Rev. Jeffrey T. Fartro was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and grew up in Houston, Pennsylvania, a small town 20 miles south of Pittsburgh. He worked in the computer software industry for many years, employed by a company now known as Ansys, Inc. The company produces an industry-leading software package for mechanical and civil engineering applications. After many years of secular employment, he sensed the call to ministry, returned to school, and graduated from Calvin College in 1996 with a B.A. in Philosophy and Classical Languages, and, in 2001, he received a Master of Divinity (M.Div.) from Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Greenville, South Carolina. While in seminary, he met his wife Lynn, a native of Concord, California and a graduate of Bob Jones University (B.A., Elementary Education and Art; M.A., Biblical Counseling). Jeff and Lynn were married in 1998.

Pastor Fartro comes from a checkered religious background. Raised in a home with a Methodist mother and a Roman Catholic father, he became a Christian while in high school through the influence of the parachurch organization Youth for Christ/Campus Life. Shortly after his conversion to Christ, he was briefly involved with a Pentecostal church. When in his mid-twenties, he read for the first time the Westminster Confession of Faith, he became convinced that the Reformed faith was the purest expression of biblical Christianity. He then joined the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC), the church where he had membership from 1991 to 2007.

His first pastoral call immediately following seminary was to Cherry Hill OPC in Cherry Hill, New Jersey (2002-2005). In that call, Rev. Fartro strove to make the Reformed faith understandable and applicable by developing an extensive Inquirers’ Class, a class he still teaches regularly. He also preaches mainly expositional sermons directly from the original languages of the Bible.

From 2006 to mid-2007, Rev. Fartro served as the interim minister for Christ Presbyterian Church in Elkton, Maryland. During that time, Rev. Fartro assisted the congregation in finding and joining a denomination.

Rev. Fartro and his wife Lynn have two young sons and a third child due in September of 2008. He enjoys the many miles of biking in Cleveland community, playing board games such as Risk on the Westminster PCA game-night, and visiting his in-laws in the San Francisco Bay area.