Coming to us by way of Argentina, Peru, and Tennessee, Mr. Jared Bouton is ready for his fresh start here at Judah, as the seventh- through ninth-grade Bible teacher.
Mr. Bouton went to college to study history education, which usually puts a person on the path to be a teacher. God, though, had different plans for him. Mr. Bouton said, “I wanted to teach at a private university, but God redirected my life. When I graduated, I went to the mission field instead.”
He became a mobilization coordinator. A mobilization coordinator, as Mr. Bouton describes it, “connects with people in the local ministry or church ministry, providing opportunities for them to go on mission trips, and coaches people who feel like they were called to the mission field.”
As a mobilization coordinator, Mr. Bouton lived in South America two times. He lived in Argentina for a year and in Peru for two years. While he was in South America, he helped to film various Christian television shows, which broadcasted in multiple languages to multiple countries. He wasn’t exactly prepared, but he did adapt. He said, “I didn’t know Spanish at all when I moved to Argentina, but I very quickly learned it there, being immersed in the culture. After about four months, I was pretty proficient, in regard to being able to communicate conversationally with people.”
The Spanish he learned, though, was practically a name tag saying “I’m from Argentina.” Apparently, Argentinians speak a different dialect from, and have a mutual rivalry with, everyone else in South America. So when Mr. Bouton tried to talk Argentine Spanish in Peru, he was immediately dismissed and even called out. He said, “I would go places and get treated poorly. People would tell me, ‘You speak Spanish like an Argentine.’ In South America, Argentine people don’t generally like anybody else from South America, and everybody else from South America doesn’t really like Argentina.”
Undeterred, Mr. Bouton went to a language institute to curb his accent into something more well received. He said, “I took some classes to try to kick the accent I learned in Argentina. You’d think you learned a language, right? You go to another place, and you can speak the language just fine. But I was constantly discriminated against because of how I talked.”
After his time as a mobilization coordinator, Mr. Bouton was a college professor for five years, teaching spiritual and leadership development at Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville, Tennessee. He said that “in a lot of ways, the middle school and early high school freshmen here at Judah are like the college students I had back then. The desire to be in attendance is different though, as it’s obviously required here, but not necessarily in higher education. College students get to make that choice. It’s a little bit different in that way, but I’ve enjoyed both.”
Mr. Bouton is also experienced as a pastor. He got his start by pure happenstance. He said, “I asked the pastor if he would be willing, or if the church would be willing, to give me a space that I could use as an office in the church, even if it was just a closet somewhere. The pastor said, ‘Well, I’ll give you a space, but I’d like you to come on staff. You can have the office, but you’ve got to come on staff here at the church.’ So we prayed about that, and I just felt like that was what God wanted for me, and I came on part-time.” Here in Illinois, Mr. Bouton is on staff at Decatur’s First Church of the Nazarene, or as he calls it “D1 Naz.” Now he can’t think what his life would be like if he wasn’t a pastor.
When Mr. Bouton moved from Tennessee to Illinois, he saw that Judah had an opening for an elementary teacher, so he sent a link to his wife Ashley, who also has experience in education. He said, “She is a teacher. She has been in the classroom for a few years and has kind of always worked in early childhood development. So I sent the link to her, and she sent something back to me saying, ‘Hey, they have an opening for a Bible teacher as well.’ I had seen that, but I hadn’t really considered it until she sent it to me. We began to talk and pray about things, until we decided to fill out the application and pursue it.”
Here at Judah, Mr. Bouton feels he’s not yet made an impact per se, but he says he has added a new flavor to the melting pot. Seventh-grader Jack Yeackley says this about his time with Mr. Bouton: “He’s a really fun teacher. He does get strict when he needs to be, but he lets us work on our stuff, without that step by step that makes you feel controlled.”
Mr. Bouton sees Judah as a school with determined and serious Christian discipleship, and he believes Judah will provide a good foundation for his own children. He said, “I think Judah is a place that really believes in Jesus, promotes Jesus, and helps and encourages people to promote Jesus to the rest of the world. I think that we strive for excellence and that we take seriously people having a relationship with Jesus. I love that about being here. I especially love that for my children. I think it’s an incredible thing to see them in a place where they are being well educated, but also living the truth that a lot of times the world tries to hide. I’ve come to adore many of the people here already, and I have hope that we can be part of the Judah community for a long time to come.”
—Michael Oshimokun, class of ’26
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