Jeff became Northstar's second pastor in 2009 after the retirement of founding pastor Bob Jackson. He and his family are from southeast Arkansas where he served as a campus minister at the University of Arkansas at Monticello for eight years before planting Journey Church there and serving as its founding pastor for six years.
Jeff's wife, Carolyn, works at Blacksburg High School in the guidance office as the administrative assistant. Their son Sam is on YoungLife staff in Salisbury, NC and married to Sidney. Their daughter Adelyn is a senior at Christopher Newport University and helps lead youth at a local church as well as serving as a worship leader with Cru at CNU.
Jeff desires that Northstar Church continue to encourage others and build spiritual leaders. He blogs regularly at journeyguy.com, and his first book called Super Center Savior is available at the church office or through online retailers like Amazon.
Jeff is the Lead Pastor on the staff at Northstar. Visit our leadership page to get to know the rest of the team.
Connect with Jeff
The following was shared with us by our friends over at NLCF. Coronavirus Prayer Guide Praying Through Uncertainty: We are all being impacted in ways that stretch us during this time. We are however not without hope! Now more than ever, our prayers matter. Use this prayer sheet as a resource for you as you pray for the world suffering …
On Sunday, March 15, Northstar learned “on the fly” and hosted its first livestream worship event in response to the COVID-19 crisis. Many thanks to our tech volunteers who made it possible: Ezra Richards, Ethan Smith and Joseph Hunter. Our worship team scaled down in size but made up for it in spirit and heart as Matt Simpson, Lissa Brown …
The following was an email sent out by Jeff on Friday to help prepare the church family for worship services this Sunday. Since things are very fluid with the state of response to the coronavirus pandemic, we are watching all sources of information. As of noon Friday there were still no reported cases of COVID-19 in Montgomery County, per the …
It’s March 1. I declare it’s time. Time to begin inviting people to Passion Week services at Northstar! People need “lead time,” so I’d urge you to sincerely invite people to attend Easter services with you this year. I wrote this post over on my blog back in 2018, and I hope it encourages you to think about invitational investment …
My family began attending Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock, Arkansas when I started junior high. They were drawn to IBC by the preaching of Dr. W. O. Vaught. I was extremely active and involved in the youth group there and loved the games, fun, camps and Bible studies with my peers, but it was Dr. Vaught’s preaching that was …
We asked several people at one of our December Nights services what they love about Christmas…
It’s always a special Sunday when we have the opportunity to see people declare their faith in Christ through baptism. On Sunday night, December 8, we celebrated with Andrew Ansell. Click the video to hear his story and watch his baptism:
It’s always a special Sunday when we have the opportunity to see people declare their faith in Christ through baptism. On Sunday, November 24, we celebrated with Chris Graveline. Click the video to hear his story and watch his baptism:
We had a such a great time participating in the Blacksburg Christmas parade this year! Our float received third place overall, but the joy and fun of joining our community in celebrating Christmas was even better. Many thanks to our families and children and worship team who made this year’s float possible. We had a drawing to give one of …
