“Final name” made all the difference in Linthicum’s life

Authored by Jim Langham on Aug 18, 2010

He was born Jeff Edgell in Decatur. However, by the time he was in elementary school, he was Jeff Linthicum. But through the changing of names and for many years after, he faced an identity crisis that he satisfied through the intake of all types of drugs. Since he was raised in homes where there was alcohol, the solution to cover his misery was through use of drugs, serious drugs such as LSD, crystal meth, cocaine, and other harmful abuse methods.
These days, he sits behind the desk at the First Mennonite Church as the church’s head pastor. He is Rev. Jeff Linthicum, but his heart and life belong to Christ. His identity has gone from confusion to total identity in Christ. In his confusion, he was Jeff Edgell and Linthicum, but these days, Christ’s name is written across his heart. The final “name” changed his life and made him the servant he has become to the local congregation.
“I love people; I love to share their highs and lows,” said Linthicum. “I love to be there for their weddings, celebrate their baptisms and see their growth in Christ. God designed for me to be a pastor.
“I appreciate the opportunity to be with them in their grief, to share their highs and lows. I love to share the message of Christ in every circumstance of life. It is very life giving. I guess you might say that I’m like the round peg that fit into the round hole. God gave me the gifts to be a pastor.
“It’s about Christ and Christ alone; life in Christ is really exciting. I think about Him the first thing I get up in the morning,” Linthicum added.
But it wasn’t always that way. Linthicum was born into an alcoholic home. His parents divorced when he was in kindergarten due, in part, to drinking issues. His mother remarried a man retired from the Navy who got a job in Decatur. He was then employed at International Harvester.
However, when the Fort Wayne plant shut down, the family moved to California. A year after the move, his stepfather, who had adopted him and brought about the name change, passed away, so Linthicum came back to Indiana. This time he started drinking and partying.
A second move back to California brought heavier and more severe drug involvement. This time he was kicked out of various schools because of behavioral problems. He joined the Navy because his stepfather had been part of that branch of the military, but Linthicum was kicked out due to drug abuse.
He returned to Los Angeles where he lived homeless and severely addicted to drugs. When he started to see his friends die, he called his mother who had remarried and was living in Pennsylvania. She made arrangements for him to move back to relatives in Indiana. He was still partying and working at Decatur Casting.
“I called my brother and went to church with him. I went to the altar and accepted Christ as my savior,” said Linthicum. “I compare my condition at that time to that of Lazarus when he came out of the tomb. He was alive but he was still bound in grave clothes.
“I was a Christian but no one discipled me. I knew that I was supposed to read the Bible so I started. I was okay with Genesis and Exodus, but when I got to Leviticus, I started floundering. You have to have someone walk with you and help you when you have all of the baggage that I had,” said Linthicum.
“I met a girl and we got married, but we fell away. We fell away from the Lord and she left me. We had a lot of issues,” continued Linthicum. “At that time I started to listen to Christian radio. I heard Chris Mishler, the pastor at Crossroads Church. I liked Chris, so I decided to attend church there. I went forward again. But when the youth pastor, Ron Farthing, came and prayed with me, I told him that I had tried Christianity and it didn’t work.”
At that point, Farthing told Linthicum to give him some time and he would help disciple him in Christ. Linthicum went into discipleship counseling with Farthing and things started to change.
“He discipled me and mentored me. We worked through my past life,” observed Linthicum. “We didn’t just read the Bible. I had someone to walk with me and encourage me. This kind of discipling requires lots of time and energy and he had that.”
At that time, Linthicum started attending a young adult Bible study at the First Mennonite Church. He experienced great times of worship and Bible study. He started to sense a much deeper walk in his faith in God.
“I surrendered everything to Christ and started to walk and trust Him day by day,” observed Linthicum. “The drugs went away the first time I came to him, but I didn’t have any discipleship. We can’t break away from sin and the darkness of the world if we don’t walk with them.
“The resurrection power of Christ is much more powerful than anything Satan can throw at us,” continued Linthicum. “I knew that I needed to sacrifice everything else that I stood for and stand for Him.”
While he was attending the small group, Linthicum was called to the opportunity to become involved with a short-term missions program. The only problem was that he had to raise his support to participate. Thankfully, Crossroads Church took on his support and enabled him to follow the call to become involved for two years with the, “Reaching and Discipling,” program. He worked with church planting in London and at a youth center in Ireland.
Prior to going on the trip, he had sought to date Megan Lehman, a girl that he admired greatly, but she turned him down.
“I asked her out and she turned me down outright,” said Linthicum. “I can understand why; I was older than her and with my past it was very understandable.
“She had just returned from a mission trip to Brazil and really loved the Lord. But I told her I would never ask her out again because I still wanted her friendship. I didn’t want to lose that,” said Linthicum.
However, when he returned from Northern Ireland, Megan had experienced a “change of heart.” She was willing to consider another proposal from Linthicum and this time they were married.
They moved to Heston, Kansas where he enrolled in the pastoral ministries program at Heston College. While they were there, they were given the opportunity to be youth leaders at a Mennonite church. There, they experienced a very successful ministry together.
However, Linthicum still had missions in his blood. Even though he felt called to pastoral ministry, he was afraid, in some ways, because of all of the stories he had heard about pastor’s families and all that they went through.
In the meantime, he and Megan were given the opportunity for another missions trip, this time to Kosovo. However, do to cultural views about women, life became miserable for Megan.
“I knew that if God called us, he called us as a family. We would all be thriving. Megan wasn’t thriving so I knew we needed to come back to the states,” said Linthicum.
It was then that things opened for him to become head pastor at the Pine Creek Chapel Mennonite Church in Arcadia, Florida. Three years later, he was called to become the pastor of the First Mennonite Church in Berne and he assumed responsibilities at the local church on Dec. 1, 2009.
“One thing I was deeply concerned about was my own family and their relationship God,” said Linthicum. “I was so happy to learn that my mother and her husband had accepted Christ through Billy Graham ministries. I had the opportunity to baptize her in the Gulf of Mexico. God assured me that He would take care of my family and he did.
“I wouldn’t want to relive all that I went through, but I’m glad that I went through it because God has used it to touch other people’s lives,” said Linthicum. “God has used it to bring people to the kingdom; I am glad that I endured the pain and came to Christ for His testimony.”

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