When faking it stops working
You know how to say the right things. Show up, smile, nod along, drive home feeling like a fraud. Kelly Camp lived that for 36 years. He grew up a pastor’s kid, learned to “play church” by junior high, and ran from God from about age 14 to about age 50. On the outside he had the marriage, the kids, the career. Inside, he was dying. Being close to God is not the same as having a relationship with Him. Kelly knew that gap better than anyone, and it nearly cost him everything.
The three lies that keep you running
Kelly points to three lies the enemy repeats every day: you’re alone, it all depends on you, and you have no purpose left to chase.
His freshman year of college, his mother called to say his father had Parkinson’s, which later became Alzheimer’s. Kelly watched his hero decline and eventually pass away at 85 pounds. He couldn’t make sense of a God who would do that to a man who gave 40 years to ministry. So he told no one. Not his dad, not his mom, not a sibling.
That silence set his direction. The anger sat in his chest like molten lava for decades. But when Daron asked what was underneath the anger, Kelly named it fast: deep hurt. Betrayal. Anger is almost always the second emotion. The first one was pain.
The isolation did the rest. A 22-year marriage ended. Addiction took hold in his 30s and 40s. He racked up scars weekly and had no idea how to talk to anyone about any of it. The off-ramp to isolation felt like protection. It was the trap.
What happens when you give God one year
Kelly met his wife Lori at 44. She gave him a choice: come to church with her, or stop dating. She’s smoking hot, so he went, and then he white-knuckled the back row for five years. Farthest seat to the right. Watching Manchester United on his phone so he wouldn’t have to feel the music.
Then came June 2015. He showed up hungover after a birthday party, staring at the floor, sure he didn’t belong there. And the pastor said it out loud: some guy here was out last night and is still hungover, and Jesus doesn’t care. Game over. Kelly walked up after the service, raised his hand, and said he was that guy.
The pastor’s first instruction was simple: get out of isolation. Two men started meeting with Kelly every Wednesday. They ran the same pattern every week. Take a biblical idea, put it into practice, come back and reflect on how it went. Information alone cannot change you. Practice and honest reflection with people who love you does. Kelly calls it two legs walking, the emotional and the spiritual growing together. That was the hardest year of his life, and it rebuilt him. Eleven years later, the guy who snuck into the back row now runs the whole church.
Key takeaways
- Your scars aren’t proof you’re disqualified. They’re proof God can redeem anything.
- Isolation feeds the lie that you’re alone and past saving. Coming out of it is step one.
- You don’t have to clean up before you come to Jesus. He comes and finds you.
- Give God one year. Then look back and see if you’re a different person.
- More Bible knowledge alone won’t heal old wounds. You need people walking it with you.
Episode Summary:
Most people who are curious about Jesus never start, because they do not know where to begin. Genesis? A random verse? A church they do not know in a town they are only in for six weeks?
Matt LeRoy spent ten years building the answer. Follow Jesus is a 50 day walk through the Gospel of Matthew that takes 10 to 15 minutes a day. A commute. A cup of coffee.
In this conversation, Daron Earlewine and Matt LeRoy break down the discipleship arc hiding in plain sight in Matthew, why Jesus found His first disciples at work instead of at worship, and what it looks like to plant orchards of discipleship among 10 million people in the dirt world who have never seen a church that fits their life.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
⚡️ Anger is almost always a secondary emotion. Underneath years of resentment toward God, Kelly discovered the real feeling was deep hurt and betrayal, not rebellion.
⚡️ Information alone does not create transformation. A weekly rhythm of talking through a Sunday message, practicing it, and reflecting on it with two other men is what actually formed Kelly into a disciple.
⚡️ Isolation is one of the most dangerous decisions a person can make after a wound. Kelly’s refusal to talk to anyone about his father’s diagnosis at 18 set the trajectory for the next three decades.
JOIN THE CONVERSATION
If Kelly’s story hit home, share this episode with someone who needs to hear that it’s never too late to come out of isolation, and subscribe so you don’t miss next week’s conversation.
Wherever you are on your journey, it’s never too late to start. Have the courage to come out of isolation. Subscribe to The Daron Earlewine Podcast, and reach out anytime at daron@daronearlewine.com.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Daron: Hey, welcome back to The Daron Earlewine Podcast. Daron Earlewine, your host, as always stoked to have you with us this morning. I want to start this episode off with gratitude. Thank you for downloading the episode, thank you to everyone who’s subscribed on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts, and a big thank you to anyone who’s shared an episode. We track that stuff because we want to know who we’re reaching around the world, and it’s been amazing watching the growth, not just on YouTube but across all the downloads. We’re stoked you’re with us.
Big shout out to a longtime listener and guest, Dylan — we’ll leave the last name out to keep him somewhat anonymous — who’s probably in a sauna sweating through this episode right now. Dylan, enjoy it in the sauna. That’s one of my favorite things, meeting people around the country who tell me how the podcast is blessing them, and they always share where they listen. Treadmill, Peloton, a walk by the pool, the sauna, mowing the lawn, a glass of sweet tea — whatever it is, I’m super grateful you’re part of this community.
Sitting down today with a new friend to me, and he’ll be a new friend to you: Kelly Camp. Kelly, welcome to the podcast.
Kelly: Thank you, Daron. It’s been wonderful. You and I hooked up these last few months. I’ve watched you from afar for many years, so I appreciate being here, and I love seeing how God’s been using you and impacting people in our area.
Daron: Well, glad to have you. We connected most strongly this summer — you were one of the speakers for our Worship on the Water events, part of Blackbird Mission. What used to be Pub Theology is now Worship on the Water, and you got invited to speak at one, and did a phenomenal job. But it was funny — you said when you got invited, you weren’t exactly sure what you were walking into, and then you showed up at the beer garden with two hundred people out there.
Kelly: Yeah, that freaked me out for a second. I was like, I hope I brought my notes. Luckily I had a few things written down on my phone. But that was a cool experience. It’s kind of funny, that used to be an old stomping ground for me, back before I turned my life over to Jesus. So it was a lot more fun to be there under these circumstances, sharing what I’ve seen God do.
Daron: That night you shared a lot of your story, which is a beautiful story of redemption. Then we had a follow-up event we call The Invitation, where people come back for appetizers and a deeper conversation. I got to hear more of your story, and afterward I thought, I’ve got to get Kelly on the podcast — because we did an episode a couple months back about scars. There was a quote I curated from someone, I can’t remember who, I actually reread it yesterday editing a chapter of my next book — something like, “your scars are your first qualification.” And in that episode we talked about how Jesus dies for the sins of the world, is resurrected, comes back with a glorified body — the first fruits of the resurrection — and He still has His scars.
Kelly: Yeah.
Daron: Which to me is interesting. If it were my plan, I’d think, hey, you get a fresh start, a glorified eternal body — scars gone. But so often the reality is we all have scars. And I don’t mean falling off your bike in third grade — I mean things you’ve gone through physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, relationally, that have cut you up or cut up the people around you. And I think the enemy loves telling us three lies, maybe every day of our lives: first, you’re alone. Second, it all depends on you. Third, you don’t have a purpose, or if you did, you’ve ruined it. Hearing your story was such an inspiration to me, because you’ve got some scars.
Kelly: For sure.
Daron: But what I love is you don’t dress them up or hide them, because you know they’re actually proof that God can redeem and heal anything. So let’s jump into your story. Where did it all start for Kelly?
Kelly: All right, I’m a Hoosier. With the exception of about five years away for college, I’ve lived in Indiana my whole life. I grew up in Anderson, not too far up the road. I’m a recovering pastor’s kid — we’re an elite group. A Christian counselor once told me PKs are by far the most jacked-up people he works with. Super encouraging way to start that first session.
Have you ever listened to Stephen Wilson Jr.? He’s got a song called “Preacher’s Kid,” and it rocks. The hook is, “Preacher’s kid, don’t give a damn about you or Jesus.” And there probably were seasons of my life where I didn’t give a damn about people, or about Jesus. It’s an interesting thing to grow up in.
My dad had a church in Anderson for 31 years. I grew up in it. I’m 61 now, so you can look back — at 12, 14, 16, 18 I’m thinking, what’s my dad doing, this guy’s super legalistic. And now, with all these years behind me, I look back and think, he was a loving dad, a great dad, my hero. But it was legalism, and that made things difficult. It’s one of those bubbles — church, Christian school — and there’s a lot of pressure to live up to standards.
I’m the youngest of four kids, and there was this pressure, never verbalized by my parents, but you just feel like every Sunday there’s twelve hundred sets of eyes on you. That started some perfectionism. I wanted to be a typical teenager, so I very quickly learned the world of deception — how to look good on Sunday. It’s strange — you grow up your first eighteen formative years super close to hearing about God, and there’s a huge difference between being close to God and actually having a relationship with Him. For me, it was non-existent.
One of my older brothers, I kind of call the poster child for stupid pastor’s kids — if there was a picture in the dictionary next to “pastor’s kid,” his photo would be there. I watched that guy and thought, I don’t want to run my parents through the wringer, so I’ll toe the line. I know how to play church. It’s not hard when you’ve grown up in that environment.
Daron: A lot of times we can look back and go, I know what I was doing. But in the moment, did you know what you were doing?
Kelly: Oh yeah. I always tell my mom — she’s still alive, 93 — you ruined every good, fun, sinful night I ever had. Because at the end of the night, back at my dorm room or later my own home, I’d go to bed thinking, I know my mom’s praying for me. I always tell people I ran from God from about 14 to about 50. That is hard work. It takes a lot of energy, and a lot of scars.
Daron: Was there anybody in that time you can think of — because I know there’s that vibe growing up in the church, it’s a challenge because your parents are never as consistent on a Tuesday afternoon as they are on Sunday morning. Was there anyone you watched and thought, that’s real?
Kelly: Oh yeah, a couple examples. My dad — he was saved in his early twenties, called to preach, trained on theology, and preached what he believed to his core. If he were alive today we could have a great conversation about doing it differently, and he’d be comfortable with that. What I admired was his consistency — who you saw on Sunday really was who he was Monday through Saturday. That was cool. But there was pressure being in that fishbowl, being “the pastor’s kid,” and I was probably a bit of a jerk in junior high and high school. There’s a pull to be popular that’s off the Richter scale, especially when you’re spiritually immature with no real relationship with God, and emotionally not mature either, making some pretty big decisions.
There were two brothers at my school who were genuinely good Christian guys — not goody-two-shoes, just good followers of Christ — and they always sat at the front of the bus. I remember thinking, my best friend Tyler and I, both our dads were pastors, we should be up there with them, not in the back.
The thing that really tripped me up, and I’ve never talked about this publicly — you and I have talked about the danger of isolation — one of the most isolating decisions I ever made was going off to college. During my freshman year my mother called and told me they’d diagnosed my father with Parkinson’s, which later turned into Alzheimer’s. I thought, what kind of God watches a guy give thirty-one, forty years of his life, and then right as he’s getting into retirement, strikes him down with this illness, and you have to watch your hero degrade and eventually pass away at eighty-five pounds. My inability to process that, and my mistake in not talking to anybody about it — I could have talked to my dad, my mom, a sibling — looking back, that was a key point in what I call early formation. Something either I did, or someone did to me, or an enemy attack, put me on a trajectory away from God. I was so angry. That anger became like molten lava in my chest for the rest of my life until I became a follower of Christ at 50.
I was always simmering, pouring out through my tongue. My mouth was horrible, the way I treated people was horrible. I married a girl from college and torched that marriage — it ended after 22 years of her putting up with my junk, not wanting to be a spiritual leader, being a spiritual zero, having kids and not being a great example for them. So that decision I made as an 18-year-old — if that’s the kind of God who does that to a person who serves Him, then I’ll have nothing to do with Him.
Daron: My counselor told me years ago that anger is always a secondary emotion. I’m a type seven on the Enneagram, so I’ve had to work hard to understand emotions, let alone sit in a negative one. But I’m growing. If it’s true that anger is always secondary, is there a word for what you were, underneath the anger, first, toward God?
Kelly: Deeply hurt.
Daron: Like betrayed?
Kelly: Yeah, a betrayal. If you’re love, but you allow these things to happen — just a deep hurt. Even though my dad and I might not have matched up on how you’d run a church, I loved him, and it was that deep hurt. By the time the Alzheimer’s kicks in, I’m a young man and I can’t even have basic conversations with my dad anymore.
Daron: Is that loss?
Kelly: I think it’s the loss, and not knowing how to deal with it. Just anger, resentment, bitterness. Then you get married, you’re a young man, your wife says basic young-wife stuff that isn’t a big deal, and I’m going off the handle, going through the roof — no ability to emotionally regulate, and no spiritual foundation either. I knew some verses because I grew up around it. I knew, like my dad took me to church, I should take my kids to church. But that was an hour of daydreaming. I was a pro at faking church — probably one of my greatest gifts. I could survive in that environment, say all the right things, and then Monday through Saturday was a nightmare.
Daron: You took the off-ramp to isolation. Looking back, if you had invited someone into that process, what do you think you’d have discovered? Would it have made any difference?
Kelly: That’s a great question. There were people talking at me my whole life. In my old, very legalistic upbringing, it felt like God was always mad, always in a hurry to fix you — a toxic environment. I don’t know — this isn’t a fully baked thought — but it’s interesting that it took me so long to come to a place of surrender. Maybe if I’d opened up at 18 or 19, someone would have said something and I’d have started listening. Or maybe, did God know I was too tough a nut to crack, that I’d have to run my head into the wall a lot more before I could genuinely surrender? I think God’s powerful enough that it could have happened at 18. But maybe God allows people to run the gamut of where they want to go, so that once they get to the end of themselves, they’re really convinced surrender is the best option.
Daron: I think that’s a cool thought.
Kelly: I’ve got a story for that. My mom is still alive at 93, sharp, still driving, reading, going out, serving Christ — a great lady. We call it living a life of love, and that’s what she is. She’ll stay with us and we have these fascinating conversations. I asked her one day — you’ve heard my testimony, you saw what was going on with me in college, and then the worst of it in my twenties, into my thirties with kids — is there a reason you never came over and said anything? She said, well, there were times I wanted to wring your neck, smack you upside the head with a cast-iron skillet. But your father would say, what we’re going to do is pray, because he grew up in this home, the other kids are on the right path, and he’s just going to have to walk this path. My father died with one hundred percent assurance that I would come to faith. He prayed that every day and would assure my mother, I promise you, God’s going to save that boy.
My mom said, son, if you grew up in that home and didn’t listen to us, and you really did know what was right, what could we have said that would have turned that? That’s when I started realizing it became my excuse not to walk with God. I think there were two things — immature, young, and hurt — and then it turned into what I think happens to all of us: I want to be in control, it’s my life, I’m going to do my life.
What’s wild is during that entire time I’m killing it in the business world. Looking at my marriage from the outside, he’s got the pretty wife, the nice kids, the house — it looks great. I’m dying inside. By my late thirties I can’t cope anymore. I’m generating scars weekly, racking them up. I’m ruined at communicating, I don’t know how to interact — my wife has valid concerns, valid issues to bring to me, and I don’t know how to deal with it. So I start traveling constantly, and while I’m out traveling, drinking, partying, doing stupid stuff. That started going down roads of addiction, an unhealthy lifestyle — that’s where I generated most of my scars, in my thirties into my early forties. Eventually that marriage blew up, which was the right thing — she shouldn’t have had to put up with that.
At about 44, I ran out of gas. It was a long run trying to run from God. Around then I got a chance to meet my current wife, Lori. One of my favorite things about growing up as a pastor’s kid in that legalistic environment is what comes out of that brand of Christianity — God’s mad at you, it’s a lot of don’ts, stop doing bad things — hard to get your head around. When I’d have a few drinks in the bars, I’d start pontificating about God, this semi-drunk theologian, going on long dissertations about what a church should be like.
Daron: I’ve met a lot of those. We’re awesome at it — preaching in bars.
Kelly: So my wife and I are on a date, still dating at that point, and she says, I want you to come to this church with me — when you go off on your tangents about what God and church should be like, this is it. I said, doesn’t exist, not going. Eventually she said, I don’t want to date you anymore. If my life’s blown up and your life’s blown up, I’m not going to waste time with someone not interested in a relationship with God. You can come with me and we can date, or you can not, and we won’t. She’s smoking hot, so I said, I know how to fake church, I’m going. I’m not letting this girl break up with me. It was a different brand of Christianity than I’d ever heard. I sat there for five years, rarely missing, white-knuckling the whole time, thinking, I am not going to give my life to Christ.
Daron: Five years?
Kelly: Five years. Forty-five to fifty years old, white-knuckling every Sunday. Sat in the very back row, farthest seat to the right, every single Sunday, or I wouldn’t go. I timed it so I wouldn’t have to greet anyone — I didn’t want anyone being nice to me. The greeters saying good morning, welcome, glad to see you — that made me mad. I was so mad at God that a genuine, kind Christian just saying hello would set me off. By then I’d talked her into marrying me, and I’d slide into the back — I’m a huge Manchester United fan, so a lot of times I’d just watch the games on my phone to disengage while she was fully into the message.
Daron: Was that a full cognitive decision — I’m putting up the barriers, this isn’t happening — or did you realize at some point you hadn’t even really engaged?
Kelly: It was a plan. The music would put me under such conviction because I could sense the Holy Spirit during it, so I came up with systems. I was very calculated — I want to stay in this relationship, I want to bring the kids here because I do like what they’re saying, I like this approach to God instead of a bunch of don’ts. Matter of fact, I’m hearing things like, stop thinking about, stop doing bad things, and instead, why don’t you just start thinking about changing your mind? The first time I ever heard a pastor say that repent just meant change the way you think — growing up I’d heard “you filthy sinner, repent, stop doing stuff, beat yourself up.” That started getting to me. Okay, well, how am I doing in my marriage? With the blended family, now seven kids? I don’t have a solution for this — in some ways life’s more complicated now.
So yeah — very calculated, still isolated, still traveling a lot for work to get away from it, still partying pretty heavy on weekends. The kicker was June of 2015. We went out to a birthday party at a local bar, and I got hammered, and thought, it’s not worth the trouble to skip church the next day. Got in at two or three in the morning, not well, but I still went because I didn’t want to get yelled at for not going — though my wife’s not a yeller, so you can edit that part out. I just didn’t want to have that conversation.
The other thing during that time — my wife would ask, can we please go introduce ourselves to the pastor, get to know him, go to coffee — and I wouldn’t do it. That Sunday I went in, looking down at the ground, thinking, I shouldn’t be here, I’m not worthy, what am I doing here, I’ve got to figure out a way to get out of this.
Daron: And you’re probably still drunk.
Kelly: Super hungover — if a mosquito had bitten me I’d have flopped over.
Daron: I don’t say that to shame you at all — I love where this story is going. People think they’ve got to get all cleaned up first, and it’s not like that. God will come find you, and how graciously He’ll come find you.
Kelly: For sure hungover, sweating, summertime, air conditioning on and I’m dripping sweat, not feeling well. And to prove his point, the pastor said something like, I think everyone assumes you come to church cleaned up and then start your walk with Christ. I’m just telling you, I don’t care who’s here today — it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a guy sitting here this morning who was out last night and is still hungover. I don’t care. Jesus doesn’t care.
When he said that, game over. I had two thoughts before the Holy Spirit thought — my wife would sometimes serve at the first service and attend with me at the second, and I thought, she told him I was out drinking and ratted me out. I looked at her like, did you rat me out? She said, you’re not that important, he just said it. For the first time in a long time, probably since I was a sensitive-hearted seven, eight, nine-year-old boy, I felt, what are you doing, you don’t have to clean up for me.
At the end of the service, our pastor always says the same thing — why don’t you pray this prayer, give Jesus one year of your life, and at the end of the year look back and see if you’re a different person. I thought, man, running from Jesus is getting old, I’m tired, run down, I don’t want to do this anymore. So I prayed that prayer. As soon as the service ended, I asked to go talk to him, walked up and said, hey, raise my hand, I’m actually that guy, I’m actually hungover. He laughed. I said, I want to give a year of my life, I don’t know what to do. He said, okay, let me help you — first, get out of isolation. He got my name and number, said a couple of guys would reach out.
Daron: That’s a crazy moment. Like C.S. Lewis says, one of the coolest moments in a person’s life is realizing, “oh — you too.” That feeling of being the only one — that’s where a lot of my passion and care comes from now.
Kelly: Exactly — I’m not worthy, I’m isolated, I’m the only one. And it’s just a lie.
Daron: [Mid-episode listener invitation to Rogue Collective Coaching — retained below in the YouTube description and not repeated here in the transcript for flow, since it functions as a segment break rather than narrative content.]
Once you connected with those two guys — theologically I think the answer is you surrendered your life to Jesus and the Holy Spirit began working. But practically, how did that relationship actually work, now that you had people you could trust and let in? How did you not just play church small group with these two guys?
Kelly: Oh, it was awesome. You’ve got to understand, emotionally I’m 50 years old and fairly immature, spiritually still a baby despite being around this stuff my whole life. We’d meet Wednesday evenings. I traveled a lot for work, so I’d go to church, treat it like my battery-charging day, take notes from the message, do my best to read them Monday and Tuesday, get back into town Wednesday, sit with these guys, go through the notes. What we’d find — and I believe this wholeheartedly — is that information alone cannot change you. Taking biblical ideas, talking about them, putting them into practice, and reflecting on them later, that’s what changes you. These guys would say, okay Kelly, here’s what we talked about Sunday, how’d you do Monday and Tuesday, let’s talk about it, let’s practice it, you’re not going to be perfect, that’s okay, let’s talk again next Wednesday about what went well and what didn’t. That repeatable pattern — information, practice, reflection — is what started forming me into a true disciple of Christ. No pressure, no performance, just guys who loved me and came alongside me.
I’d get back into town and say, Monday was a complete disaster, here’s what happened, I didn’t do what he talked about yesterday, and they’d say, a righteous man falls seven times and gets up. I recently learned a quick little prayer — hey God, you know, and I know, and I’m sorry, and I want to do better, and I just keep going.
It was tough. That was the hardest year of my life, honestly — not a great marketing line, but true. I had to disengage from a lot of bad habits and sit with, what’s my friend circle, who’s helping me live out my new walk and who’s not. Still loving them, still talking to those guys and couples, but knowing I needed to get around healthier people emotionally and spiritually. My wife and I started hanging out with other couples and growing.
One of the hardest things about going through a divorce, knowing it’s your fault, you blew things up, and you’ve got four sets of eyes looking at you — it’s not “yay, dad wants to do this now,” it’s more like, oh, now you like Jesus? Would’ve been cool if this version of you showed up ten years ago. Working through that — two things I love about God, and you mentioned one at the start of the podcast — his faithfulness, seeing my folks’ prayer covering me come to fruition, and second, his redemption, which is off the charts. My passion now is specifically working with couples on marriages on the rocks, people who’ve come out the other side with scars, and especially guys in addiction or far from God who think they’ve blown it and can’t come back. I love that stuff.
I could be sitting here at 61 having walked with the Lord my whole life with no major stumbles, and I could help people to a point — that’s needed, I love those examples, I’d honestly love to be that guy. I wasn’t. This was my life. But it means it’s very easy for me to sit down with men, and it takes a lot to shock me. For me these aren’t bumper stickers — the power of what the Holy Spirit does, the power of God to redeem — it’s not something I mentally believe, it’s true to the core of my being.
I’ve got atheist buddies I love hanging out with, love having those conversations, they can make a lot of sense at times. But the one thing no one can take from me is my actual spiritual experience — to paraphrase a guy in the Bible, I was blind, now I see. We can argue theology, atheism, agnosticism all day, but you’ll never be able to take from me what happened inside my spiritual life, what God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit have done in my life, my thinking, my ability to make it through hard times without needing a substance, having the Holy Spirit counsel and walk with me.
I ask God, I’d love to be coherent and healthy to eighty-five, and all I want to do is help people come out of isolation, grow their emotional maturity and their spiritual maturity. When someone’s struggling, more spiritual knowledge alone isn’t necessarily going to help. We’ve got to come alongside people, look at this beautiful brain God gave us, and go back to first-formation things. I had to, with a good Christian counselor, address my reaction to my father getting sick. I had to deal with the emotional garbage of failing my first wife and my kids. Reading more Scripture wasn’t going to get me there on its own. We call it two legs walking — you need both to be healthy.
Daron: My counselor calls it spiritual bypassing — where we have major emotional, spiritual, mental trauma, and rather than actually walking through it, we spiritualize it and bypass it. Not that this makes less of God or His redemption — I think too often we believe in something closer to magic than the Holy Spirit. Quote a verse, believe it, and bypass the trauma. But what the Word actually says is that the Good Shepherd walks you through the valley of the shadow of death — He walks you through the pain, and begins to actually redeem, to replace lies with truth. That’s usually not a one-time prayer at an altar that instantly transforms thirty years of thinking. There’s a laborious, difficult process of redemption. It’s still supernatural, but it’s not accidental, and it’s usually not overnight.
Kelly: No, my wife would tell you it’s not overnight. What I find interesting, and you’d understand this running organizations — if I look back two or three months I’m always disappointed with results, but if I look back a year or two, I can see how far we’ve come. When I got to the end of that first year and looked back, I wasn’t “that guy” anymore. It’s been eleven years now. My wife, my kids, my friends would tell you, that guy is gone.
I love the Message version of the Bible — for some reason the King James triggers me, probably back to my early formation — and I like to paraphrase it even more. The two most powerful things that have stuck with me over eleven years: first, I spend a lot more time being thankful for what God has done for me than what I’m doing for Him. That takes a lot of pressure off — I don’t have to perform, I get to think about what He’s done for me, my wife, our kids, our family, and now our generational tree that I get to continue, a branch my father started as a believer. Second, I believe it’s in Galatians — I don’t want to just hold these as ideas in my head, I’m trying to work them into actionable things in my life. If Jesus was living my life, how would He do it? I don’t do that every hour. I’m training. And if Jesus was sitting here with us, I think He’d say, we’ve been walking together eleven years, and he’s more and more like me every day, and we still have bad days, and I go grab his hand and pick him up, and we’re doing this together. That’s redemption. Can’t put a price on it.
I had a 40-year business career and I’ve been in ministry sixteen years — eleven part-time at my church, five running it full-time. There’s nothing like coming alongside somebody and helping them follow Christ. The first time I ever prayed with a guy to accept Christ, I think I could have died right there, one hundred percent fulfilled. Between men’s groups and different ministry things I get to do, it’s the best life — helping guys get out of that hamster wheel of religion and out of fighting God. I always encourage people, just take a step, it’s not a marketing strategy, just give God one year of your life, come out of isolation, get around some people who’ve walked it a little before you. That’s what my heart beats for — men in isolation, anyone in isolation, especially guys who’ve blown their lives up. I love working with them.
Daron: I think there’s someone listening or watching today who’s going to receive that with the same power you did. It really is that simple — just say yes, give God a year of your life.
Kelly: If you don’t like it, take it back in a year. That’s literally what I thought — he’s asking me to give God one year of my life, and can I change the way I think about myself? Am I a divorced loser who doesn’t know how to be in relationships, or am I actually a beloved son of God?
Daron: There we go.
Kelly: We’re finally starting to have grandkids, and I knew as a dad there’s nothing our kids can do to make us stop loving them — but for some reason it never fully hit me until I watched my sons hold their own sons for the first time. Seeing my sons with that pure joy and love they’ve never shown before, I asked them, do you love that baby already? And they’d say, Dad, she’s been here an hour, this is incredible, I’ve never felt like this. I said, isn’t that incredible — what has he done for you? Has he given you any money, been a good boy, done everything you told him? They’d look at me like, what are you talking about? I said, I just want you to know, that’s how God looks at you. That’s how God looks at us. That’s my favorite thing about Him. God I thought was a bully and mean to me as an eighteen-year-old — now, full circle, as a grandpa watching my boys hold their boys, I know how my father looks at me, and I keep that in mind even on the days I skin my knees or fall down.
Daron: Dude, I love it. That’s so beautiful, Kelly. I don’t even want to try to add anything to that. We’re going to land the plane, but I do want to hit this — people may have already put the pieces together, but the hilarious part is you now work at a church.
Kelly: Yeah, I do. That’s a hoot.
Daron: Give us the quick version — how did you go from all this, giving your life to Christ, giving Him a year, transforming — to now working full-time at a church instead of the business sector?
Kelly: It’s wild. I really gave my life to Christ in June of 2015, and when I go into something, I go all in, hardcore, and I started getting involved in a lot of things. It’s a larger church, and as it grew, the pastor would come to me with different projects — he’s a master at that, at not trying to make a guy who hates kids work in the kids’ department, or someone who only knows three chords on guitar your worship leader. He finds people’s natural, God-given talents and plugs them in.
As they grew and needed organizational help, especially after COVID when they opened a new building and it just blew up, he’d come to me for different organizational things. He’s my pastor first, then my buddy, and now my boss. We were doing a reorg to really free him up to focus on being a senior pastor — teaching, vision, being out in the community — and we needed to identify a right-hand guy to run the staff and the church. We prayed hard, Lord, we need you to provide this guy. We’ve got a walking trail around our campus, and he’s out there every morning praying about it, and one day he comes in and says, God gave me the word on who needs to be my right-hand guy. I said, that’s awesome, who’s it going to be? He said, it’s you. I said, which way were you walking on the trail — go back out and walk the other way, I’m retired, I’m going to Florida in the winter, not doing churchy stuff. And he said, let’s do it.
I was resistant for about three weeks — I really did want to spend half the year in Florida, golf, do unimportant things, not utilizing what my gifts were. Then one day I come home, I’m blubbering to my wife about all the awesome stuff God’s doing but that I’m not going to take the job, and she said, Kelly, you’ve got to do this, man, you love this, I’ve never seen you this excited. I said, you’re right. So five years ago I took the role on, and it’s a ball. We’re not trying to grow a church, we’re trying to help people become disciples of Christ. What’s cool is if you unplug from the growth model and just concentrate on discipling people, they tell their friends, and it continues to grow anyway. It’s a constant balance of figuring out how to help individuals in a very large church actually be seen, truly seen and cared for, and helped to take their next logical spiritual step.
I don’t think people want the show anymore at church. I’m not saying beautiful, well-done worship music is bad — God is a God of order and excellence — but I think the days of “the show” are over. What people want to know is, are you real, and do you care? I have a need, can you meet that in love, and how can you help me take the next step in my spiritual journey? To go from sneaking in after worship starts, sitting in the back to appease my wife, getting out as fast as I could, not wanting to touch Christians because in my head they had “Christian cooties” — to running that same church now.
Daron: You think God has a sense of humor?
Kelly: I know He does. Jesus has jokes. That is wild to me, that this is what God’s done in my life. It’s given me a platform to use my talents — I’m not a preacher, per se, but I know how to run organizations, and He saw that in me and uses that skill set. What I get to do every day, to help people walk with Jesus, is so awesome. It’s the adventure of a lifetime.
Daron: Well, Kelly, thank you for sharing and being on the podcast. Through my life, what I’ve found is old-school religion used to see people with scars and think, those people are disqualified. What I’ve learned is I look for people who have scars and will own them, because that’s someone I can trust — someone who’s experienced the redemption of God and is in that process. That’s somebody who understands redemption, grace, humility, perseverance — not because they memorized the Bible at a church camp, but because they lived it, because it’s transformed their life. Since the first time I met you, I trusted you. Our family comes in and out of your church — my youngest son loves going because all his buddies are there, and you guys are doing an amazing job reaching the next generation.
It meant a lot to me to go in and talk to [your senior pastor], who I knew when you guys first started — I’d go get coffee with him a couple times. It was meaningful because he told me, listen, I love what you do, I love what you’re doing with Blackbird, I love what you’re doing in the marketplace, there’s no expectation here, just let us love your family and be anonymous. It’s been a beautiful place for us. It speaks to the culture of that church that a senior pastor of a growing, exploding megachurch believed so much in the power of God’s ability to redeem and transform somebody, that he’d say, okay, what’s your rap sheet, Kelly — okay, you can run our whole church.
Kelly: Exactly. What we’re telling people is nobody’s too far gone for Jesus to redeem and change their life, and we believe it so much we’re going to let Kelly run the whole deal. It’s wild — that’s just authenticity and real belief in what Jesus can do.
Daron: So Kelly, I love it, dude, thank you.
Kelly: Thanks for letting me share, I love sharing the story. To anybody listening, wherever you are on your journey — it’s never too late. It’s never too late to start. Have the courage to come out of isolation.
Daron: Beautiful. Listen, thanks so much for downloading this episode. Would love to hear from you — you can always email me, daron@daronearlewine.com. If you have questions for me, send them over. I’ll pass questions for Kelly along to him too. We appreciate you, and until we talk again, remember these three things: God is for you, not against you. He is near you, not far away. And He created you on purpose and for a purpose. Thanks for downloading this episode of The Daron Earlewine Podcast.