About Me
Hi, I’m Darin, the Lead Pastor of Cedar Point Church.
I grew up in Nashua, IA, and have spent twenty-eight of my thirty-seven years of life living here. My wife, Deedie, and I were high school sweethearts and graduated in the same class of 1992. We were married in June 1997 where we lived in Alta Vista, IA, for our first five years. Deedie taught high school at Howard-Winneshiek driving thirty minutes to the north while I drove thirty minutes to the south working as a contractor building houses in the Nashua & Charles City areas.
We then moved back to Nashua in 2002 where I continued building houses and Deedie stayed at home with our then two children. It was during that time that I felt I needed to make a change in my life and as a shock to most of our friends and family, gave up ten years of construction, packed our family up, and moved to Toccoa, GA, where I studied to receive my B.A. in Pastoral Ministries at Toccoa Falls College.
After spending four years in Georgia we then felt called to return to Nashua to enter the world of church planting.
Deedie and I have four awesome kids; two boys and two girls. Kaylee’s our oldest and was born February 2000. Eighteen months later Luke came in August 2001. Titus was born just before we left Georgia (Nov. 2008) and Kelly joined us a little over a year ago (Feb. 2010). The six of us love spending time together, usually doing something outdoors.
I grew up attending church in Nashua all of my life but it never really meant that much to me. I never put my own thought or effort into what God wanted for my life. I was a bit of a wild guy in high school but would’ve still claimed to be a “Christian” if asked.
Then when I was twenty-three a series of events occurred in my life that made me question my faith and salvation for the first time and I discovered I was trusting in the wrong things to save me. But God had placed into my life some people who showed me that we can only be saved by having a personal relationship with Jesus. So in 1997 at the age of twenty-three I chose to begin following Christ and it’s been a journey ever since. Six years later God grabbed my heart again and showed me with 1 John 2:17 that the things I was chasing after in life were not going to matter eternally. It was time to start living my life to impact eternity.
Scared out of my mind we packed up and moved to Georgia never expecting to return. But I am excited and grateful that He has brought us back. While my life is by no means perfect, I hope that my faith is evident by the way I live my life and I long to be the husband, father, and man of God He has called me to be.
That is also my desire for everyone else. Just like God, I long to see people living in the freedom found in knowing and following Jesus. He has the power to transform lives and set you free from sin and the past. There is nothing he can’t overcome, if you trust him. My life was transformed by Christ. I want to see others transformed as well!