Real Life Meets Real Love
Jeff Bartz, pastor of Grace Baptist Church, Batavia, New York, and his wife, Jami (center), pray with their congregation during an outdoor worship service.
When the police show up at your house at 2:00 a.m., they’re not bringing good news.
Jeff Bartz, pastor of Grace Baptist Church, Batavia, New York, answered his door and learned that an officer had died in the line of duty. So, as the Genesee County Sheriff’s Office chaplain (endorsed by Regular Baptist Chaplaincy), Jeff went with the officers.
It was a full-circle moment for Jeff, whose first encounter with Grace Baptist Church—and local law enforcement—was in 1995, when he’d been arrested for shoplifting.
“My parents were desperate. Didn’t know what to do with me,” Jeff says. “So they just decided we were going to go to this church. . . . I had a shaved head, a yin-yang necklace, and a hat that said kiss my butt.”
While 15-year-old Jeff “knew Jesus was the answer,” he was waiting (hoping?) for the church to outright reject him. Instead, they did the opposite.
“People at that church just love,” Jeff says. Through the gospel and Grace Baptist’s hospitable love, before long, he was off to Bible college for ministry training.
Meanwhile, an unmarried, pregnant young woman named Jami showed up at Grace “expecting to just sneak in and sneak out.” But that wasn’t what happened.
“Everyone loved on me there,” Jami says. “There was something different.”
Making a Difference
Jeff and Jami met at church, married, and began ministry at a church in Ohio. Then in 2007, God led them back to Grace Baptist Church. Jeff served as a youth pastor under Pastor Don Shirk, transitioned into an associate role in 2016, and became lead pastor in 2023. Having earned a DMin in Biblical counseling, Jeff established a counseling ministry through the church.
“We counsel people, plus we train counselors,” Jeff says. “One of the biggest ways we help other churches is actually in counseling pastors, sometimes counseling them through hard church situations.”
Grace’s counseling team currently has nine certified counselors, most of whom are volunteers. The counseling ministry helps people who come with needs of all kinds, but Jeff says the most common issues are anxiety, depression, and struggling marriages.
“People just need help connecting the dots between the gospel and the Bible to real life, and those dots don’t always get connected in a public forum.”
Jeff estimates about three-quarters of baptisms every year are from people who meet the church through the counseling ministry.
Jeff and the staff don’t just wait for people to come to them, though. They’re also involved in the community in various ways. In addition to Jeff’s chaplaincy, the associate pastor, Zack Dawson, is the Batavia Police Department chaplain. Jami works with a Catholic high school.
“We’re not isolated in our church. We constantly look for involvement in the community.”
In 2022, Grace Baptist became a storm shelter during Winter Storm Elliott, a raging Christmas week blizzard. Working with the American Red Cross, the city of Batavia, and Genesee County, the church housed and fed more than 200 stranded travelers. Grace canceled Christmas services but gathered the guests for carols and Scripture before authorities lifted the three-day travel ban on Christmas afternoon.
So when the police department tragically lost an officer in the middle of the night, Jeff was the first phone call. And because of the church’s counseling ministry and community presence, Jeff and Grace Baptist’s staff could offer prayer, stability, trauma counseling, and grief counseling.
“We identified a need to get the whole sheriff’s office together to debrief the incident and to talk about trauma and grief,” Jeff says. So they did.
Jeff led a debrief for the officers, and the church hosted a dinner. Grace Baptist Church did what they do best: “just love.”
