Church Planter Conversation: Jeff Palen

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Benjamin Kreps:

Hey everyone and welcome to the Mark Prater Podcast -- where our aim is to connect our global family of Sovereign Grace churches with our Executive Director.

Mark, we have a treat on this episode of the podcast because we are joined today by Jeff from Center Church in Star, Idaho — recently planted as of last year. Jeff, welcome to the podcast.

Jeff Palen:

Thank you, guys. Appreciate being here.

Benjamin Kreps:

Good to have you. Let's get right into it and learn more about Jeff. I got to know Jeff a little bit before we started recording, but I'm eager to hear more of your story. So why don't you begin by telling us about some things that are most important — your wife's name, tell us about your family.

Jeff Palen:

Yeah, my wife's name is Barb, and we were a couple of kids that met in school when we were barely 20. So we've been married 20 years this last November — we were very excited.

Benjamin Kreps:

Congratulations.

Jeff Palen:

Thank you. Yeah, it was a big deal — we were pretty excited. And we have four kids. Our oldest, Hannah, she's turning 18 and she's graduating high school this year, so we're dealing with college and all of that, which is exciting stuff. Not so exciting for Mom and Dad, but definitely exciting for Hannah.

And our next daughter is Mackenzie. She's 15 and she's just kind of in full high school mode — loving it, just really loving all the stuff that comes along with that. And then we have one son, Ben, and he's 13. He's really digging all the new activities — he loves going fishing with his dad, doing the shooting stuff, all of that. And then we have Eva, who is the youngest of the bunch. She's turning 12, and she really is the lion tamer of the family. She keeps us all in line, makes sure he remembers everything he's ever said. She does a good job of that. And yeah, so that's our little family.

Mark Prater:

That's great. That's great. I'm glad they're loving Idaho. Jeff, you were a pastor for several years at Center Church in Gilbert, Arizona, and were sent from that church to plant in Star. How did your pastoral ministry experience prepare you to plant a church .

Jeff Palen:

Yeah, I don't know about my experience beyond what I got to see and do there in Gilbert. There are really two things that stood out to me.

The first was the team. Rich, Trace, Steven, Frank — there in Gilbert — and the rest of the leadership team. They have just always been — both as a member and as I became a team member and elder there — outstanding examples of Christ-centered leadership. Just getting to watch them, in all their unique ways, show the church Christ and His love — that's been huge. Watching them navigate dynamic and diverse circumstances and issues there in Gilbert was just a great education. And now that I'm sort of solo here in Star, I find myself really often drawing on those memories — thinking, "How would I address this individual right now?" or "How would Rich lead through this situation?" — and really benefiting from having gotten to sit under them and sit with them, frankly.

And then the other thing that was really helpful was just the people there in Gilbert. As I got to leave, I remember reflecting on how much they embody the things that we value in Sovereign Grace, and just celebrating that about them. There are just countless examples of people there demonstrating what it looks like to be formed by Christ into the image of Christ through a constant dependence on the gospel.

I think about the beginning of Romans, where Paul talks about the mutual encouragement, which he can both receive and give within the Roman church. And that's kind of a remarkable thing to hear from the Apostle Paul — that he's going to benefit from newer believers. I just felt like that was perfectly demonstrated in Gilbert, in such a way that I became convinced it was something I wanted to see elsewhere, not just in Gilbert. So those two things were very powerful to me.

Benjamin Kreps:

Wonderful. Yeah, really is. That's your story. And I'm glad it's a fairly common one in Sovereign Grace — that church planters are nurtured and incubated in healthy Sovereign Grace churches, benefiting from elder teams there. So it's great to hear that was your experience as well.

But you are not in Gilbert, Arizona anymore. You are in Star, Idaho, and for geographically challenged people like me, I believe it's about 2,000 miles away. It's certainly a different context. So talk to us about when your desire for church planting generally even began, how it grew, and then why you ended up planting in Star, Idaho.

Jeff Palen:

Man, I don't know if we have enough time for all of that, but I'll take your time. Yeah, yeah. We can edit a lot, I'm sure.

So I didn't actually come from a background that really made me want to be a church planter. The way I understood church planting was: that's something you do if you want to be a lead pastor but don't have a place to be one — you go build a place. So I really didn't identify with that, and I was very content being on the team in Gilbert. It wasn't until I saw what church planting looked like in Sovereign Grace, and really became sold out on that vision, that things changed for me. So thank you — Mark, to your leadership — for conveying what that looks like. That was very helpful for me personally.

But really, a few years back is when things shifted. My wife and I started to sense that the Lord was calling us to do something we didn't fully understand. We didn't know if it meant staying in Gilbert or going somewhere else. At the time, I thought it meant transitioning from being a bi-vocational elder to a full-time elder. And so that's what I thought it meant. And as we were praying about it as a team — because I did go to the team and just said, "Hey, I don't really know what this is; I sense God is doing something. Would you guys just pray with me? I know that's a really broad target — it could be anything. Thanks for doing that." And they did. And we just started praying.

What I found through that time of prayer, through working with the guys on the team and then looping in our region — Eric Turbedsky out there in the West was a huge part of those early conversations — was that I just didn't quite know what the Lord was directing. But the Lord started to oddly put this interest, or burden, or curiosity about the Boise Metro area on my heart. And honestly, every time I try to think back, I can't quite figure out what triggered that. It's really odd because for the longest time, up until that point, I honestly — and I hope you don't put this out there — I probably couldn't have told you where Boise was on the map.

Benjamin Kreps:

We'll keep it a secret.

Jeff Palen:

I probably thought it was in the Midwest — confused it with Iowa or something like that. But realistically, I just don't know what it was, but I started to really think about this area. I had been hearing about a lot of migration that had happened. A lot of folks were moving to Idaho in a big way — everybody had probably heard about it. Tennessee and Texas were also experiencing a lot of that. So I'm sure something like that factored in. But I just became very curious and passionate about learning what God was doing there. And so we started to pray about Idaho, not knowing what that meant, but we were open-handed about it. Nobody was saying, "Don't do that." And honestly, Rich's leadership was, "Let's just let God make it clear if that's not the right direction. Let's pray about it, lean into it, and see what He does."

And so when that happened and we started to zoom in, I took some trips. I got a group of guys from the church in Gilbert who were also interested in doing something like this. Our family made about four or five trips, and we did a couple with other couples who were interested as well. We just drove all around the valley — the Boise Metro — got out, looked around, talked to people, and did some research. And something really seemed right and appropriate about Star specifically. The more research I did, it really confirmed that, because Star has grown tremendously. I believe it's grown something like 88% since 2020 — and that's not a very long period of time. It's currently, I believe, one of the fastest-growing cities in the state. 

And what really stirred my interest was this: that growth is almost entirely from out of state. This isn't folks moving from Boise into Star — it's folks coming from the Bay Area or Sacramento, or from the Seattle area, or parts of Oregon. And they're all moving there really to try to change something about their context. Maybe they're interested in a different political environment, or it's more affordable and they want a more economical community, or — and this is probably what I hear most — people are really worried about the environment in which they're raising their families. It doesn't feel safe where they're from, or it's just dangerous in general. And so Idaho provides a sense that you can let your kids play out on the street and that sort of thing.

And so all of that together became a clear picture: everybody's moving there, and they're all moving there to essentially enhance or improve their life. And that's exactly the kind of place where the gospel is going to powerfully work — because when those things fall short, when people find that those are not the things that are going to serve the deepest parts of their soul and heart, that's what the gospel does best. So all of that together rounded things out for me — that we needed to go and serve folks who were desperately looking for a better life in a place where they weren't going to find it if they didn't find Christ.

Mark Prater:

Thanks for sharing that, Jeff. Just to hear the intentional prayer you and the Gilbert team put into this, and how you involved others — it's just a reminder of how the Lord does lead us and the importance of prayer in all that we do in ministry and in following Christ, and certainly in church planting. So you're in Star now — talk about your vision and hope for planting there in Star, Idaho.

Jeff Palen:

Yeah, that's a really good question. I would say the desire for us as a church is to really be seen as a big family in the neighborhood — really known for our love for Jesus and for those around us. If I could put it into a simple phrase, that's really what I would desire for us: that we would be very approachable — the same way you could just kind of walk up to your neighbor or something like that — and they would know and have the expectation that we love Christ and we want people to enjoy and love Christ as well.

Where that desire sits in Star is kind of interesting, because so many folks coming here have a background where they're really used to or familiar with a sort of institutional church — a very large, organized structure. What I think we have a unique opportunity to do, at least in Star, is to really introduce them into a fuller, more well-rounded idea of the faith — where their worship of Jesus and their walk with Jesus is not just something you go to, but something that's always happening in all these different ways wherever you are.

So our desire is to facilitate that as best we can, and you facilitate that best when you're actually doing it and just inviting people to jump in with you. The constant thing I'm trying to help communicate to our people is: let's think about what it is to walk with Jesus in all the other parts of the week outside of the hour or two on Sunday. And so that means we are very much investing in relational forms of evangelism and care — interpersonal care and discipleship. Those are the big rocks we need to be thinking about, and we're investing a lot of our time and resources into them. We hope to serve well at a neighborhood level and then trust God that, when we're serving at a neighborhood level well, we'll be able to serve at the town level and the greater area. So that's the vision.

Benjamin Kreps:

I love that you have this heart for people to enjoy Jesus. That's just a beautiful way of putting it. So you actually have one of the more unique origin stories I've heard when it comes to where you first started meeting. Talk to us about when you guys started meeting and having public services, where you first started meeting, and then thankfully God has provided a new space as well — talk to us a little bit about that. 

Jeff Palen:

Yeah, so around October — or actually more like September — we were talking through remaining details. Everybody was coming up from Gilbert and the ducks were all in a row, so to speak. We had everything lined up and were thinking, "Hey, there's no reason for us not to start meeting — what's keeping us?" So we started to pray and go to work.

We thought we had the most amazing meeting space lined up. There was a junior high school about a mile away from all of our neighborhoods, and we were thinking we were going to land a great spot there that we could grow into — right in the middle of a wonderful part of town. I started conversations with the school. And as we were having those conversations, another church booked the space. So we had already kind of gotten the engines running, and we're thinking, "Oh no — we have nowhere to meet. What do we do?"

And Jeff and Brooke Carmichael — a couple who moved up from Gilbert with us — said, "Hey, what if we all met in our garage? We have a three-car garage and we don't have a bunch of stuff in there." So basically what they did is they went and cleaned up their garage, painted it, and Jeff installed a mini-split to make sure we had heat if we needed it, which we did.

And so they went through all this work, got their house set up, and we just took their floor plan and spent a couple of hours drawing it out to figure out where we could put the kids, how we could make sure folks could get to a restroom, and all of that. We mapped it out, everybody agreed it seemed right, and we just started meeting. So on the first week of October, we met in our neighbors' and friends' garage, with the kids held in their dining room. We made little barricades so they wouldn't run free, and we met inside that garage. You all saw it — if you were at the conference, you saw the photos. We'll always hold those moments affectionately.

We ran from October all the way through about February in the garage, and we were really grateful for that. It was a wonderful provision, and Jeff and Brooke's generosity was huge. But since then, we have found a meeting space in a local gym that predominantly does fitness classes. They have a very large open space that we're able to dress up very nicely. It's called TruHit Gym — which sounds intense, I know. But we do go there. The team gets it all set up and we meet there. We've been meeting there now for a little over a month, and we're very grateful. God has just been so good to us. Every time we show up on Sunday, my heart — and I can just see it on everyone else — is just like, "This is clearly us. This just feels like the Lord held this place for us." So we're very grateful and very excited. We have a great story, and it's going to be fun to tell it 50 years from now.

Mark Prater:

Oh, that's such a great story. Just the generosity — that you mentioned — of that couple that came with you all the way from Gilbert. That's members of Sovereign Grace churches making it all possible. That kind of thing always moves me.

All right, so let's say by chance somebody listening to this podcast lives in the Star, Idaho area — or more broadly, somebody listening or reading knows family or friends who live in the Boise/Star, Idaho area. How would they find out more about Centered Church if they wanted to visit?

Jeff Palen:

Yeah, there are a couple of ways to think about that. The easiest is just to go to our website, which is centerchurchstar.com. We're also on Google Maps, obviously. And then we have a YouTube channel where we post our sermons. Any of those avenues are going to be really helpful, but the website will probably connect them to all of those.

Benjamin Kreps:

And the gym — what is it called? TruHit Gym? 

Jeff Palen:

Yeah, TruHit Gym. You can get your sweat on Saturday and praise Jesus on Sunday — I'm sure we can work that in at some point.

Benjamin Kreps:

Fantastic. So there are a lot of folks who check out the podcast who are committed to praying for needs in Sovereign Grace. I'm confident there are a number of folks eager to pray for you and your family and this church plant. So how can we be praying for you and the plant?

Jeff Palen:

Yeah, that — man, I'm so grateful for that. There is a passage I would point to: if we could pray according to this passage, that would be wonderful, because it's definitely the desire of my heart. It's 2 Corinthians 2:14–15:

"But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of Him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing." 

We want to smell like Jesus, really badly, here. And we just know He is calling people out of darkness. We would love to be there to see that happen and to help them for as long as we can. So yeah, please pray that way as often as possible.

Mark Prater:

That's great.

Benjamin Kreps:

Well, Jeff, thanks for joining us and for sharing a little bit of your story. It's so encouraging to hear what God is doing in and through you in Star, Idaho. We'll be praying that more and more people in the Star/Boise area come to enjoy Jesus because of the faithful efforts of Centered Church. So thanks, Jeff. And thank you everybody for checking out the podcast. We'll see you here next week, Lord willing. Bye for now.