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