True freedom doesn’t come from doing what we want to do but from living out the will of God, then let’s choose to be people who submit to God, who are people who really do want to hear the Word of the Lord and live by it. We learn from Jehoshaphat that if we are serious about that, then we better surround ourselves with people who share that same approach to life. Otherwise, we will never make it. We are so good at justifying what we want to do, that if we are surrounded by the wrong people, we’ll give up our freedom every time. This is one of the reasons that God invented this thing called “church,” as a community of believers who are all committed to the freedom that comes from increasingly living out their destiny, of increasingly becoming more like Christ.
Jeff Jones
Pastor Jeff Jones is senior pastor of Chase Oaks Church, a cutting-edge multi-campus megachurch in Plano, Texas. After high school and before college, Jeff traveled with Child Evangelism Fellowship to Eastern Europe for several months. He worked behind the iron curtain, training and resourcing children's workers. Working with persecuted believers would mark Jeff's life forever, seeing believers who literally gave everything-even their freedom-to serve Christ. Jeff attended Southeastern Bible College in Birmingham, Alabama and was also very active in ministry in his home church in Huntsville as well as his college church in Birmingham. It was during these college years that Jeff met Christy, who a few years later became his wife. After graduating from college, they decided to attend Dallas Theological Seminary, and their biggest prayer request was a place of ministry that would take their development as leaders seriously. God opened that door by providing an internship position with Fellowship Bible Church North (now known as Chase Oaks Church). In May of 1993, Jeff graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary. Shortly after graduation Jeff and Christy moved and eventually headed north to Alexandria, Minnesota. They served on staff at a fast-growing church plant that wanted Jeff to bring some of the Fellowship concepts of small groups and leadership development. Jeff and Christy stayed there until the fall of 1994, when Gene Getz (then senior pastor) and Bruce Miller (then Associate Pastor) invited Jeff to come back to Fellowship to work in adult education and help launch the Center for Church-Based Training, an organization that helps churches around the world disciple believers and develop leaders. Jeff worked with a team of people to write, edit and field test the Discovery Series, a spiritual growth curriculum that hundreds of churches are now using across the country. He also led our internship program and helped build a leadership development strategy for leaders at Fellowship. During that time period, Jeff became part of the SALT team or management team of the church. He also began to preach increasingly regularly in Gene's absence. In 2000, Gene and the elders approached Jeff about becoming Gene's successor when he planned to retire. Jeff and Christy accepted and the mentoring process began. In November of 2003, Gene announced his retirement and felt confident that Jeff was ready to assume full responsibilities as Senior Pastor. Jeff was officially installed as new Senior Pastor on the weekend of January 9/11, 2004. Jeff's passion is seeing Chase Oaks continue to be all that God has called it to be: a fully-functioning church that aggressively shines Christ's light to the community and equips believers to fulfill God's calling in their lives.