren – Jacob Eugene and Bella Rose. Their five grandchildren are a source of inestimable joy for Gene and Mary.
Gene’s passion for teaching, encouraging believers, serving the needy, and reaching the unreached are threads that run through all he does. He holds a Master’s Degree in Urban Ministry Leadership (MAUML) from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Boston graduating summa cum laude.
True to his conviction that no price should ever be placed on the teaching of God’s Word, his 2,500+ sermons, Bible studies and notes on a multitude of biblical subjects are available free for the asking.