North Salem Baptist Church welcomes new pastor
Special to the Herald
North Salem Baptist Church’s new pastor, Drew Whaley, is extremely excited to lead the flock into its new era.
James Staubes, the church’s interim pastor, departed recently after ministering at North Salem the past two years.
A Georgia Southern University alum, Whaley comes from a family of longtime Bulloch County residents. He grew up in the Atlanta area and after graduating, worked in Savannah for a logistics company.
He didn’t immediately enter the pastoral calling. After graduating, he took up a job in Savannah in part to pay his way through seminary. After graduating from seminary, he was called to serve as the youth ministry director at Grace Church in Indiana, Pennsylvania.
In 2019, he married Olivia and moved to Mississippi in January 2020 to serve as a youth pastor at Highland Colony Baptist Church in Ridgeland.
They weathered the pandemic and a transition to a new pastor. During that, Whaley said he and Olivia felt the Lord calling them back to the low-country.
He formally took up the post at North Salem in August. The Whaley’s would have been here sooner, if not for their first child, Kenny, coming into the world just 17 weeks ago.
Whaley is no stranger to leading a church. Aside from his own time tending to congregations, he watched his father doing so growing up.
“My dad was a pastor, my mom’s dad was a pastor, and my grandma’s father was a pastor. That’s four generations that there’s been somebody in my family who’s done that,” said Whaley.
“(My father) was associate pastor at a church in Atlanta, one of the bigger churches,” Whaley said. “Watching him battling cancer while leading the church and … leading mission groups all over the world, it was very spiritual to me.
“Obviously God did a work in my heart.”
Whaley’s father died at 39 when Drew was 10.
Whaley’s faith didn’t become truly real until he was 14. He believed in God and the Gospel, but it was more something he learned from mom and dad than anything else. He felt a pull to do something for God, but didn’t know what.
“You’ll hear people who communicate that calling to ministry. It’s confusing, it’s hard to understand at first, and sometimes a lot of people will pull away from that, but for me it’s been something that’s been pulling at me all my life,” said Whaley.
He did missions via one of the churches his dad had worked with, and one mission trip took him to Romania. It was the first trip he took that he felt like he was evangelizing. He met a lot of orphans and learned about a crisis of street children in Eastern Europe. Romania suffered in the 1960s an epidemic of child abandonment due to a series of causes. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990, the extent became fully known and Western countries have tried to assist since then, but to limited success.
Speaking to those children, Whaley discovered something about the Gospels.
“I was saved, but my faith hadn’t been ignited, so to speak,” he said. “It was on that trip I started pursuing Him and reading the Word, even just throughout the day. … It became real to me.”
He’s still trying to find his pastoral style. He learned from his seven years in student ministry that a pastor is really only successful when he or she is relational and gets involved in their lives.
“When it comes to leading a church as the pastor, my philosophy is the same thing. Loving on people, meeting people where they’re at, encouraging people, meeting with people one on one. Discipleship is big for me,” he said.
“There’s a lot of potential for growing the Kingdom here at North Salem Baptist Church. There’s been good, faithful ministry that’s been done here for years and years and years. It’s a 201-year-old church. That’s one of the things that drew us here is the history and legacy; but they’re also entering a new season of harvest with the area growing like it is,” he said.
North Salem Baptist Church is located at 955 GA Hwy. 30, Port Wentworth. For more information, click on its Facebook page.
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9/11 Day of Service rekindles community unity
Special to the Herald
Rincon – On the Sept. 11 National Day of Service and Remembrance, communities come together to honor those lost as well as those whose lives that were forever changed Sept. 11, 2001. Together organizations, congregations, businesses, schools, and individuals lift one another—neighborhood helping neighborhood—in reflection of the outpouring of love shown more than 20 years ago: United we serve.
JustServe.org is an official partner of the www.911Day.org movement and is sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. JustServe is a website that connects volunteers with organizations in the community that need their skills, time, and talents. Users can search for projects based on interest and location as well as remote project options. JustServe seeks to motivate volunteers and people-in-need to come together.
One local Rincon congregation hopes to bring awareness to a growing need in the community while bringing remembrance to the day.
If you have a project that needs volunteers, consider listing it on the JustServe site: JustServe.org. Any national need can be submitted for approval from the representative in that area. More than 30 million Americans and others participate, dedicating time each 9/11 to helping others in need, and rekindling the spirit of unity. More than 14,000 organizations around the world use JustServe to connect with volunteers of all ages throughout the entire year.
For more information and to find a volunteer opportunity near you, click on www.JustServe.org.
