Jeremy DeWeerdt, 38

By Barbara Connors

In 1990, Jeremy DeWeerdt, fresh from receiving an associate’s degree from Rock Valley College, was set to move to Phoenix, a “mecca” for Xers at the time, to attend business school at Arizona State University. A small voice invited him to consider a different path.

Shelving his dream to run an advertising firm, DeWeerdt instead took a ministerial internship with Rockford First Assembly. He then pursued his ordination at Global University, and in 1998 was ordained a minister with the Assemblies of God.

“People thought I was crazy,” he says.

Hardly. The Rockford native now is lead pastor at Rockford First Assembly, and live couldn’t be more exciting or fulfilling.

With a “heart to help people, and an interest in their spiritual life,” DeWeerdt leads a congregation of almost 2,000 weekly and a staff of more than 300 from the church’s six retirement centers, two radio stations (WQFL, WGSL), Christian Life School, Kiddie Kollege Daycare and Rockford Master’s Commission. Life to him is “exciting, surreal, fast paced and adventurous.”

One of his favorite Bible passages is John 10:10, “A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I [Jesus] came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.”

DeWeerdt grew up at Rockford First Assembly; attending Christian Life High School and involving himself with the youth group Cross Current. After high school and his calling, and one year into his ministerial internship with Cross Current, he received clear direction to start a ministry.

In 1993, he founded the Rockford Master’s Commission, which draws young adults, ready to go to college, and teaches them how to be disciples of Christ and influence their culture.

“Many kids graduating from high school have no idea what they want to do,” DeWeerdt says, possibly digging back to his own memories. “It’s a cultural problem, that many who grow up in the church, leave to go to college, and it all goes away.”

Today Rockford Master’s Commission boasts an alumni group of 1,000. To house the roughly 140 students who arrive annually from the United States and oversees, in 2000, DeWeerdt and his church raised $333,000 and constructed an 18-unit apartment complex at the corner of Alpine and Riverside roads. Other students make temporary homes with congregants.

Also in 1993, DeWeerdt founded Earthbeat, a non-profit organization that draws young people once a year to clean the streets, playgrounds and rivers in Rockford. In 2001, he became director of Cross Current Youth and Young Adult Ministries, a program that draws more than 1,000 young people to the church each week.

To add to his pastorship, DeWeerdt often goes on mission trips around the world, including a recent one to minister to Assembly of God pastors in Cuba.

With all of this leadership experience, DeWeerdt said his greatest accomplishment is being a dad to his two boys, Caden and Connor, and a husband to Jennifer, a woman hemet through Cross Current. “My calling as a husband and father is more important than my calling to ministry.”

For fun, DeWeerdt rides his Harley motorcycle. He recently got back from a four-day road trip from Tucson, Ariz., along historic Route 66. “Riding is a very healthy release for me. It’s relaxing. I can’t answer my cell phone.”

Although he and his congregants envision that Rockford First Assembly could have a national presence, DeWeerdt says, “I’m more concerned about what the people in the condos across the street know about us.”