Rev. Jeffrey Jewell came to Jeffersonville United Methodist Church beginning June 26, 2022.

Pastor Jeff is a native of Ohio.  He was born in Cleveland but his family moved several times in his life.  He moved to a suburb of Chicago IL during the first grade.  Their family moved to upstate NY just outside of Utica NY between his Seventh and Eighth Grade years.  At Sixteen, the family moved to the east coast of Florida just north of West Palm Beach.  Pastor Jeff attended and graduated from the University of Florida as a music educator.  His first full-time job as a teacher took him to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota.  After one year, he was led back to Ohio.  A year later, he began to hear God’s calling to ministry.  He attended the Methodist Theological School in Ohio during the mid-1980s.  His first congregation was in East Ohio east of Zanesville.  He married in 1988 while at his first parish.  While there, he took two units of Clinical Pastoral Care at Children’s Hospital in Columbus.  Pastor Jeff was Ordained Elder in 1991 and transferred to West Ohio.

Jeff has served the Bloomingburg/Madison Mills Charge, Prospect, and the Pleasantville/Pleasant Hill (Lancaster) Charge.  His marriage ended sadly and he took a leave from ministry.  While away from ministry, Jeff learned many of the trials of the laity (like being laid off three times in two years).  After four years, he remarried and returned to ministry at Hicksville Grace, then the Commercial Point/Scioto Chapel Charge, the New Holland/Madison Mills Charge, and finally the Jeffersonville/Madison Mills Charge.

Jeff enjoys music (just about anything), photography, travel, pets, and rural people.  His two children live in Lancaster, Ohio.  Loretta’s children live in Kentucky and California.  Unfortunately, they don’t get to see any of them very often.  Jeff occasionally takes a trip to Tennessee to visit his 95 year old father.  Jeff has two sisters, one in Powell Ohio and the other in Winter Haven Florida.  Loretta has a sister in Vancouver Canada.

Jeff and Loretta bought a home in Eaton (a little over an hour’s drive from Jeffersonville).  They only get to go there two days a week for a day off and a Sabbath.  They both enjoy the area and the people they have met.  Pastor Jeff says he will be forced to retire five to seven years from now, so he wants to make them the best years for all of us.