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Jeff Eastwood – Interim lead pastor
My name is Jeff Eastwood and I am the interim lead pastor at Northside Baptist Church. My wife Melanie (Flietstra) and I were married in July of 2002 and welcomed our daughter Esther into the world in July of 2003, our first son Titus in May of 2005, our second son Elias in August of 2009, and our second daughter Lydia in June of 2011. We accepted the invitation to come minister together with Northside Baptist Church in August of 2003 and have enjoyed a great time of ministry seeing what God has done and will do as we faithfully serve Him.
I was born in Saint John, New Brunswick and accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Saviour at a young age. I was brought up in the Fundamental Baptist Church until age six at which time my family moved to Nova Scotia. We attended Oakhill Independent Baptist Church and I was baptized there at age ten. At a summer camp after grade nine, I made the decision to do whatever God called me to do and soon thereafter felt that God was leading me to become a minister. After graduating high school, I attended Northland Baptist Bible College and received my Bachelor of Arts in Theology in 2002. I attended Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary for three years until my health caused me to move to Toronto. I am currently working towards a Master of Divinity degree from Calvary Baptist Theological Seminary through their satellite campus in Mississauga. It is my great passion and privilege to serve God with my life and I count it a privilege to serve Him at Northside Baptist Church.
My wife was born Melanie Flietstra in Cambridge, Ontario and accepted Jesus Christ as her personal Saviour at a young age. Her parents left for Belgium as missionaries when she was four and she spent much of her life in Europe. She attended a boarding school for missionary children in the Black Forest area of Germany during her parent’s ministry in Belgium, and then finished her education in Cambridge after her parents' return. She studied for one year at a Bible college in Sweden and then returned to Canada in 2000 where we met in 2001. God has given her many gifts and abilities, and she is the Nursery Coordinator at Northside Baptist Church, as well as a Sunday School teacher.
It is a privilege for my family to be a part of the ministry at Northside Baptist Church and it has been a great pleasure to see God at work in our lives and the lives of those we minister to. God has richly blessed during our time here and we look forward to what He will do in the future.
In His service only by His grace,
Pastor Jeff Eastwood
Deacons
Hans Koopman
I was saved by faith in Christ Jesus (and baptized by immersion) at 17 after I met my future bride Dawna. She had made those personal choices years earlier, and both of us made those decisions in a "baptistic" church. We were married at that church just as soon as we both turned 21 and God blessed our union with three children, with great health and for me enough "busyness" to drift away from serving Him as I should have. I do have regrets in that oversight of years. Now I really am driven by Ps 90:12, but this did not happen until God intervened to rescue His spiritually erring child in 1982 by almost electrocuting me with 660V. I then realized that God alone had spared me to serve Him, to serve my family (with His proper focus), and to serve those of the household of faith. God could have taken me home at that time, albeit to very few rewards. Since that time we have studied His Word and not once declined any opportunity to teach, preach, clean the sanctuary, sing His praises, (and for Dawna to play piano & organ) and to serve King Jesus anywhere He directs.
Eventually God brought us to Waterloo and we found Northside wherein the Bible was preached with enthusiasm. We've been here for 19 years and pray God allows us many more years of service here for Him.
Chuck Swartzentruber
I grew up in a Christian home with Christian values for which I am very thankful. My parents faithfully took us to church every Sunday. We were attending a Mennonite church until I was eleven years old. At that time my parents did not like the direction the church was going and decided to change churches. They were looking for a church with stronger Christian values and a good youth program and decided to try Velvet Hills Baptist Church. They liked what they saw and decided to stay. We had been attending for approximately one year when one Sunday one of the teachers was teaching about Jesus dying on the cross for my sins. I knew I was a sinner and wanted to accept Jesus as my Saviour. After class, the teacher led me to the Lord. A few months later I was baptized. I continued attending church and the youth group and I am very grateful for the Christian friends I grew up with. One of them became my wife! God has blessed us with three wonderful children and each one of them has accepted Jesus Christ as their Saviour and two of them have gone off to Bible College. God has truly blessed our family and we pray that we will keep being faithful to Him!