As president of One Heartbeat Ministries, an organization he founded to bring the Word of God to people around the world and engage them in the Christian mission, Jeff Schwarzentraub provides overall vision and direction for the organization. He serves as a motivational and inspirational speaker at youth and college groups, men’s ministries, churches, businesses, civic groups, camps, retreats and other venues throughout the world.
Upon graduation from the University of Illinois, where Schwarzentraub helped launch the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, he embarked on a career with Northwestern Mutual Insurance Company. Although he showed great promise, Schwarzentraub felt a higher calling to the ministry and left the company. He served as a youth minister for two years before enrolling in classes at Dallas Theological Seminary, from which he graduated with honors and was awarded the H.A. Ironside Award, given to the most outstanding speaker in each graduating class.
After returning to central Illinois, Schwarzentraub continued to hone his leadership skills through athletic and faith-based opportunities, including serving as a football coach at Richwoods High School. In 2004, he founded One Heartbeat Ministries and has pursued its cause by championing large-scale events both stateside and internationally. He teaches at several churches throughout the Midwest, has two weekly radio shows, and just completed his first book, Challenging Christianity.
In 2006, Schwarzentraub obtained support from 64 churches and 10 parachurch ministries in the Greater Peoria Area and secured the Peoria Civic Center for a community-wide youth outreach event called Converge. In preparation, more than 700 youth were trained in how to build relationships with others in order to share their faith—work which paid off when attendance numbered nearly 4,000 participants.
Schwarzentraub feels a responsibility to build up the lives of those around him with the hope that they will do the same for others. He mentors local men through two men’s Bible studies and is a licensed pastor in the Fellowship of Evangelical Churches. He has received leadership training with Tentmakers in Minneapolis and Fellowship Associates in Little Rock, Arkansas, and participated in the North American Institute for Emerging Evangelists at the Billy Graham Training Center in North Carolina. iBi
