Graduate Profile: Jerry Hurt

I live in Jerome, Idaho with my wife Megan and our two daughters, where I serve as the Associate Pastor at Northridge Fellowship. Although I could spend pages telling of the Lord’s providence in working out His decree in my life leading to this point, I will limit myself to the immense impact that Reformed Baptist Seminary has had on both me personally as well as on Northridge.

I have fairly deep Baptist roots. My grandfather spent his life heavily involved in Texas Baptist Men and SBC Disaster Relief. My father was a Southern Baptist pastor for most of my childhood. After spending some time in the army, I attended a university that is aligned with the Baptist General Convention of Texas for both undergraduate and graduate studies. Through all of that I had almost no knowledge of Baptist history, and what little doctrinal foundation I had was most certainly not reformed.

Thankfully, while I was in college I interned at a church where an associate pastor introduced me to the Doctrines of Grace, and I was hooked. After college, I served at a church in West Texas as a youth minister, and through my own study came to more understanding of Calvinism. At the time, I considered myself “reformed,” because I did not realize that there is much more to Reformed theology than Calvinism; however, the church I served at was what I consider pretty typical for a small-town Texas SBC church, and I joke that I had to keep my Calvinism to myself.

After a couple of years there, the Lord brought me and my family to Idaho as a youth and music minister. I continued my study of Reformed theology, and somewhere along the way (after two degrees from a Baptist university, mind you) I came across the 1689 for the first time. I soon felt led to go back to school, and as I searched for a Reformed Baptist seminary that was affordable and online, I came across RBS and enrolled in the Marrow Program with the Historical Theology emphasis.

One question that has constantly come to my mind through my studies is, “Why did I not know this?” Learning of the Reformed and confessional heritage of Baptists has truly been life-changing. I am now by conviction a confessional Reformed Baptist with a deep desire to see the Church return to the “old paths.”

My studies at RBS have had an enormous impact on Northridge Fellowship as well as I have been able to share the education that I have received with others alongside our pastor who has continued to reform through his own pursuit of a DMin. The story of Northridge is a testament to the grace of God and bigger than the space allows, but it can be summarized this way: In 2019, NRF was a moderately Calvinistic, dispensational-leaning church that was fairly ambiguous doctrinally in many ways. Fast-forward five years, and we are currently teaching through the 1689 in Sunday school to head-nods and hearty “amens,” moving towards adopting it as our confession.

I do pray that the faculty, staff, and supporters of Reformed Baptist Seminary are encouraged to know that God is reforming a small church in a small town in southern Idaho, and that RBS has been a massive part of that as a secondary means by which God has worked out His decree here. I am grateful for my time at RBS so far, and I am excited to continue my studies as I move into the full MDiv program.

Jerry Hurt