How Ministering Outside the Box Reshaped My Ministry and My Life

When I became a Christian at age 21, I immediately felt a need to share the truth with everybody in some way. I connected with a local church and developed a strong relationship with the youth pastor who took me under his wing and discipled me. I really looked up to him because he was a little rough around the edges like myself and was an “out of the box” thinker, so we connected really well. He spoke the idea of me becoming a youth pastor someday. He believed in me and saw my passion for winning teenagers for Christ.

I took online courses and received my certification to preach back in 1995 and started leading the Jr. High age at our church. Julie and I got married later that year and became youth pastors in 1997. Our first church experience was a little rough, not only did I not know what I was doing I was not a great fit with the pastor. Not knowing what the pastor, associate relationship was supposed to be like, I allowed some things that I never would of outside the church.

I had worked many years in retail management before becoming a youth pastor and I would never treat my employees and allow someone to treat me the way that my wife and I were treated. I learned real quick that being a pastor doesn’t make someone a good leader. The pastor was a nice guy and meant well but didn’t have quality leadership abilities.

We worked under him for seven years and after about three I realized that if it wasn’t for the teenagers I would go back to retail management. When he resigned, the church asked me to stay, and I did. We had an interim pastor come and it was a great learning, growing and healing process for Julie and I.

After about a year the church hired a new permanent pastor and we served with him for about a year. He was a great guy but Julie and I knew it was time to move on. So after nine and a half years we resigned and moved to our most recent church.

It seemed that in both church settings, I just didn’t fit into the way ministry was done. Both churches were very traditional in the way they saw things working. I would constantly have different ideas about reaching the unchurched and it was just not resonating with others in leadership. So even though I got along well with the pastor, I still felt a little held back to do some of the things that I believed would really be exciting and effective for our church.

It was about two years ago that my wife and I started making some better health decisions through running. Because of it, God started opening doors for us to connect with and build relationships with a lot of unchurched/dechurched people. It was a new passion that was born within us we were now ministering outside the church more than we ever had, and to think we had been in the church as pastors for 15 years. It was crazy! We started feeling that this was how it should be all the time as pastors.

We really tried to make it work in our local church. We wanted to expand what the ministry looked like, and spend less time in the office and more in the community; right away we could see that this was going to be tough. Once we were determined that this was more than just something that we were going to do nights and weekends, it was a call that God had given us, I shared it with our pastor and at first, he was very supportive and allowed us to stay at the church.

That year was both really good but also very hard. As we got close to the time of our transition we were really hoping that it would work to create a little bit of a different position and stay at the church, we really believed this was a great opportunity. Even though the leadership was very supportive, they didn’t see how this could fit with the vision of the church. So in July of this year we resigned and August 31st was our last Sunday, and we have stepped away from the traditional Pastorate to pursue a new way to pastor. I love the church and believe that it is the hope of the world, and I also believe we must rethink the way we do things. Having a senior pastor, associate pastor, youth pastor and children’s pastor is not always the most effective way to do ministry.

I think we must ask ourselves, do we have those positions because that’s the way it’s been in the modern church or are we doing it because it’s most effective? I would have to sadly say the first is probably true. My wife and I, after 17+ years in the local church as pastors have been out for 3 weeks now and I can honestly say our ability for real organic ministry within our community is tenfold, just without the paycheck.

Jerry and Julie Mullins love working with people to help them reach their full potential in life. Our Mission is helping people down the path of holistic health, by living active, powerful, and effective lives through intentional focus on physical, emotional, and spiritual health. You can find out more about them on Facebook.