T-R PHOTO BY LANA BRADSTREAM New Hope Christian Church Pastor Kerry Jech and his wife, Jane, laugh about memories at the church. Jech retired from his position as lead pastor on June 1, capping off a 47-year career.

For almost 50 years, Kerry Jech has been a pastor and a mainstay of the faith community in Marshalltown.

On June 1, Jech retired from his role as lead pastor of New Hope Christian Church.

“Forty-seven years is a long time,” he said.

When Jech started officiating weddings of children whose parents he married years before, he said it was time to “get out.”

“Before I start doing the weddings of grandkids,” he said, laughing. “Because that would really make me feel old.”

While Jech has retired, he has not disappeared from the church he created, which is a spiritual home for roughly 600 people every week. Jech has become an elder and was even able to go to the camp held every summer for young congregants.

“It was nice to reconnect with the church camp again,” he said. “It was fun to be there with the kids.”

Not all of Jech’s church career has been at New Hope. He started as a pastor of the Hillside Church of Christ in 1978 after graduating from Nebraska Christian College. After remaining there for 12 years, he was asked to resign from his role by the church elders.

“We had been having disagreements, and I’m sure there were areas I needed to improve,” Jech said.

He told his wife, Jane, about the requested resignation and she told him she would support whatever decision Jech made.

“It was a hard time,” he said. “Church splits are never fun. Some people quit going to church because they watched what had gone on. Others went to other churches.”

Roughly 75 percent of the congregation left with Jech, so New Hope Christian Church was born.

“When we were trying to come up with a church name, we knew people were looking for hope, and for those of us who had seen the whole thing, it was like we were given new hope,” he said.

At first, services were held in the Senior Citizens Center before moving to the Marshalltown YMCA. Then in January 1993, the church moved to 30 acres of land and the new facility across the street from Marshalltown Community College at 3901 S. Center St., land Jech received in the mutual separation from Hillside.

New Hope

Jech recalled good memories of activities which have occurred in New Hope during the last 30-plus years. His wife Jane was in charge of dinner theater productions, which would take place every Christmas season at the church.

“We would have over 1,000 people come,” Jech said. “People came from all over to her dinner theaters. The food that was served, and the program that we had. It was awesome.”

During its tenure, New Hope has served as more than just a church. It was also the home for the Marshalltown Christian School and Upward Basketball, and more than 300 kids in grades first through sixth would play every week. Unfortunately, Jech said the COVID-19 pandemic killed the basketball program.

In previous years, Marshalltown residents were free to park their vehicles in the New Hope parking lot to watch fireworks displays. Jech said sometimes they would have bouncy houses set up and barbecues available for the Fourth, other times church members would just hand out water.

“That was so fun,” he said. “Having people in our parking lot and having the opportunity to reach them.”

Last summer, New Hope hosted a food drive at Hy-Vee and people filled two U-Haul trailers with groceries for the Emergency Food Box.

While the activities are good memories for Jech, the relationships he has formed give him the best memories of his time as a pastor. Those relationships and the people Jech encounters are an important aspect of his ministry.

“Wherever you land, as long as you have the Lord and people who know the Lord, you have something in common, you’ve got family,” he said. “Some of the nice things people have said to me over the past few weeks – it’s just relationships.”

Finding Snyder

When Jech, 69, decided it was time to retire, the elders gave him some extra time to lead the search to find the right replacement. It was a task Jech wanted to play an active role in.

“I’d seen other churches which went through transitions and inevitably, if the pastor wasn’t involved, the church would hire somebody who was totally different,” he said. “In my mind, I thought, ‘You know, I’ve been in this for 47 years. There’s a certain kind of culture, and it’s not going to work to bring in a Bible college professor who sits in his office all the time.'”

They had to find someone similar to Jech, and he marveled at the process of how his replacement — who he said was like his “mini me” — arrived.

Wade Snyder has taken up the mantle of New Hope lead pastor, a role which he said is the result of divine appointment. Snyder, originally from State Center, was visiting and taking care of his brother who was struggling with cancer. At the time, he was the group’s pastor at The Crossing Church in Tampa, Fla. During Snyder’s Iowa visits, he wanted to continue attending church and decided to give New Hope a try.

“Unbeknownst to me, they were looking for a replacement pastor because Kerry was retiring,” he said, adding that he had hit a ceiling at The Crossing Church.

There were other factors in Snyder’s journey to New Hope that could not be coincidences, Jech said. For example, a New Hope church leader was moving to Florida, and some newer congregants moved to Iowa from the Sunshine State and used to attend The Crossing Church.

Church attendees who were familiar with Snyder began dropping his name to Jech and the elders as a possibility. Jech began talking to him over the phone, looking for red flags, and none were raised.

“He was here as a guest, and he’s visiting with people, finding out their names and praying with them,” Jech said. “He’s a visitor. I thought that was pretty cool. The more we talked the more I knew he loved people, he loved the Lord.”

Six months after the first meeting between the two, Snyder was offered the job.

“I know the legacy Kerry has in Marshalltown,” Snyder said. “He has been ministering for 47 years. People say I have big shoes to fill, and sometimes I think this feels weighty, too heavy. At times I feel unworthy, but this is humbling and I am excited for the future. I can’t discount God’s hand in this.”

According to both pastors, they clicked, so the transition between Jech and Snyder has been an easy one.

“We are like minded in a lot of things,” Snyder said. “We love people, pastoring and love expressing God’s word. I look at him as a spiritual father. I am the same age as his oldest son. We have a good spiritual father-son relationship.”

He said it was important to both of them that the congregation saw the spiritual, father-son love between the two pastors. Jech’s presence is still at New Hope as he serves as a mentor to Snyder.

“Kerry is not gone,” Snyder said. “I told him I was not going to let him go, yet.”

Jech said no beats have been missed since Snyder took over on June 1. He still gets the minutes from the church meetings and noted the changes Snyder has implemented are good ones, maybe changes which should have occurred a long time ago.

“God gives to us all kinds of talents, abilities, experiences,” he said. “What we do with it is our stewardship.”

Contact Lana Bradstream at 641-753-6611 ext. 210 or lbradstream@timesrepublican.com.