You keep waiting for the burning bush
You keep waiting for the sign. The dramatic moment. The voice from the sky that finally tells you what your life is for. So you stay put. You hold off on the next step because it does not feel big enough to count. Ken Primeau, lead pastor of Mercy Road Northeast, knows that waiting. On this week’s episode of the Daron Earlewine Podcast, Ken walks through a journey that looks nothing like a lightning bolt and everything like a quiet, repeated yes. He never had a burning bush moment. What he had was a string of small decisions that added up to a life of purpose.
A life built on small yeses
Ken’s story runs from Winnipeg to San Jose to Pepperdine to Hawaii to, of all places, Indiana. At 18 he jumped into one of the priciest schools in the country with a single year of funding and a prayer that God would cover the rest. God did. On a missions trip to Panama, he felt God ask whether he would be willing to give up everything, and his first honest answer was no. Then he surrendered anyway. Each turn followed the same pattern. Say yes to reading the Bible. Say yes to a guys group. Say yes to whatever God put in front of him. As Ken puts it, you keep saying yes, and one morning you wake up and you are a pastor. The master plan was never the point. The next faithful step was.
Why home is a person, not a place
When you have moved as much as Ken has, the question “where is home” gets complicated. His answer reframes the whole thing. Home is the presence of God. Home is Jesus. That is why he could land in Indianapolis, hear two words he never would have picked for himself, “welcome home,” and actually mean it. Here is the definition of success Ken is working out: you discover who God created you to be, then you partner with God to do what He is calling you to do. That is it. Not the size of the platform. Not the applause. Just a surrendered yes and a willingness to move when God moves. So here is your question. What is God asking of you right now, and will your answer be yes? If this episode stirs something in you, subscribe wherever you listen and reach out anytime at daron@daronearlewine.com.
Episode Summary:
Most leaders are waiting on a dramatic, burning bush moment to tell them what their life is for. So they stall. They spin their wheels, convinced the “real” calling has not arrived yet.
In this episode, Daron Earlewine sits down with Ken Primeau, lead pastor of Mercy Road Northeast, who built a thousand person church without ever planning to. Ken’s whole story is a chain of small yeses. A blank check handed to God in a Panama outhouse pit, a scholarship that came through at the last second, a dream that pointed him to a state he could not find on a map, and two words he heard as his plane touched down in Indiana.
If you have been measuring your life by milestones nobody handed you, this conversation reframes what a faithful, purposeful life actually looks like.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
⚡️ Purpose gets built through small steps of obedience, not one cinematic calling.
⚡️ A surrendered “blank check” yes to God strips the fear out of risk.
⚡️ Healthy leadership shares the weight instead of building everything around one personality.
Which yes is God asking you to say right now? Drop it in the comments, and if this episode helped you, hit subscribe so more people find it.
Connect with Daron on Social Media:
If this episode hit you in the messy middle, share it with someone who needs the reminder, leave a comment with where you’re feeling stuck, and hit subscribe so you don’t miss Part 2.
Links to the Daron Earlewine Podcast
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: DEP 214 – Ken Primeau
Ken: I feel like my whole life has been little steps, not always a big kairos moment. It’s been a lot of yes, yes, next step, yes, yes. Even in that, those turning points were just a lot of little yeses. Saying yes to reading the Bible for the first time, saying yes to joining a guys group, saying yes to whatever God put in front of me. That’s really been my journey. I have not had a big life plan goal. It’s been a lot of yes, God. Surrender. Take the next step.
Daron: Created on purpose and for purpose. Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Daron Earlewine Podcast. Daron Earlewine, your host. Stoked that you downloaded this episode. Once again, from the bottom of my heart, genuinely grateful for all the new folks who have joined us here in the Daron Earlewine Podcast community. If you haven’t had a chance to subscribe to whatever channel you watch, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, go ahead and hit the subscribe button so we can continue to get this message out around the world. Today we’re sitting down with a good friend of mine, a coworker of mine, my pastor as well. That’s kind of weird to say. Ken Primeau. Ken, welcome to the podcast.
Ken: Grateful to be here, man. Long time viewer and never been invited. So thank you for inviting me finally, Daron.
Daron: I figured you were going to start there. Before we recorded, I said, you’ve been on the podcast before, right? And they said, no. So full transparency, we’re putting the list together the past month or so of new guests we want to have on. Immediately I said, I should have Ken on. But I thought, he’s already been on. Then I went back and looked at best episodes, and I’m like, oh, I’ve never had Ken on. We’ve only been working together for six years.
Ken: It’s all right. It’s fine.
Daron: Anyway, I’m glad you’re here now.
Ken: I’m here now. Good.
Daron: Ken, give the folks, I know you well, they don’t maybe know you at all. Some would if they’re part of the Mercy Road family of churches or all of your journeys around the globe. But give us a little 30,000 foot intro of who Ken is.
Ken: Yeah, so I am the lead pastor of Mercy Road Northeast, and Daron’s a teaching pastor there and has been part of leading that church since we launched it six years ago. That’s a church in Fortville, Indiana. We’re in a small town of like 5,000 people right on the cusp of suburbia, a lot of young families moving to that area. So it’s been a joy getting the chance to lead that. And then I’m married to Carolyn. Next month is 20 years.
Daron: Congratulations, dude.
Ken: Twenty years of marriage. She’s incredible. And we’ve got four kids, two boys and two girls. A 13 year old, 11, nine and seven. Our kids are out of diapers and into the teenager zone right now.
Daron: You got it all. So, Ken, we have been working together for almost six years now. I want to get there eventually, because it is a unique dynamic that we have, one that I would say not a lot of lead pastors would probably be cool with. So we’re going to unpack that. But I want to go into a little more of your journey. We talk on the podcast about our three tenets. We always say God’s for you, not against you, near you, not far away. He’s created you on purpose and for a purpose. I have been very intrigued by and loved your story that brought you all the way to Indiana. But even more than that, because God has had you in different countries, across major oceans. You have had quite the journey. People may pick up, not strong, but maybe just a seasoning of a little Canadian accent every once in a while.
Ken: A boot. Maybe.
Daron: You don’t have the strong Canadian. You’ve worked that out.
Ken: I’ll tell the story on that.
Daron: I’m guessing your family is still in Canada. Are they strong with the Canadian?
Ken: My mom, so mum is how you would say it. Mum, not mom. She definitely has not lost the accent at all. She lives in California but has continued to say all the Canadian words.
Daron: So, born in Canada. Where at?
Ken: I grew up in Winnipeg, Canada. It’s flatter than Indiana, right in the middle of Canada. My parents, their grandparents, their whole family. Grew up in a Christian home. I have three older brothers and the youngest got picked on a lot, but also protected by them.
Daron: Four boys.
Ken: Yeah, we shut it down after three.
Daron: Your parents are like, no, one more, let’s get that girl. No, here’s another boy.
Ken: So I grew up in a Canadian home, a Christian home. Then my family moved to San Jose, California, when I was 13, eighth grade. With that move, that was a huge moment in my life. Teenage years. Looking back on it, it was probably one of the best things that ever happened to me. But in that moment, anyone who has kids and you have that major move, we moved countries. Thankfully I spoke English, but I said words differently, so kids would make fun of me for that. I had grown up in a suburban area, much like where we live now, where my friends from kindergarten were my friends in eighth grade. We had grown up together, and a lot of them are still friends and live in the same community. So moving across the country, having to make new friends, and yeah, I had an accent so they would make fun of words. I remember getting marked down in my science class because I was drawing this graph and I wrote the word color, C-O-L-O-U-R. I added a U in there because that’s how Canadians write it. I got marked down on that, for spelling color wrong.
Daron: Really?
Ken: So that was a moment in my life of, oh man, I’m getting corrected on this stuff that was normal for me, but now I’m in a new context.
Daron: At 13, you’re going into teenage years, trying to figure out who you are. Junior high, basically the worst time of identity formation in your life. Ken, the new Canadian guy in San Jose, California.
Ken: So that’s been part of it for me. Even when I’m preaching, I’ll bring up that I’m from Canada, and it’s because of that formative time. I move, I’m the Canadian kid, I love hockey, everyone else loves baseball, basketball, other sports. It became a part of my identity. But in that year, my brother got a guitar for Christmas. I didn’t have my friend group yet. I’m still figuring things out. So I pick up a guitar and just start playing. I start playing like four or five hours a day. Get home from school, start playing guitar. And I bring this up because I think for a lot of people there are moments like that, defining moments in your life that became painful moments. That pain became part of my purpose, because I learned how to play guitar since I had the time and I didn’t have the friends. Out of that, we were involved in a local church. I started playing guitar in the youth group, leading worship and playing guitar, singing. My freshman year in high school, I started becoming a spiritual leader in our youth group.
Daron: Before you started learning guitar, did you sing? Did you have a lot of musical stuff in the family?
Ken: My mom was a music teacher. She plays piano, she sings. All of us took piano. So I was taking piano lessons at that time.
Daron: So music wasn’t brand new.
Ken: No, but the guitar was. I was able to figure it out because I can read music, I can sing. So I started learning chords, learning how to play, learning how to sing. That was the beginning of leadership for me, leading worship in the local church, in the youth group, getting opportunities there. So that became part of my journey, my story. Then journeying on, through my high school years, I became pretty hypocritical. By junior and senior year I’m the upfront spiritual leader, then I go to a public high school where no one from my church goes and just live a different lifestyle. I had this double lifestyle going on until I ended up going off to college. A lot of people who go off to college are like, freedom, I’m going to do whatever I want now. For me that was a defining moment of identity once again. I have a fresh start. I only knew one person, my roommate and best friend from high school. We roomed all four years in college. I didn’t know anyone else. But it was a fresh start. And I made the shift from being a consumer Christian to a disciple. I actually started reading the Bible. I actually got community and talked with other guys about stuff going on in my life. Up to that point it was large group church. None of the small community discipleship type stuff.
Daron: One issue too, Ken. It doesn’t have to be just people on a stage, but oftentimes it can be. A lot of it is also tied to where we have charisma or talent. I’m in no way throwing stones at the local church. But when we early on in life figure out, oh, this is the thing I can do publicly to get attention, appreciation, approval from people, I don’t think you’re alone in that. Whether people are 16 or 26 or 36, there’s this kind of onstage public persona and I can do all the right things with this talent I have. I’m not trying to throw stones at the church, because any organization can do it, but man, we’ll take your talent, because it’s doing some work for us. I don’t think it’s necessarily malicious. It’s maybe just lazy. We may not be all that involved in making sure that your character, your actual relationship with the Lord, is being developed. Developing you as a leader, somebody who is led by Christ, not just somebody who leads people.
Ken: Absolutely. And I think it’s tough.
Daron: Some people never, praise God, like you went to college and said, no, I’m going to start actually reading the Bible. Basic. Weird. We’re leading worship for everything, but, oh yeah, reading the Bible, actually letting God’s word shape and form my life. A lot of people can get caught in that trap. So it’s cool that you saw that and began to make that shift. Was there a kairos moment in that, or was it more the relationships and the community you were around?
Ken: I feel like my whole life has been little steps, not always a big kairos moment. It’s been a lot of yes, yes, next step. Those turning points were just a lot of little yeses. Saying yes to reading the Bible for the first time, saying yes to joining a guys group, saying yes to whatever God put in front of me. To be honest, that’s been my journey. I have not had a big life plan goal. It’s been a lot of yes, God, surrender, take the next step.
Daron: Has that ever felt, have you ever felt negative about that? Like, man, is there something wrong with me, why don’t I have the big thing? Or has it been, no, I’ve seen God through the little things? Have you ever had moments, maybe even during those yeses, where you heard somebody else’s crazy story, an angel came, or a big car wreck and this thing happened, and it felt like, am I doing it right? Does there need to be something more special or grandiose?
Ken: That’s a great question. What I’ve struggled with is, do I have the clarity? Is there enough clarity? Am I doing what God has asked? Am I doing the right thing, what God created me for? Over time it’s become clearer and clearer. But I never had a burning bush moment calling me into ministry. For some people it’s, man, I was at a Christian camp, and it was a big thing, here’s the date. I never had that type of calling into ministry. It’s been one yes after another. Then you kind of look back and you wake up one morning and you’re a pastor. And I’m in Indiana. I live in Indiana. I kept saying yes, dang it.
Daron: Eugene Peterson has a book. I started reading it, never finished it. Something about a long journey of obedience. I’m screwing the quote up. This is a terrible moment of the podcast. It’s a Peterson book, but there’s that idea in it.
Ken: You got a Coop?
Daron: It’s that whole concept. I think it’s actually really healthy, and hopefully really inspiring for the audience. If you’re at that place and you’re like, well, I’m waiting for the burning bush, no, just, what do you think God’s saying to you now? Say yes. Then you see along the way, oh, I am good at this. Or when I do this, people affirm that. Just continue to step into those moments, but continually open-handed. God, what do you want me to do? Because there are times where God takes you on a right turn and you’re like, I wasn’t planning on this, and he shows up in some cool ways. I remember you telling the story about college. You went to Pepperdine. There was a pretty cool thing that happened where the price tag of college was pretty hefty, and then God showed up and opened some doors.
Ken: I only applied for one school. It was there or nothing, and I got in. Problem was the price tag. Both my parents were elementary school teachers. We weren’t rolling in the dough. Pepperdine is one of the most expensive colleges in America. I looked it up last year, it was the most expensive school in America.
Daron: Sorry, kids.
Ken: Dad went there. So it was an expensive school. I had some scholarships, and then my college fund, I threw all of it into freshman year and took out some loans. The game plan was, God provide for sophomore year and beyond, or I’m coming back home. So I moved about six hours away from where I lived in San Jose to Pepperdine for freshman year. I loved it. It was the only school I felt like, that’s where I’m supposed to be. So I wrote a letter to the dean, applied for scholarships, did everything I could. I got a phone call during summer break. My game plan was, if I don’t get funding, I’m just going to transfer to community college. He talks to me for a while, and I explain, hey, I’m starting to sense that God might be calling me, I thought at the time to be a worship pastor, and I don’t want to end up with $100,000 in debt. A couple days later he calls me back and says, hey, if we give you this number of scholarship, will you stay? Yeah. So God provided through that for my three years. I ended up with just a little bit of debt at the end of it and finished out Pepperdine.
Daron: So when you came to that moment, Ken, okay, I’m jumping off the cliff of faith, I’m all in, I’ve got some scholarship but I’ve only got a year, you’re probably 17, 18 years old. We don’t really have a huge perspective at that age. That kind of risk is just like, yeah, I’m 18, let’s do it, I like Pepperdine. But were there some moments where you were like, God’s gotta do something? What was that like emotionally? Was it more excitement for the risk, or was it like, dude, this is probably going to go bad?
Ken: I think it’s part of my wiring, of how God’s designed me, and you too, more of the risk taker, entrepreneur, apostolic. As you’re saying that, I’m thinking, that was part of those seeds already there. My mind in that was, I feel like God’s asking me to do this. God will figure it out. I’ll work hard and do my part. God will do his part. It’s going to turn out. And if not, we’ll figure it out. It wasn’t this impending doom. It was, all right, let’s go.
Daron: That’s cool to see. I don’t know if you had all the knowledge at that time of, God’s created me to be more of a pioneer apostolic type of person, I’m not risk averse, I’m going to push the edge of it. But a lot of it sometimes, even if you took an assessment, it’s those kinds of experiences, those kinds of risks, that help you start really seeing, yeah, this is how he made me.
Ken: Love it.
Daron: So you get to Pepperdine, that works out. Where’s the next adventure?
Ken: Actually while at Pepperdine, this is part of my life, just yes, my freshman year I’m saying yes to all these things, and I say yes to my first missions trip. It’s a service project, Project Serve. We’re going to Panama, and we’re digging out a hole for an outhouse for a missionary, for the community to have this toilet. That’s literally the project. A bunch of college students digging in Panama. This guy planted a little rural village church. He’s probably about our age now, 40 something. He’s American, living there. He’s given up all of it. He lives in a thatched roof type home. There’s no air conditioning, no regular running water and toilets. He gave all that up to bring the gospel to these people. So here I am, reading the Bible, getting in community, growing in my faith, and they give us a little journal, like they do on a missions trip, and they say, hey, go and reflect. We’d spent a few days there. The prompt is, what is God saying to you? And I feel like God says to me, Ken, would you be willing to do this? And I go, no. Thanks for asking, God. I got the answer right here. No, I’m not willing to do this. So I started grappling with that. I come home from this trip and I’m like, Jesus, you have my life, I’ll do anything for you, but I mean, Panama, I’m not doing that, I’m going to live in a nice house in the US. I realized I’m putting boundaries on what yes God has for me. So I spent some time wrestling with that, and I finally get to a place in my prayer life with God where I say, God, I surrender. Romans 12 says, in view of God’s mercy, offer your life, offer yourself as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, this is your true and proper worship. It was, God, you’re looking for my yes, you’re looking for a surrendered life, so I surrender, and if this is what you want for me. And the guy was like, awesome, Ken, that’s the heart that I want. I’m not sending you to Panama. It’ll be Indiana later, but that’s the heart that I’m looking for. So I just surrendered. That really started the journey for me, which ended up becoming a pastor eventually, but it wasn’t in the moment like, I’m going to be a pastor. It was, whatever you have for me, God, Panama, missionary, whatever, I’m all in. Blank check. You have my yes. Eventually that led, through moments and stuff, to, hey, maybe I’m supposed to be a worship pastor. I’m leading worship at church, this feels like ministry, this is probably what I should do. So I went on a journey for years of wanting to be a worship pastor. Interned at churches. Between my junior and senior year, I interned at New Hope Christian Fellowship in Hawaii. Wayne Cordero planted that church. They planted hundreds of churches. It was the largest church in Hawaii. I interned there as a worship leader. They offered me a job for after I graduate. I finished Pepperdine, got married, moved to Hawaii, and worked at one of their churches. When I get there, the church plant I was at already hired a worship pastor. I had led worship while I was interning. I come back and they’re like, what do we need you for? So my mentor, who you got an opportunity to meet this past week, Creighton, he says, I want to invest in you, I see leadership in you. I’m like, all right, what do you want me to do? So I started doing young adult ministry at this church plant. I’m 22 years old, freshly married, doing ministry for 18 to 22 year olds. I started learning, how do I lead a Bible study, how do I teach people about Jesus, and they’re just pouring into me. I spent two years there, still grappling with, am I going to be a worship pastor, am I going to be a teaching pastor, what am I doing? Then I left to go to seminary. I get a master’s of divinity. I moved to the LA area, to Huntington Beach, California, and started going to school full time, because I think I’m supposed to be a teaching pastor but I’ve got to learn more of this stuff. I’m not naturally, let me get up in front of people and teach or talk. I’m not naturally, let’s get on a microphone. I’m fine being in the back of the room. If I’m up front, give me a guitar and let me sing. I’m more comfortable with that. So God’s moving me in that space. I need to get equipped, I’ve got to learn more Bible, theology. So I start going to school for that. My wife and I got married at the church she grew up in, in the Huntington Beach area. Her youth pastor did our wedding, and he reaches out and says, what do you think about starting a college ministry at our church? I’m like, I like you, I don’t love the church though. It’s a hundred and something year old church, dying. And God starts to speak to me in ways I hadn’t experienced before. I literally started having dreams. I’m sleeping at night and God’s speaking through dreams. One of them was this pastor in the dream talking to me, and he says, every church has its bumps and bruises, and then I wake up. I felt like God was saying through it, there’s no perfect church, and yeah, you don’t like this old church, but I’m calling you there.
Daron: Did you have experience or context or training in, like, God speaks through dreams, God does these kinds of weird things, before that at all?
Ken: That is a great question. A little bit, yes and no. I grew up in a church context that never talked about this kind of stuff. I grew up in a church where it was like Father, Son, and Holy Bible was the Trinity. We didn’t talk about the Holy Spirit at all. Then when I was in college, probably my sophomore or junior year, I’m learning a ton about other churches. I had grown up in a Baptist church in Canada, a non-denominational church. In college I was attending a Presbyterian church. These different traditions within Christianity. So I’m learning more about it, reading about all these different expressions of the church. And I’m reading the Bible for the first time, going through the Bible every year at this point, and I’m reading the book of Acts, and my roommate and I, I’m like, this doesn’t look like the churches we belong to. In the book of Acts, they’re praying for people for healing and people get healed, and God’s speaking in dreams, and Paul, the apostle Paul, gets a dream, a vision from God, he says, go to Macedonia and plant churches. And I’m like, God’s not talking to me like that. We didn’t have a church, or a mentor, or anyone that was talking to us about this stuff, but we just start talking, and we’re reading through the Bible, we’re crying out to God. One night in our dorm room, the Holy Spirit, I just had an encounter I can’t fully explain. The best words I could use, I felt God’s love and his presence and his nearness in a way I never had before. I was just like, God is real. I just experienced him. I experienced his love. It changed the way I thought about him. Because up to that point, and maybe you growing up in the church had this a lot too, it was so much about the Bible, which the Bible is the word of God. But even in the Bible, Jesus didn’t just communicate with God the Father through the written word. He didn’t just read the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, and that was his devotional time with God. Jesus would go up on a mountain and talk with his heavenly Father and come back and tell the disciples, I only do what I see the Father doing.
Daron: Only say what I hear him say.
Ken: So Jesus himself, God in the flesh, showing us how we should live and interact with God, didn’t just read the Bible, but he also listened for God’s voice. So I started to experience that in my own life. I end up at that church in Hawaii. They believe those things, and they started teaching and equipping that more. So I had little flavors there. Particularly there, something I started getting exposed to that I hadn’t before was prophetic words, where someone would listen for God’s voice. Maybe it was a vision, or they actually saw something in their mind’s eye, or just a prompting, or maybe a scripture that God gave them, and they would share that with someone else, and it was God speaking through them to someone else. I saw this with our young adult ministry. I had someone who was really strong at hearing God’s voice in that way, speaking into 18 to 22 year olds’ lives, and they’re in tears, because this person was adopted and they’ve never met this other person, and this person is just hearing from God and speaking into their life, hey, I just sense, were you adopted? You’ve always felt like you weren’t wanted, but God has always wanted you. God has always seen you. God has always chosen you. Tears. And this person’s not making stuff up. They’re just listening. I saw that over and over again. That got me open to, God can communicate however God wants to communicate. There are ways we see in the Bible that God communicates in these different ways. So I started experiencing that a bit.
Daron: Hey, sorry for the interruption here in the podcast, but I wanted to take this moment to invite you into something. If you’ve ever been in a place in your life where you just felt stuck, you felt like maybe you’re just spinning your wheels, you’ve been thinking there’s gotta be more for me. I listen to the podcast all the time and I hear Daron talk about on purpose and for purpose. I have to discover my purpose. Well, that feeling is right. You do need to. And I want to help you. I want to be a guide for you to step into who God created you to be. That’s the purpose and the design of what we do with Rogue Collective Coaching. So if you’re curious, or if you’re saying, listen, I’m not curious, I know it’s time for me to take action, here’s your call to action. I want you to go to RogueCollectiveCoaching.com. Click the button that says Book a Discovery Call. Jump on a 30 minute conversation with me. We’ll talk about where you are and if Rogue Collective Coaching is your next step to help you become who you were born to be. RogueCollectiveCoaching.com. Book a Discovery Call. Can’t wait to chat with you. Let’s get back to the episode. So then the dream shows up and you’re like, okay, this is the next iteration of this, this is what God’s doing. He tells you that every church has bumps and bruises.
Ken: So I sign up and start helping out, and we start a college ministry in our living room. We’ve got eight students. Over time it starts growing, 60, 80, 100 students. We move it to the church, and we do young adult ministry. Then I become associate pastor of the church. That guy who was the youth pastor, about six months into me starting the college ministry, he becomes the lead pastor. He’d been at that church, he got saved there at 14, youth pastor for 17 years, and then is the lead pastor now. So I join with him and become the number two on staff and we grow the church. It grows from like 200 something people to about a thousand people over a number of years. I’m teaching on Sundays, learning how to do all church type ministry. Then we started a second campus, and I’m the lead pastor for that. We do set up, tear down church, live teaching. We launched that and ran it for about three years. It’s about a hundred, 110 on a weekend. I just get to a place where I’m like, this isn’t it. For me, I just knew God was calling me to something different. So I said, you guys can hire someone else to take this over, we can merge these people, it was about a 15 minute drive, we can merge these people in and hold it together. So we decided to do that. Then I resigned, and I didn’t know what was next. That was a 12 year journey.
Daron: Twelve years.
Ken: And that season was basically when our paths started to cross. The day I’m resigning, I hand in my resignation letter at like noon, and I get a phone call from Josh Husmann at 10 a.m.
Daron: Josh is the founder of Mercy Road. He started the first church in Carmel.
Ken: At this point they’re raising funds and planting churches in different directions. They’re looking in Fishers for a facility they can buy, and he’s looking for a pastor. Josh had been part of the same network of churches. I was doing young adult ministry in the same network. Josh was in Pomona, California. We knew each other. Then he planted, and I’m still part of the same network of churches, so I’m watching him from afar. We’d connect at conferences. So Josh calls me and goes, hey, I just want to check in, we’re planting churches and looking at Fishers, and you keep coming to mind, I just want to see what’s going on with you. I’m like, Josh, interesting timing, about to resign 12 years in an hour. But where’s Indiana?
Daron: You didn’t know.
Ken: I grew up in Canada, so I knew most of the United States, but I didn’t know exactly where Indiana was. I was thinking Iowa. Then I was like, oh, Indiana is pretty far from California. My wife’s family is Southern California, my family is Northern California at this point. Like most people, they live in California.
Daron: And once you left Canada, you really upgraded. San Jose, then Pepperdine, then Hawaii. It just kept getting better.
Ken: It was beach cities. My adult life has been beach cities.
Daron: What about Indiana?
Ken: So I’m like, I’m resigning, let’s keep talking. That starts this journey of conversations. I resign. We talk about things for a while. I feel in my heart, God’s calling me to plant a church. I’m thinking we’re going to plant somewhere in Orange County. I hear about the model of Mercy Road and what they’re doing as I’m talking with Josh, and I’m like, oh, I love this. Part of it was, at the time, I was looking at the American church and seeing how much it was about, let me build up one person, and it’s usually the guy, here’s the guy, they’re a great talker, they preach, we put them on the billboard, and we build this organization around this one voice and we get thousands of people there. And I saw, on the other side of that, the pressure that guy is going through. In Southern California, there were two pretty high profile pastors about my age, with kids, just like me, who took their own lives within about a year of each other. One was a youth pastor of a very large church in Southern California. About a year later, another guy whose dad had built up this big mega church, he took over, had a few kids, going through mental health, suicidal ideation, ended up taking a sabbatical, came back, and then took his own life, like week two back. And I was like, how does that happen? How have we created an organization and a system where these people who should have the most resource, the most love, the most opportunity for life, abundant life, feel so overwhelmed with the responsibility placed in front of them that they’re like, this is the only way out. Now, I was not struggling with, and haven’t struggled with, suicidal ideation at all, but it rocked me. I’m like, is that where I’m headed in ministry? Is this what happens if you’re successful in ministry? And I don’t want to be a part of that type of ministry. So what really attracted me to Mercy Road was this idea of empowering the body of Christ. Let’s make the one man Jesus and build it all around him. Same heart of, we do collaborative teaching. Daron teaches about 40%, I do about 50%, we’ve got a few other people. So you could come to Mercy Road Northeast where we both teach, and if you go four Sundays in a row, you might hear four different people preach. That’s intentional. It’s not because we couldn’t preach more. It’s because I don’t want to build this church around my voice or your voice or anyone else’s. Let’s make this about Jesus. There’s also the shared weight. I don’t carry the full weight of it, you don’t carry the full weight of it, our staff don’t. Jesus carries the weight of his church, so let’s do this as a team. And then the model of the church, it’s not about just building this big organization. How many people can we send out to be disciple makers, to make an impact with their lives? How do we help people not just figure out, and this one thing bugs me about a lot of churches, let’s figure out spiritual DNA or whatever the thing is. Let’s help people discover who God made them to be, so that, and here’s what a lot of churches do, so that they can find a way to serve our church. So it’s, we’ve got to put you on the parking team. You’re the CEO of a company, you release a customer, all that stuff, and according to this test we just did, yeah, you’d be great at the front door. It’s like, we’re not developing people. Now, it’s good for us to serve in the body of Christ, absolutely. But is someone’s God given purpose to hand out a bulletin at a front door? No, absolutely not. Is that part of them learning to serve and have a heart of caring for others? Yeah. But the whole thing of, hey, let’s be a church that’s not just about what happens on Sundays, but about what people are doing throughout the week. What is the purpose that God created them for, and how do we, so really, Mercy Road’s modeled that way, and that really attracted me. Anyway, in that journey, I actually said no to Fishers, and it ended up being Fortville where the church ended up. But I did say yes, I wanted to plant Mercy Road Orange County. So the game plan was, I move to Indiana for a year, I rent a house, I’m helping with all the church planting things. My title was operations pastor. I’m overseeing, they had three buildings at the time, overseeing the buildings, the facilities, the finances. Then the person who was going to plant the one in Fortville backed out. So I’m like, well, I’ll help, we’ll get there and teach there.
Daron: This is an interesting thing. When it was all going down, I remember you came for, we had lunch, like an interview thing. I was an interesting asset slash problem.
Ken: That’s what I was going to say.
Daron: So Josh is like, all right, as you’re interviewing, we bought a building in Fortville and we’re going to renovate it, so there’s the building, and you also get Daron, and it’s like, okay, which of these are assets, which are liabilities.
Ken: We’re meeting and I’m like, do I like this guy, because he comes with the building.
Daron: That was the thing. Josh is like, yeah, we met this guy, Kenny G, he’s in this, he resigned, maybe God’s in this thing, but you’ve got to like him. And I’m like, what do you mean? He’s like, well, you guys are going to have to work together. And I’m like, no, I don’t. So he sends me one of your sermons, watch it, see what you think. I watch it. I’m like, hey, he seems like a great guy, but how am I going to know from watching a YouTube clip? So we have lunch together, like, can you deal with me being a part of this thing? And it’s sad to me, Ken, that, I remember Eric Maitland, who was part of Mercy Road for a long time. He’s got a calling for missions all over the globe, and he’s always done that, but he’s a phenomenal worship leader. I remember him having a conversation with the church, he told me this story, he was saying, hey, this is who I think God’s called me to be, these are the things I’m passionate about doing, I’m passionate about the church but I feel like God’s called me outside the walls of the church. And I remember he said one of the senior pastors was like, well, we expect you to be on stage here 50 weeks out of the year. There’s no conversation. You are going to be the guy and you will be required to be here 50 weeks of the year. And the unspoken thing around that is, we’re going to build this culture around you and your personality and your gifting, coming back to what you discovered in that maturation jump from high school to college, hey, we just really need your gifts and talent, and we need them 50 weeks of the year.
Ken: For me, before the years of you coming here, Mercy Road wanted to plant a church in Fishers for a long time. It was one of the first ones they wanted to do. Then we ended up doing Northwest first, and then downtown, and that’s just how God did it. But Josh Husman would ask me all the time, hey, you could plant this church, you could plant this church. And I’m like, I don’t know how many times this went, no, I’m not going to plant this church, because at that point I knew the call God had on my life. We were doing it with Blackbird, and I could feel like, I want to bless and serve the local church, but my calling is not to be the lead pastor of a church. But then that makes it awkward, because there are probably a lot of lead pastors who it’s like, no, I need to be the guy, I probably need to be the best communicator, the best leader, I’m the guy. And that’s not said, but there’s insecurity in that. That’s probably why God has led it to this place, because I’ve never been like, I don’t even want to be the guy. I’m just giving God my yes.
Daron: You’re like, I have to be the guy, dang it. All right, God.
Ken: It’s just been that.
Daron: But then it creates the opportunity, and I love it. Right off the bat, the moments we started working together, for the past six years, it’s been one of the greatest environments for me. You’ve been such an amazing person to work with, Ken, and so affirming to me in the way you have blessed me. Listen, I see you for who God’s created you to be. I’m coming to know you, and I want to affirm the calling and the gift that God’s put on you. You have blessed me so much. One of the first things, I remember you did this, I think it was the first Christmas we were working together, first or second Christmas, you gave me a Christmas card and you put like 200 bucks in it. It blew me away, dude. Because the years prior to that, I did it to myself, I was like, I don’t care what you pay me, I just want to speak and help the church. And one of the board members found out at one point, after a couple of years, what they were actually paying me to speak once a month and to help create a lot of the sermon series, and they were like, you are robbing him blind, this is not communicating any value. Like I said, I didn’t care about the money, I was just doing it because I felt like it was the obedient thing God asked me to do. I don’t have a problem with that. But it was one of the first times you had a chance to bless me and our partnership, and you did. From that moment I was like, I trust this guy. This is going to work, because he’s not here for himself, and he’s not here to try to control me. He wants to partner, and he wants to bless me. For the past six years, every step of the way, you have affirmed what God’s called me to do. You have cheerleaded for that. We have had multiple crazy situations where the Holy Spirit tells me, this is what I think I’m going to ask you to do, and then within 24 or 48 hours I bump into you, we have a random conversation, and you always have a mentor.
Ken: I got a guy.
Daron: And they’re either in Korea or Hawaii or California. Those interactions have changed my life. I absolutely long for more leaders like ourselves, and the church in general, to experience what it could look like if we were to say, hey, we want to actually embrace the body of Christ, the gifts and abilities of each person. We’re not here to jockey for position or prestige. I think it’s so funny, because I didn’t even know how reticent you were to take the job and do the whole thing. But what I think is funny, dude, I’ve been in church my whole life, and we have watched Mercy Road Northeast grow. There was, we launched with like 300 or something, because there were a lot of people waiting for Mercy Road Northeast to start. Then we kind of dropped down from there. But in six years, that’d be six years in September, to watch a church grow from a couple hundred people to now about a thousand in less than six years, led by a guy who was like, I don’t know that I want to be the guy, and I sure as heck don’t want to move to Indiana. We have a great staff, great people who serve and are part of the board, great people at the church. But for a guy who was like, I don’t know that I want to be the guy, do we partner with the guy that’s like, I don’t really want to be a part of the church, I do but I don’t, but I want to do this thing, but I want to be able to be a part of the team, is that cool, can I kind of hang out? Just as a testimony to me, this is what God wants to do. Not like, man, we got Ken in here and he’s the best and everybody thinks he’s amazing, we got this guy with the best worship. It’s just, coming back to what you were saying, no, we really want to disciple people, we really want to make disciples that make disciples, and we really want to equip people to step into what God’s called them to do. Maybe a part of it is, God has led us through our yeses to lead by example.
Ken: That’s good.
Daron: You know what I mean?
Ken: I have, I’m working on, last couple days, I want to run it by you, this idea of a definition of success. Of success as a Christian, as a follower of Jesus. Success being to become who God created me to be, and then partner with God to do what God’s calling you to do.
Daron: Love it.
Ken: Success is, I’m discovering and walking, becoming the person God created me to be, and I’m now learning to partner with God and do what he calls me to do. That’s a successful life.
Daron: That’s it. What are you saying to me, God? What do you want me to do about it? That’s what it comes down to. I love it, Ken. What I love, I keep coming back to that yes, the blank check moment with God. I can’t go back to the exact moment, but I do remember in the past 20 years or so, somewhere in there, me having a conversation with God where I say, God, listen, the answer is just yes. I’m just going to be default yes.
Ken: Default yes.
Daron: Please, Lord, nowhere colder than Indiana. I always bring in that caveat. God, I mean, Michigan, Wisconsin, maybe for a trip, but not all the time. I want the audience to hear the journey you’ve taken. And I love that you don’t have these major, I knew it from the beginning, there was this burning bush. It was, no, from the start, because you’re in college, as a 20 something or maybe 19 year old, you just gave God a blank check. It’s just yes. And then that makes everything else so much easier. Youth pastor, lead pastor, worship pastor, doesn’t matter. Hawaii, California, doesn’t matter. Just yes.
Ken: Let me connect a couple of dots. I said yes to Indiana for a year, and my wife’s from Southern California, so she really said it for you. Then the opportunity opened up again. What happened was, I started March 1st, 2020. The world shuts down March 15th ish. So I had two Sundays. I was helping out at Mercy Road Carmel. The one in Fortville hadn’t started yet. By July, I’ve been here months, helping out with stuff, and we were looking for who was going to plant with you. We interviewed some people, brought some people in, and I started going, maybe it’s me, maybe I’m not supposed to go back to California, maybe I’m supposed to stay here. We go visit California and we come back, the airplane’s landing, I’m looking out the window, we just had our first trip back to California, we’re landing in Indianapolis, and I’m wrestling with God. What am I supposed to do? And I hear these two words. Not an audible voice, but I literally said in my head, God, what do you think about all this? And I hear, welcome home, as the plane hits. Welcome home. Those are not words I would have thought of. That’s sometimes when you’re hearing God’s voice, God speaking, I would have thought God would dialogue the way I would, but it was just, welcome home, which is not the way I would have had that conversation flow. So I was like, okay, welcome home. So I meet with Josh and I say, Josh, I think I’m supposed to plant Mercy Road Northeast. I say yes to it. We plant, and the rest of it is history. In that, as I think about my journey and those surrendered yeses and just God guiding, I so resonate with Moses when he was leading the Israelites. There’s 40 years they’re wandering the desert, and in Numbers it talks about how they build a tabernacle, which is like God’s presence dwells there, and then they’re supposed to camp around it. It explains in crazy detail how they’re all supposed to camp and where they all go, all these 12 tribes. It’s a bunch of work to set this thing up. This is mobile church, but crazy. There are particulars on what materials to use, and only Levites can set it up. So they set this up, and then they go around, and it says they might stay there for a year, because there was this cloud, or this fire, that symbolized God’s presence. If God just stayed there, they had to stay there. Then it would just lift up one day, without them asking, and it would start moving, and they’re like, we got to pack up. They’d just start packing everything up, all their tents and belongings, and they’d pack up the tabernacle. Then when it would stop somewhere else, they’d set up camp around it. That’s become a metaphor for me. What was that about? It was, just give God your yes. For us that represents the Holy Spirit. How is the Holy Spirit leading? If it was three days, they’d stay three days. Three months, they’d stay three months. It moved over here and they’d go, for a year or whatever. Now, I don’t think people need to move every year, but what was the point? God was teaching them, will you live in my presence, and when I move, will you move, and when I say stay, will you stay? That’s become for me, recognizing, because one thing with people who have moved a lot, and there are people, military families, who have moved way more than I have, but when people say, where’s home, I’m like, well, kind of Canada, San Jose, Pepperdine, Hawaii, Huntington Beach, Indianapolis, where’s home? It’s hard for me to answer, to be honest. But for me, it’s become, God’s presence is home. Jesus is home. I don’t care if I’m in California or Hawaii or Indiana or wherever God sends, he is my home, his presence. So I’m home anywhere. I’m just going to give him my yes. And if I stay here for the rest of my life, so be it.
Daron: That’s so good. That’s the closer right there. We’re going to have to have you back, because I want to talk, we’re not going to have time to do it today, but I want to have the conversation about following Jesus’ Spirit, and this past year and a half where you and I are just embracing, we’re just going to get weird. Holy Spirit stuff, just make us weird, God, that’s totally fine. We’ll have to come back and have a conversation about getting weird and following where the Spirit’s taking us, to places that make us feel uncomfortable, which is basically just the next iteration. Because every part of it is, there’s a part of uncomfortable risk, whether it’s Canada, I mean, it’s everywhere. But dude, home with Jesus. That’s the takeaway. I love it, dude. Ken, I’m sorry it took me six years to have you on the podcast. Producer Coop, let’s make sure we don’t make it another six years before we have Ken back for the next episode.
Ken: That’d be Travis to you.
Daron: Let’s come back and have the conversation about getting weird. But dude, I try to say thank you often, I probably don’t say it enough, but it’s an absolute joy to get to serve with you. I love your leadership. You have a great vision, great conviction, unbelievable humility, and just an authenticity. So the audience knows, the stuff Ken’s saying, it’s not just good for a podcast. I’ve watched him live it. I really do hope that more teammates on staffs could experience what we have. And if you’re looking to figure out how you do it, you take your ego and set it on fire, and just get to, God, could we just do the best for the kingdom, I don’t care who gets the credit or who got whatever. Honestly, dude, you learn that through decades. I learned that through decades as well. But it’s so cool, man, to work on sermons together and not feel like, oh, what’s Ken going to think? To get to the end of one of our services and be like, hey bro, what would you edit, what would you take out, what would you keep, and you being able to speak honestly into that to me, and me to you. It’s just cool to be on a team where you feel like, we’re just getting to serve what God wants us to do.
Ken: Everyone desires that. No one wants to be an island and do their own thing. But ego gets in the way, where it becomes about me, or about our organization, or our team, or our thing. The more and more I’m seeing God, I think, raise up a younger generation, it’s like, let’s quit quarreling over our church versus your church, or our denomination against your denomination. It’s, God, what do you want to do? Man, life’s short. 2,000 years from now, no one’s going to care about how great my sermon was, or yours. But there are real people whose lives, neighbors that you have, that we have, coworkers, they’re eternal beings. How are we loving people? How are we making an impact? Let’s just give God the credit and do all we can together.
Daron: Love it. Ken, great stuff, man. My home is with Jesus. That’s it. Get the tattoo. Sticker. Actually, please don’t, that’s weird. We’ll have you back. Let’s have a conversation about following the Holy Spirit in the next one.
Ken: Sounds good.
Daron: Hey, until we talk again, thanks again for downloading this episode. As I tell you every single episode, I’ll tell you again today, remember, God is for you, he’s not against you, he’s near you, not far, and he has created you on purpose and for purpose. We’ll talk to you next time on the Daron Earlewine Podcast.