Dallas Henry, the senior minister at Capital West Christian Church, arrived in August of 2020.
He and his family arrived in the midst of the pandemic.
"It was a weird time to move," he said. "These have been two interesting years."
Henry met his wife, Alpha, in 2001 and married her in 2003. She is a Jefferson City native, whose maiden name is Brown.
Before moving to Jefferson City, they spent the previous 12 years in Cubs country, about 60 miles south of Chicago.
So yes, they are Cubs fans.
"I have three Cubby fan sons," Henry said. "We've played catch on (Wrigley) field and the whole nine yards."
Henry said as their family grew, he and his wife wished to give the boys names with Biblical significance, and would be important throughout their lives.
Their oldest, Boaz, is 12.
In the Bible, Boaz is the person whom Ruth marries after she is widowed. He's called a kinsman redeemer, Henry said. His role is to provide for his family.
"That was significant to us," Henry said.
Their middle son is 10-year-old Justus. In the New Testament, after Judas betrayed Jesus, when disciples were looking for a new apostle, they wanted someone who had followed Jesus from the beginning. Justus was one of two men from whom the disciples selected.
Their youngest son is 7-year-old Ezra.
"We felt like whenever we had our third son, we were going to need a lot of help," Henry said. "Ezra means 'God helps.' He was the priest in the Old Testament that restored Israel to God."
Alpha Henry had attended Capital West Christian Church as a high school student.
The Henrys married at the church.
"We've always been connected to Capital West," Dallas Henry said. "Whenever we felt like God was telling us that we were done with our time in Illinois, we knew at that same time that this church was probably going to be looking for somebody in the near future. They had recently undergone a staff transition and had brought in somebody in the interim to kind of help navigate that."
Henry said he reached out to a person he knew and asked about the church and the health of the church. He soon applied for the senior minister role.
Lots of things had changed. But both Henrys were born and raised in Missouri, which always felt like home.
Church was meeting in person in Jefferson City. In Illinois, restrictions prevented that.
"It was very different," Henry said. "It was great -- coming here and getting back into some of the things we missed during the pandemic."
Folks at Capital West were focused on church health, he said.
"They'd had a season of struggle," Henry said. "When we came, it was really beginning to focus on organizational health and working with the leadership here -- the elders, the deacons here coming together under one mission."
They focused on determining where God was leading the organization, he said.
Once they felt that they had a handle on what God wanted them to do, they began building what God is calling them to do.
They had to maintain the care of people.
"Loving people well, and meeting the needs of people we can is significant to us," Henry said.
Folks in the church love the community and demonstrate it through their acts of service, he said.
"We've all changed as we've all learned each other," he said. "That's bound to happen. My wife and I lived in a couple of very different regions of the U.S. We have changed in some of our sensibilities just with those life experiences. Organizations take on parts of their leaderships' personalities. And I can't help but be changed by the people here."
Joe Gamm/News Tribune photo: Capital West Christian Church Senior Minister Dallas Henry chats about community, Christianity and Cubs.