Minister in the Making

Minister in the Making started out as a way for a son to give his dad something to do during the isolation of the first pandemic summer of 2020. It turned out to be the last thing they ever did together. Travis Irwin, the "minister" in 'Minister in the Making', shared his entire life story in 37 episodes that ran from August 2020 until May 2022. On June 1, 2022, Travis died at the age of 72 after his final struggle with cancer. He was only 15 months into his retirement from 45 years in Christian ministry. The lessons he learned and the stories he told in his own voice and his own words are now available to anyone in the world who has access to this podcast.

Since the "minister" in 'Minister in the Making' is no longer with us, the podcast no longer has its subject. This is the last episode.

Dad (Travis Irwin, the "minister" in 'Minister in the Making') died on June 1, 2022, before we could record the last episode with him. 

In this episode, I took many of the questions that I wanted to ask him in that episode and asked them of the one person who may have known Dad better than he knew himself: Mom (Debbie Irwin). 

Over one hour, Mom shared what she thought Dad learned in life, what it all meant to him, and what he hoped it would mean to those who came into contact with him. Nobody could better describe or summarize Dad's faith, life, and work than his best friend, companion, and partner for 49 years. 

We also had a couple of surprise guests show up for this one!

This episode is the perfect way to look back on Dad's life and work and apply it to yourself.

Travis Dewey Irwin (the "minister" in 'Minister in the Making') died on June 1, 2022, after a 10-month struggle with cancer. 

In this episode, we bring you his funeral--his "celebration of life"--as an audience member recorded it on June 11, 2022, in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

Over more than 40 years, Dad ministered to countless people who were battling cancer. He ministered to many people who were dying of it. He ministered to their families. He eulogized them at their funerals. Then, in August 2016, Dad heard the words that so many of us dread hearing: “You have cancer.” Almost overnight, Dad went from being the one who ministered to cancer patients to a cancer patient needing ministry himself.

What was it like to be caught in this role reversal? How did cancer change the way Dad thought about the church, ministry, and God?

Most young ministers start out dreaming of being “The Guy” at the head of a growing congregation. Dad had that experience. It burned him out and eventually almost hollowed out the congregation he served for more than two decades. By the time Dad was ready to go to work with his fifth and final congregation at the age of 58, he was humbler and wiser. He wanted to be just an associate minister, working behind the scenes to increase member involvement at the Athens Church of Christ in Athens, Tennessee. There, Dad put a lifetime of ministry experience to work to help members find and use their spiritual gifts to build up the church.

After almost three years as a part-time minister for the small Church of Christ congregation in Brushy, Tennessee, Dad and Mom both knew he was ready to go back to full-time ministry work. They committed to finding a situation that would make it easier for Dad to stick to the healthier lifestyle and ministry habits he learned after his burnout in 2003. He also had a whole new philosophy of ministry and he needed to go to work with a congregation that was open to it. Oh, and he had several more “must-haves” on his list (you’ll hear them in the interview). In short, Dad was looking for a situation that most Church of Christ leaders would have told him doesn’t exist. Dad, however, prayed and persevered and it paid off.

In this episode, we pick up around the start of 2005, a little more than one year after Dad crashed and burned after 22 ½ years ministering to the Steele Avenue Church of Christ in Ashland, Ohio. After a year of sabbatical from ministry, Dad and Mom started to feel like he was ready to start easing back into his calling to serve the local church. They both wanted to be very careful to keep Dad from making the same mistakes at his next ministry that he made with the Steele Avenue Church of Christ. So they set some very specific boundaries and criteria and started looking for just the right place. That search led them to a little congregation in a place so small it doesn’t even show up on the map. But it turned out to be the perfect place at the perfect time.

The story picks up on January 5, 2004, the day Dad finished 22 1/2 years as minister to the Steele Avenue Church of Christ in Ashland, Ohio. When Dad woke up that morning, he was burned out, exhausted, not even able to think about what he would do with his life next. Even as the next mortgage payment bore down on Dad and Mom, they knew that rushing into a new job just to pay the bills would not be the best thing for them to do. Instead, they committed to make space and take time to heal, rest, and seek God all over again. Even though 2004 was a lean year, it turned out to be one of the best years of their lives and just what they needed to go back into church work in 2005. 

How do you separate after 22 ½ years together? That is the question that Dad had to answer starting on October 4, 2003, the day after he read his resignation letter to the elders of the Steele Avenue Church of Christ in Ashland, Ohio. His contract with the congregation stated that he had to complete 90 days after the date of his resignation, but Dad also wanted to make sure that he left everything in the best possible shape. Dad kept working hard for the congregation, but as you’ll hear Mom say in this interview, he was so emptied out that he was almost mechanical, robotic about his work. As I also learned in this interview, Dad’s last 90 days with the Steele Avenue Church of Christ turned out to be awkward, lonely, and strange. Listen to find out why.

In this episode, Mom joins Dad to tell the story about the day he reached his breaking point as the minister to the Steele Avenue Church of Christ in Ashland, Ohio. Before that day, Dad seemed to have at least some small sense that he was trying to do too much and that, sooner or later, something had to give. Then, on a normal workday in July 2003, Dad had a total breakdown. All systems in his body and brain just…stopped working. He curled into the fetal position on the couch in his basement and waited to succumb to whatever had him in its grip.

Those scary moments in the basement finally got Dad to admit that he needed help, but when help presented itself, would Dad take it?

This is the story of how one minister’s extraordinarily successful 22 years with the congregation he loved collapsed into a painful end. This is Minister in the Making Episode #30: Fetal position.

To participate in the upcoming live retrospective episode on Dad's time with the Steele Avenue Church of Christ, please email your questions and thoughts to bt@btirwin.com by Monday, January 24, 2022. 

As a Christian minister who has lived among Christian ministers since I was born, I notice something sad, scary, and strange. Christian congregations look to their ministers and pastors to model and teach spiritual health and strength. Yet, many times, these ministers and pastors become some of the most spiritually unhealthy and spiritually weak people in their congregations.

By the late 1990s and almost 25 years into his ministry, Dad was at the top of his ministry game. His congregation, the Steele Avenue Church of Christ in Ashland, Ohio, was bursting at the seams and starting a building campaign. Dad’s ministries were multiplying and he was bringing more and more people to Christ. But even as Dad looked like he was bearing fruit, he knew a secret. He was neither spiritually healthy nor spiritually strong. He was just going through the motions. Even as he worked nonstop to fan into flame the spiritual life of his congregation, Dad had no spiritual life of his own. His flame was out. He was smoldering into a pile of ash.

How did this happen? What choices did Dad make that led him into this spiritual coma?

Send questions for future episodes to bt@btirwin.com.

As a Christian minister who grew up in a family of Christian ministers whose lives revolved around the church, I can tell you from first-hand knowledge: Shocking and staggering is the number of Christian ministers who cheat on their spouses or whose marriages end in divorce. Many more Christian ministers who do not actually get into affairs often entangle themselves in ministry relationships and ministry work that slowly takes them away from their spouses until they wake up one day and find that their marriage is all but dead.

Dad was a case of the latter. Over the 1980s and 1990s, the congregation he served grew and grew. As it did, Dad chose to take on more and more responsibilities. Each of those new responsibilities left less and less for Dad to invest in his relationship with Mom. Finally, the morning came when Mom woke up and Dad was gone. In the aftermath of that break in their relationship, Dad finally realized that he would have to make a choice he avoided for almost 30 years: Choose the church or choose his marriage.

Send questions for future episodes to bt@btirwin.com.

When Dad started in ministry in 1975, he and Mom could not foresee how helping people in crisis would become a normal part of their everyday lives. Almost from the get-go, they had to get used to almost daily calls for help. As long as they worked with small congregations, they found that they could handle it. But by the mid-1990s, Dad was ministering to the Steele Avenue Church of Christ in Ashland, Ohio. The congregation was growing so much that the elders decided to build a whole new campus to meet the need for space. As the congregation grew, so did the responsibility that Dad took on himself to be there for people who needed help. And the more Dad helped people in crisis, the more people in crisis seemed to find Dad. Even though he refused to admit it at the time, the strain was beginning to break Dad. Things finally got out of control when Dad got so entangled with one member of the church that it put Dad, our family, and the entire congregation in grave danger.

If you would like to ask Dad or Mom a specific question on a future episode, please email it to bt@btirwin.com.

When Dad arrived in Ashland, Ohio, in August 1981, the Church of Christ that met at 323 Steele Avenue comprised about 150 members. Almost 20 years later, the congregation’s membership swelled to almost 350. The building was bursting at the seams, people could not find a place to park on Sunday mornings, and there was not one more inch of space left in which to grow. So, in the mid-1990s, the elders of the Steele Avenue Church of Christ began a long campaign to raise funds, purchase property, and build a new campus on West Main Street in Ashland. The congregation was enthusiastic in its support for this goal. But as hard work and hope pointed to a brighter future than anyone once imagined for the congregation, Dad’s world was growing darker and darker with each passing year. As the congregation gave more and more money and plans moved closer and closer to putting shovels in the ground, Dad was putting himself under greater and greater pressure to meet impossibly high expectations. The church was getting ready to build, but Dad was tearing himself down. What was happening? And why?

The 1990s were the golden age of Dad’s ministry career. He was in the prime of life. His congregation, the Steele Avenue Church of Christ in Ashland, Ohio, was growing so much that it needed a new building. People got along and seemed happy and peaceful. It was a picture of near-perfect congregational health. But did this healthy congregation reflect the health of its minister?

In this episode, Dad reveals the inverse relationship between the health of the Steele Avenue Church of Christ and his own mental, physical, and spiritual health. As each year went by, Dad more and more chose to tend to the health of the church and neglect his own.

Was it a good trade-off?

What's in this episode

For generations, you could walk into any Church of Christ building in America and find three common features: The absence of musical instruments, a baptistry, and a billboard hanging on the wall next to the pulpit. On that billboard, you would see numbers. Numbers like how many people attended Bible class and worship the Sunday before and how much money they put in the offering plates. Church leaders looked at these numbers to measure the spiritual health and strength of their congregations.

Dad did, too. When he started full-time ministry at the West Side Church of Christ in Akron, Ohio, he got a diary in which he carefully recorded the latest church numbers every week. He kept that diary every week for the next 20 or more years, taking it with him from Akron, Ohio, to Cadiz, Ohio, to the Steele Avenue Church of Christ in Ashland, Ohio.

At the Steele Avenue Church of Christ, those numbers looked really good. Year after year of Dad’s ministry there, the congregation grew and grew.

But one day in the mid- to late-1990s, Dad decided to stop keeping his numbers diary. He just quit.

Why?

In this episode, Dad talks about how he started having strong doubts about how he and most church leaders measured the spiritual health and strength of their congregations.

Dad has a new book out: 'We Are God's Masterpiece' 

In this book, Dad utilizes his experiences in church leadership to compile several inventories for individuals to complete in order to discover how they are intended to be used in the church. From spiritual gifts to personality types to passions, among others, God has made us each unique parts of the whole. This book will walk any individual through the steps of recognizing just how beautiful and necessary we each are to fulfilling His masterpiece.

In this episode, I asked Dad what I thought would be a juicy question: Tell me some stories about how you handled conflict and criticism during your 22 ½ years with the Steele Avenue Church of Christ. To my surprise, Dad had very little to say about those things.

Did he block those stories out of his memory or forget about them because of his chemo treatments? No. As it turns out, conflict and criticism just did not happen much at the Steele Avenue Church of Christ in the 1980s and 1990s. When they did, they got settled and sorted out quickly and with very little fuss. Dad couldn’t take any credit for this because he said he had very little to do with handling conflict or criticism when they did arise. He credits the elders of the church for creating a culture, modeling behavior, and taking a firm but gentle lead when situations called for it. More than that, though, Dad said that church members themselves--even the ones who started conflicts--valued being together much more than they valued winning arguments against each other. For that reason, the Steele Avenue Church of Christ doubled in size and thrived during a period when most Church of Christ congregations were shrinking and struggling.

What lessons can church leaders and members today learn from that congregation's culture 30 - 40 years ago?

The year was 1994 and Dad was 13 years into his ministry to the Steele Avenue Church of Christ in Ashland, Ohio. The congregation was growing. Dad’s ministry was cruising. Then something happened that changed the direction of all of that.

Dorothy Abels died.

Who was Dorothy Abels? Most people around the congregation knew that she was a ladies Bible class and Sunday school teacher. She was kind, but quiet. Outgoing, but not outspoken. Just another woman doing what she could to help out around church.

But Dad knew something about Dorothy that most people didn’t know: She prayed for the church. And not just a word here and there. She prayed for the church every day. Sometimes for hours. She prayed for the members of the church by name. She prayed for Dad and his ministry.

When Dorothy died, Dad felt it as if something in his body changed. As if the air in the church changed. Dorothy and her prayers were gone. When Dad lost Dorothy’s prayers, he began a decade that would end with him losing his ministry and losing his way.

In this episode, Dad will talk about just how crucial one quiet person and her prayers can be to the life of a church. I call this one: “I’ve never met another Dorothy Abels.”

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Dad was hitting his stride with the Steele Avenue Church of Christ in Ashland, Ohio. The church was active, growing, healthy, and seemed to be avoiding some of the problems that some churches face. Dad was happy, too, as he felt good about his family life, spiritual life, and work life. But even as all was going well, Dad was already making choices that would lead to difficulty and trouble in the years ahead.

In this episode, Dad will talk about church culture and church habits and how they lead to church growth. He’ll also talk about how he chose to manage his own time and workload (and how he seemed to think that he could find a way to work through any limits). Dad will also take us behind the closed doors of elders meetings. What goes on there anyway (and what is the minister’s job when he sits in that room)?

Do you have a question you'd like to ask Dad in a future episode? Email it to bt@btirwin.com.

In another episode, Dad said that everything was going well for his ministry with the Steele Avenue Church of Christ in the mid-1980s. But at home, Dad and Mom were going through one of the hardest and scariest times of their lives. In 1984, tests revealed that their one-year old daughter, Bethy, had Cystic Fibrosis, a genetic disease that was the #1 killer of children and young adults at that time. On top of the overwhelming confusion, fear, and frustration, Dad and Mom had to face the financial hardship that came from multiplying medical bills and trying to buy their first home. When families in the church face this kind of hardship, they turn to their ministers. But where do ministers turn when they’re the ones going through hell?

Do you want to ask Dad a specific question in a future episode? Email it to bt@btirwin.com. 

Study after study, survey after survey, shows that ministers have a hard time forming and keeping friendships in their congregations. On one hand, ministers and their families can never quite escape feeling like they are different from everyone else in the congregation, like they are expected to be a little better than human. On the other hand, church members often only show ministers their best side. The majority of ministers in the United States report that they feel lonely. Perhaps that is why so many ministers burn out, drop out, or flame out because of exhaustion, failing marriages, loss of faith, or personal sin. For their own health and well-being (and the health and well-being of the congregations they serve), ministers need good friends. 

In this episode, both my dad (Travis Irwin) and mom (Debbie Irwin) talk about their experiences forming and keeping good friendships in the congregations they served for over 45 years of ministry. The inspiration for this episode is John Kerr, a member of the Steele Avenue Church of Christ who befriended Dad on the very first day of his ministry to that congregation. Dad and Mom talk about how their friendship with John and his wife, Jan, set the pattern and the tone for their entire 22 1/2 year ministry to the Steele Avenue Church of Christ. 

Dad and Mom will also share their insights on what it is like for ministers and their families to make friends in the congregations they serve and what boundaries need to be in place to keep those friendships "safe." I ask them what they wish that regular church folks would know and understand about their ministers and their families.

This is a good conversation about the importance of friendships to ministers. 

In the 12 months between the summers of 1980 and 1981, Dad resigned from two different churches. The second resignation came after nine months in which "things just didn't work out" and Dad and Mom grew more unhappy in Cadiz, Ohio. But what would they do and where would they go next? Would any church even want to look at Dad after he abruptly left two congregations in less than one year?

Then, out of the blue, a stranger called Dad from Ashland, Ohio, where the Steele Avenue Church of Christ had problems, too. The congregation was dealing with the difficulties that came from firing two ministers in two years and being rejected by the minister it chose to succeed them. 

As if someone, somewhere scripted it, Dad and the Steele Avenue Church of Christ came together at just the right time. 

In this episode, Dad talks about how it all happened and what it all meant. Today's story is a family favorite that my sisters and I heard over and over as we grew into adulthood. Dad and Mom often bring it up as an example of how God is always looking out for us (even when it feels like he's not there) and that his timing is always just right.  

At the end of this episode, Dad will also talk about his recent cancer diagnosis and the low visibility of the days ahead. At the time of recording, the only information we had is that Dad's cancer from five years ago returned and is all over his body.