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OC Mag 01-22

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FAITH |

Pastor Jeff Whit has been a fixture of New Hope Evangelical

Free Church in Orange City for more than a quarter century.

TEXT BY TOM LAWRENCE | PHOTOS BY ERIC SANDBULTE

F I N D I N G

FAITH

Jeff Whit wasn’t sure what he was

searching for, but he knew there

was something missing from his

life.

“I was really kind of unhappy. I was

kind of deeply unsatisfied, even when

I would have my best successes,” Whit

said.

He was a good student in his Kentucky

high school, and had success as

a distance runner. His family was loving

and supportive, and in many ways,

he was living a good life. But he felt a

gnawing need for more.

Friends talked to him about the fulfillment

they had found in their faith.

But Whit, who had not been raised in a

religious family, resisted it.

Then he decided to try prayer. It

was, he admits, an awkward attempt,

a “wimpy prayer” that helped change

his life.

“I said, ‘God, if you’re really real,

and I’m not sure you are, I want you to

come into my life, because nothing else

is filling that hole,’” he prayed.

With that, his life began to change.

It wasn’t immediate, Whit said, but

is newfound faith helped gradually heal

his brokenness and rebellion.

There was a long journey before he

arrived in Orange City on Oct. 31, 1994,

as the first pastor of a newly planted

church.

“Never dreamed I’d be here 27-plus

years later,” Whit, now 60, said.

He was born in West Virginia, moving

with his family to Kentucky when

he was a teenager. He graduated from

high school in Lexington in 1979 and

enrolled at Wake Forest University,

where he studied history, with a minor

in education.

Whit took a job teaching middle

school and high school special education

in rural West Virginia, while

also working to complete a master’s in

education. Mingo County was a poor

county in a poor state, with poverty and

misery constant elements.

Many of the people worked as coal

miners, a job that Whit’s grandfathers

had done decades before. He had roots

in the area, he said, but seeing the difficult

lives the people faced was an eyeopener.

“It had a profound impact on me,

actually,” Whit said. “I was really humbled

by that.”

He realized the question that was

constantly on his mind was, “Where do

you find hope?” The answer seemed to

be in the Gospel.

He enrolled

in the Trinity

Divinity School

in the northern

suburbs of Chicago — completing a

three-year degree in five years, he said

with a laugh — to obtain a master’s in

divinity. He also worked part-time to

pay the bills and get through the seminary.

By then, he was married to Karen,

who grew up on a farm outside of Baxter

and studied to be a nurse. They met

through a mutual friend in West Virginia,

while he was teaching and she

was on a nursing mission.

They became friends, then dated, fell

in love and were married 36 years ago.

Iowa assignments

His first assignment as a pastor was

in Madrid in 1991 as the sole pastor at

an Evangelical Free church for three

and a half years.

Whit said Evangelical Free churches,

while part of a national denomination

with about 1,500 churches, are governed

by their members, who also own

42 OC MAGAZINE | SPRING 2022

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