Pastor Farmer grew up in Southern WV. He is a graduate from Welch High School in 1978, and attended both Virginia Tech and Concord College, where he played college baseball for four years. He graduated from Concord College with a B A in Psychology in 1983.

Upon graduation, he immediately accepted a call to the ministry, accepting a position with the Coalition For Christian Outreach, a regional campus ministry organization serving campus’ in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and WV. He worked with this organization for ten years, receiving extensive theological and ministry training, and serving on the campus’ of Salem College West Virginia University. During this time he completed work on his M. A. in Counseling Psychology at WVU and his Master of Divinity at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, married a member of First Baptist Church in Morgantown, WV, and shared in the birth of their first and only son. Rick and Kim have been married for close to twenty years now and their son Joshua is 15.

Pastor Rick accepted his first call to the Pastorate in 1993. It was a small country church in the suburbs of Morgantown, Goshen Baptist Church, and he was their first full time Pastor. During these years at Goshen he also worked six to eight hours a week at the Morgantown Pastoral Counseling Center, serving anywhere from four to eight clients a week. In 2001 he accepted a call to the congregation in Weston WV. In March of 2004 Pastor Rick accepted a call from First Baptist Church in Fairmont, WV.

In March of 2007 God led Pastor Rick to our congregation, Trinity Baptist Church, Marion, Ohio. Within the first two months of his arrival he completed his Doctoral of Ministry Degree from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. We are looking forward to many years of ministry with Dr. Farmer and his family.

Dr. Farmer has been powerfully influenced by the writings of C. S. Lewis, David Wells, Ed Wheat, John White, Eugene Peterson, M Scott Peck, J. I. Packer, Barbara Johnson, Rebecca Pippert, Lewis Smedes, R. C. Sproul, Richard Carlson, and Charles Stanley.