September 19, 2024
WENTWORTH, Ga. — North Salem Baptist Church is positioned perfectly to bring the word of God to a dynamically growing community, and its 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 since July 2022. We are grateful for his time at North Salem Baptist Church.
“They’ve had a transition season here, not having a full-time pastor,” Whaley said.
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 that, he moved to Indiana, Pennsylvania — and yes, he’s heard whatever jokes come to mind — to serve as the youth ministry director at Grace Church. In 2019, he married his wife Olivia and moved to Mississippi in January 2020 to serve as a youth pastor at Highland Colony Baptist Church in Ridgeland.
“The world ended two months later with the onset of the COVID pandemic,” he laughed.
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 after Staubes’ departure in August. Whaley comes to North Salem Baptist Church from Mississippi. He and Olivia would have been here sooner, if not for their first child, Kenny, coming into the world just 17 short 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 there’s been somebody in my family who’s done that,” said Whaley.
Seeing firsthand what leading a church looks like helped immensely in discerning his own calling. His father passed away due to leukemia when both he and Whaley were young. Whaley was only 10 and his father was 39, but seeing his dad lead the church even during such a trying time in his life was all the more impactful.
“He 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 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, 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.
Community and discipleship are key concepts. Not just preaching about it but, leading by example. He and Oliva want to be members of the church, not just the leaders. They want to build relationships and live alongside the Church Body,
“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.
