Youth Pastor: Tom Tefft
With wife Karen
Five weeks after graduating from Cabrillo High School, I accepted Jesus Christ as Savior. I had been invited by a friend to “High Life”, a church youth outreach in Vandenberg Village. Within just a few weeks, I was serving as a volunteer in a leadership position at the church and at different youth camps. It was then I had decided to be a youth pastor, not because I had a heart for leading kids, but because a youth pastor had so much fun and was paid to do so. I had never considered the seriousness of the calling on a man to be a “pastor” until much later in life.
Hoping to raise money to attend a Christian college, I joined the service. But, by the time I had finished my commitment to the military, I wanted to do nothing else but come home and marry. June 15, 1985 I married Karen Marie Ferguson. Joel Kehlan arrived in our young married lives sixteen months after the “I do’s” and Alec James four years after him. I had given up the idea of being a youth pastor or even being involved with students at church. I had taken a job driving school buses and was taking night classes to earn an associates degree in liberal arts. It was while driving buses I discovered a love for junior higher’s.
October 1993 is when God, through Calvary Chapel’s radio ministry, turned my whole life around. I wasn’t serving my wife as the spiritual leader in the home, I wasn’t serving my children as their spiritual shepherd and I wasn’t serving God at all. God’s word broadcast via CSN changed all of that by transforming my heart. As I sought the Lord for where to serve in the Body, He led me right back to youth ministry. By 1996 I was teaching Sunday school to 6th grade boys and singing in the church choir, in 1998 7th and 8th graders were added to the class. And my wife Karen joined me as a leader and a teacher. It was also in 1998 both Karen and I volunteered to help with the junior high youth group. In 2000 I became an Awana leader and co director, something I thought I could never do. By 2001 Karen, again, joined me as a leader and co director. Not only were we witnessing God working in the lives of junior higher’s, we had the privilege of witnessing God equip and grow us up as spiritual leader’s. Through all God was purposing to do, Karen and I felt as though He was leading us to be more involved and to branch out into other aspects of youth ministry.
Enter The Village Chapel. After seeking and receiving a blessing from our sons, we looked into the new church plant at whether it was the real thing or not. After meeting the leadership and witnessing what God was all ready doing in the church before it‘s inaugural service, God confirmed to us His leading our family to The Chapel. Within just a few weeks after the first service, it was clear the youth at The Chapel were in need of leadership themselves.
In April 2007 at the age of 43 the leaders at The Village Chapel offered me the youth director position. It was a dream come. Through it all, there were two things the Lord continued to remind me of: First, be patient, the Lord’s timetable is not the same as our timetable. All things are according to His will and His plan regardless of how long He takes. And second, the call to be a shepherd has nothing to do with education or popular vote, it has everything to do with God, He determines and He equips. God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised–and the things that are not–to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before Him (I Cor 1:27-29). God Bless!
Children’s Director: Jennifer Musselwhite
Jennifer was born and raised on the Central Coast. Sports and competition defined much of her early years. Her first commitment to Christ was made at Camp Cedar Crest the Summer of her 7th grade year. It was then that she began to feel the inner longing; the desire to not only know and love Christ, but to serve Him with her whole heart. She was challenged to “Go all the Way” with Jesus; words that still haunt and compel her to this day.
Upon graduating from SJHS in ’92 she left for Westmont College. This opened a whole new world to her; amongst other things it exposed her to her first taste of Ministry as she led The “Off Campus” Ministry of Christian Concerns at Westmont College. Her Junior year she experienced her first “Call” to ministry as she read a book entitled “Nobody Knows my Name” By Bill Wilson. Answering the Call, she spent the following summer learning what Inner City Children’s Ministry was all about (the good, the bad and the very ugly) as she interned with Bill Wilson’s Metro Ministries in Brooklyn, NY. This experience exposed a hunger within her, an unquenchable desire to serve God; a passion that still goes unsatisfied to this day.
About this time the Lord brought her the greatest gift of her life; a man who shared this same passion for the Lord and desire to minister. Chuck and Jen met at a College Bible Study and from the beginning they have been doing ministry side by side (something they wouldn’t have any other way.) They began Youth Ministry in ’94 and watched God do awesome things with their “fish and loaves.”
Upon graduating from Westmont ’96 with a degree in Communication Studies/English she began teaching English. Within a year she married her best friend and the adventure took on new heights. They stood amazed, as they trusted the Lord with everything they had and watched Him guide and continually provide. She quit teaching as the ministry grew and became more demanding. After 6 years of marriage the Lord blessed them with the first of their four children. Parenthood brought an unexpected joy into their lives that neither anticipated. In so many ways Parenting and Pastoring are so similar: the greatest joy and the most painful heartache. And yet, who would want it any other way; for so much of the joy seems to be found in the pain.
It has been her privilege and honor to serve the Lord and the people of The Village Chapel. She looks forward to ALL that God has in store and continues to be compelled by the still, small voice that whispers “Go all the Way.” She is confident in the promises of Christ and knows full well that He who began this work, will complete it.
“Not that I have already attained or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus first laid hold of me.” Phil 3:12
