Jeff Stratton was born in Rushville Indiana and graduated from high school from Fort Wayne Northrop. Jeff’s undergraduate degree is from Indiana University and his Master’s of Divinity Degree was completed at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY, and Oakland City University. Jeff played college baseball and is an avid golfer, snow skier and has coached high school tennis at Pike Central H.S. and Evansville Bosse.
Jeff is a certified Law Enforcement officer graduating from the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy in Plainfield and successfully completed the Professional in Residence program at the Betty Ford Institute.
Jeff is married to Gayle, who works for Ascension Health, the parent company of St. Vincent Hospital for 35 years. They have three grown children, two of which, April and Katie, reside in the Indianapolis area and the third Jay is a resident of Chicago, Ill. He is a proud grandparent of Gracie 4 years old and Emmett 16 months.
Jeff has held several positions not only in the sacred world but in the secular world as well. Jeff has pastured in Lancaster, Moores Hill, Petersburg and most recently in Evansville Indiana. While in Evansville Jeff presided over the merger of two very small churches that grew in to a congregation that employed twenty-five people in various ministry and education programs. While at American Baptist East in Evansville, Jeff started a recovery effort called Project Reclaim, that responded to the hurricane Katrina disaster by establishing a work camp that saw over 11,000 people work and reside there from 2005 to 2008. That project became the premier response of the American Baptist Churches, USA.
Jeff has traveled extensively in central America and India where he has spoken in dozens of venues and participated in rescue ministries, water projects, AIDS outreach in the brothels of Pune, India and orphan relief. Jeff was also the former president of the Public Education Foundation of Evansville, H.O.P.E. of Evansville, an organization that has built many homes for the City of Evansville’s low income housing program, Front Door Pride. Jeff used his experience as a commercial bank lender to found and serve as president of a Certified Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) Our Greater Community which provided business start-up loans and training for individuals with good business ideas but lacked the experience to receive regular bank loans.
Jeff has always been deeply involved in the communities he serves and hopes to continue to use his life skills to not only serve One Christian Church but the Indianapolis Community as well. He is the kind of person who when he see’s a problem endeavors to develop ways and means to solve those problems.