Classic Episode Welcome

Announcer 0:01

Welcome to a Leading Conversations Classic Podcast. We've searched through our early episodes to find some of the best just for you. If you've been with us from the beginning, you may have heard some of these. If you haven't, enjoy this classic episode. Welcome to the Leading Conversations Podcast, sponsored by the Excel Leadership Network. On each episode, JD Pering will have conversations with church planting pastors and leaders from around the country. You can learn more about how to connect with Excel at the end of this podcast. Let's join JD now and listen in on this leading conversation.

Growing Up In Turnaround Churches

J.D. Pearring 0:45

Welcome to the Excel Leadership Network Leading Conversations Podcast. Today it is our honor to have the great Paul Mints with us. Paul is an incredible, incredible leader, really good friend, kingdom-minded pastor, the mayor of Mansfield, Texas. Wow. Paul, thanks for being with us today. Yeah, it's my privilege. It's my privilege to join you. Hey, we like to uh just find out your story on this podcast. So um I know a little bit about your background growing up in a Christian home. So tell me, tell me what it was like you growing up and how you came to Christ.

Paul Mints 1:24

Um I grew up in a pastor's home. Actually, my dad pastored uh and really felt a kind of a sense of calling to uh hurting churches. Uh I would probably label them as looking back now, toxic churches would go in and just really try to see uh churches, you know, doing turnaround uh situations and go in and these problematic churches. And um, you know, about the time that they would get good and healthy, you're like, okay, it was now the next one. I was like, our whole whole you know, childhood would grow up in these crazy churches uh that God had called us to. But um, you know, my my dad was just my spiritual hero. My mom was my best friend. I have I have four older siblings. And I just came to uh an awareness. I mean, I I'm this is interesting to say, I there's biblical present precedence for it, I guess, but is that I just I've just always loved our Lord. I really have. I loved my mom, I loved my family, I love, and I loved God so deeply. Um, and about my mom tells me, uh, it's probably right right around the time I turned five years old, just the awareness of sin and the awareness that I was lost, uh, and and loving God as deeply as I did, but it it was traumatic for me. I mean, not after not, mom would just say, you know, uh, you know, she'd she would go, he said it again. But I was just like, mom, you gotta have Mike and Dad, I mean, uh, dad and Mike and Wayne and John and Cindy pray for me because I I'm not a criteria I it just the the fearfulness of my lostness was was off the charts profound for that age. And of course, they were concerned I was too young, I didn't understand everything. And I just remember being in church one Sunday morning, my dad had finished preaching, the invitation was going, I'd start bawling, I started crying. And my mom finally looked down and she said, Do you do you want me to take you down front to uh talk to your dad? I remember just looking up at her, I was just crying, I was like, Yes, why won't you let me be saved? And and so she did. Um, I remember that that day going forward, my dad leading me to receive Christ. I was baptized right after that on my sixth birthday. Um and that was just that's just been my life. I mean, literally, there's been I I I don't have some huge rebellion period in my

A Painful Meeting Sparks A Call

Paul Mints 3:58

life, um, as far as my faith journey, but how I came to Christ with that. Now, I my my relationship with my father really got uh interesting in his dynamic uh because my father did not know how to give approval. He did not know verbally how to affirm. He he was still recovering from the abuse from his father, and he was doing the best that he could not to pass that on to us. So uh he just did not know how to give the blessing and get off all that. So I developed this desperate need to try to earn my father's love, earn my father's approval, because it seemed like he approved of all my older siblings, but not me. And each one of them now, as we've come out of our home, have said, Oh, he did the same to me. I thought he was proud of all the four of you, but not me. We all kind of left with this similar father wound, even though it manifested itself in each of our lives very differently. So now I'm called to the ministry, which I swear to God I'd never do, uh, from a lot of the painful things I saw in my dad's church and go off to college. And this trying to germing. Talk about that call call to ministry. How did that yeah? This is this this toxic faith uh just was killing me. Um well, I just remember saying, I watched my dad get pretty much slaughtered on the floor of a of one of those churches' business meetings. It was about a two-hour meeting. I was sitting on the front row and and watching the leadership dynamic of that and and God helping me to see it because it was part of what he used uh for my calling. But man, it was so painful. Just the the way that they were talking about my dad, the way they attacked him, obviously it was premeditated and all that. And there were some other men that you know that dad had talked to that were supposed to stand up and really address the questions, which they all chickened out. Um, it was just a horrible thing. I remember walking out of that meeting saying, I don't know what I'm gonna do with my life, but I will never do what my father did. That was that was right before my ninth grade year in high school started. So we ended up leaving that church. They voted us out, voted my dad. I was just horribly painful. And then we moved to Sweetwater. And for the next three years, God just consistently pursued me and was calling me and pursued me and calling me. And just in the last six months, every single day, it just I felt the Spirit of God drawing me, draw me to the ministry. And I just said, Well, you know, that's just not what we're gonna like. I've had I here's some four or five choices, Lord. You pick a card, I'll do any of those. And he said, Yeah, well, the problem is none of those are the card I'm gonna pick. And so finally, just uh met with my pastor, my youth

Surrender Confirmed By A Brother

Paul Mints 6:38

pastor, and they said, Paul, the the issue is surrender. Why don't you just say to the Lord, you know, God, I don't know what you're calling me to, but whatever it is, I'll say yes, uh, which was an extremely fearful uh decision to make, but prayed through, and finally my deep desire was to honor the Lord, even though that was my greatest fear. And uh and and for about a week or so, I prayed, desperately prayed. I said, Okay, God, I'm just gonna surrender and say yes. The result of that was I went forward, I surrendered to God's whatever that was gonna be, and then um kind of put the fleece out, told God, you know, me and my brother John pretty much fought like cats and dogs, you know, we're the last two of the five. And so I thought, well, John will never do this. So I said, Okay, God, if you want me to be in the ministry, if you call me to preach or whatever, then just have my brother John tell me, because that ain't gonna happen. Um two weeks later, I just come back from a mission trip. Um, and at the end of the invitation, short story is John said he thought he was losing his mind, gonna go crazy. But he finally just he said, This boy just kept saying, You've got to go tell Paul. I'm calling him to preach. You gotta go tell Paul. So he walked from the back row of that church. I was up on stage because we had just done, you know, reports. He walked all the way up on stage during the middle of the invitation, apologized to me as a brother, told me how much he was sorry, man. I've been a terrible big brother. You turned around and walked off the stage, and he said, Man, I thought maybe that would solve it, I wouldn't ruin your life. And God does this that all the spirit was all over him again. He turns back around, comes back up on stage, and said, I don't know how to explain this to you, but God's telling me that I'm supposed to tell you that He's calling you to preach. And um I don't know what else he said, but as soon as he let go, I walked to the front and and surrendered my life to God's call to be pastor and and preacher and the ministry in a formal way. And so, as they say, the rest is history.

J.D. Pearring 8:41

That's incredible. That's incredible with your brother. Wow. Um, talk a

The Long Road To Church Planting

J.D. Pearring 8:47

little bit about um, I know you were in in youth ministry, you were doing other stuff. Where did the church planting bug come from?

Paul Mints 8:57

I was passionate about student ministry. I was in the I ended up being a youth pastor for 21 years. And I think I was so uh convinced of the strategy of the priority of reaching the next generation that I I just was like, I'll do this for the rest of my life. Um and I think again, it was part of this fear of well, maybe I can be a youth pastor, but see, this isn't doing what my daddy did. You know, I I'm not gonna be the pastor, I'm not gonna be the lead pastor, I'm not gonna be the um, but I was a youth pastor, I was 25. I was up and out of college, which I was called to preach, went to college, got a degree in business, uh, got a minor in Bible. I knew I was gonna go to seminary. We were in seminary, uh, finished up there, and been doing student ministry and traveling and preaching, all that through that, through that time. Um, I was I took our students to a youth camp at Mount Lebanon Baptist and Camp Summer. You'll know that here in the Dallas Metroplex area. Um, me and one of my best friends from First Baptist Dallas, we did our youth camp together. And I was leading a leadership track, training students on leadership. And um just talking about the end in mind, begin with the end in mind, a lot of different things like that. And this, uh, and I was talking about like if you could do anything you want to do, be anything you want to be, go anywhere you want to go, guaranteed not to fail, money was no issue. What would you do? What would you be? Where would you go? And just getting them to dream and think and kind of, you know, as 15, 16, 17-year-olds. And this one kid came up to me at the end, he goes, Man, I have no idea how to answer that question, but how would you answer that question? And I just remember opening my mouth and basically the vision of T Cal just crawling out of my mouth. Uh it was like I was hearing it for the first time as it was coming out. It's one of those not out of body, but just I was like remembering going, like, I've never even thought these things, I've never heard, but they were they were so in me and it crawled out of me. And that day, I remember he walked in, that's cool. Okay, he just walked off. But I was like, God, what is are you, you know, are you caught? And and the Lord's like, Paul, that church must exist. Uh, I'm 25, and you know, I'm in youth ministry. Um I it just didn't seem logical. I didn't know what to do with it, and really it sat dormant in some ways for a long time because it was I we I was 39 when we moved here, and I turned uh 40 like two months later. So, you know, 15 years later, we we activated, you know, actually moved and began the process of planting the church. But uh it's there's no doubt God had a lot of things that He had to build in me, had to grow in me, and a lot of uh things he had to chisel out of me and fears he had to remove from my heart for us to make this big step. But I mean, I I wish it was more sexy or whatever, but that that's really what happened.

J.D. Pearring 12:07

So 15 years of uh waiting for that vision to come to fruition. That's that's interesting. Hey, can you talk a little bit? I know your vision is bigger than just one church. I mean, you have a vision for seeing church planting movement. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Building A Multi Ethnic Movement

Paul Mints 12:28

When it I think a lot of that formed in student ministry, uh everywhere we went, uh, that God called uh Shannon and I, we, you know, it wasn't just about uh our youth group. It was like, you know, hey, together all of us are pastoring the city. And, you know, my kids and your kids and all the churches together, they all go to school together, uh, they hang out together, they put play football together. So we just begin to try to have this mindset of let's build a student ministry network. And in doing so, man, God just kind of, you know, I was kind of stuck in my own little Baptist bubble for a lot of my ministry and a lot of my life. But that began to move me outside of that. I began to fall in love with youth pastors from other denominations and their unique beauty that they brought to the kingdom and the expressions. And I was like, I'm just smitten with the larger picture of the kingdom, uh, thankful for my tradition, thankful for what I grew up in, but just began to love and grow in this heart. I think so. God's growing that part of my heart, um, as well as you know, he was working on on growing me as a pastor and getting me past some fears of that. And and so when we when we came, uh we moved here, we had net, we had never heard of Excel and uh had no idea about them. Matter of fact, I'd interviewed with four other uh networks before I even heard about Excel and just kept going, that's not it, that's not the right DNA, that's not the right DNA. And and but we came here and the passion was like we don't want to just plant a church, but we want to really start a church planting movement. I had been really hurt in traditional churches growing up, and the church that even I was coming out of mega church is well as I say mega church, you know it's probably north of 2000. We ran somewhere around 2,500. Um, and student ministry, you know, we probably ran 400 on Wednesday nights. And so, but but it, oh God, it just it was eating me alive. And and I was like, there's there's no unity. I was in Shreeport and it was so segregated, and there's white churches, and but like our Wednesday night youth ministry, we we had blacks and Hispanics and whites and all that, but then on Sunday mornings, like we almost had greeters that if we had some of the students we were leading to Christ from football teams come and want to visit our church. I had I heard someone report to me, they said, one of our greeters said, uh you're gonna feel comfortable, more comfortable at the church down the street, and almost wouldn't let an African-American kid come in that church. I I was just like, God, God, I can't, I I can't be a part of something like this. You know, we had such a passion for multi-ethnic, plus just this larger passion for the kingdom. So our heart, you know, and I was so frustrated with the established church, which God's healed me from, but I was like, I will never work with the established church again. So our heart was like, I mean, if we're not gonna work with the 300,000 churches that are already in existence in America, then we're gonna have to start a whole new wave of churches. And so that was kind of my heartbeat's like, God, let's go plant one healthy church and let's just see if we can't multiply a planting movement and especially one that had more of an antioch heartbeat and multi-ethnic heartbeat, and uh and it just it just started happening.

J.D. Pearring 15:43

And you are you are doing that. Um you've helped start so many churches and just encouraged so many church planters um of all different stripes uh in the the Dallas area and across the U.S. Um let me ask you this one last question, and that is uh give us your your best shot. Um you're a leader. Tell us leaders what we need to know.

Four Core Tasks Of A Leader

J.D. Pearring 16:08

Just what would you encourage us with?

Paul Mints 16:11

Well, it might be twofold. Let me see how much time we have, but uh if only let me start here. If you're a new church planter, I I remember getting on on site, you know, we we'd moved from Shreeport, we moved here, I moved in because our house uh was supposed to sell and then had this crazy glitch. So I ended up moving in to the spare bedroom of Brad and Julie Riggins, the couple that moved here to plant the church with us. Number one, don't plant alone. Always plant in a team. Just don't plant alone. Anyway, even if you live with them, huh? I'm sorry, even if you have to move in. Oh my god, it was and and and you know, we were like, we're gonna call it the community at Lakeridge, and they were like, Well, I guess we're gonna see if this idea of community works, if you live down the hall from me. Um, you know, we would eat break and I'd go down, and whoever's up first started the coffee. It was just you know, just what we did. Um, but you don't know always what to do. Like, what do I do? Uh like we're here. I don't know what to do. And so, really, what what are your what are your activities in the first days of relocation? That's not what uh so much I want to talk about, but once you kind of get up and you begin to gather a team, uh let me tell you what I think people they don't always understand this. There's four things that a church planter that leaders uh times, I believe, are divided into, some of the best uh training I've received. And as I've lived and walked this out, it's just played out to be to be true. And no matter how large the the ministry is has gotten or how large a church grows, it's still these four things. The only thing that changes is the percentage of time that you dedicate to one of these four things. And that the the four simple things, the four things that you do as a lead pastor, as a church planter, as a as a as a kingdom uh, you know, uh influence and a kingdom catalyst person is you do, you lead, you lead leaders, and you resource leaders. It's pretty much simple. It's that simple. Now, when you first start planting, I mean you you know, you you don't even have me, of course, we had me and Brad, and I was leading him, but I mean 80, 90, 85, 90 percent of my time was was doing. I mean, you got to, we we were planting seeds, we were plowing, you know, we were preparing, uh, and I was leading Brad. And then before long, you know, as we began to gather our our launch team and gather those people and really sort through to make sure they didn't have just uh attenders, but we were really trying to grow a launch team. And and so Brad and I, because he came from a large church, he was like, okay, of the hundred-person structure that we really need, he goes, Look, I'll take these 50 hats and you take those 50 hats, and let's see who can get rid of our hats the quickest. In other words, who could how can we start to empower people, hand things off so that we're leading them. So we you do, then you lead, but then you got to begin to raise some of those up to to leader status. So now you're leading leaders, and you do that long enough that you're doing less so you can lead more. You're doing a little bit more less so that you can lead leaders more, and then you have to do a little even less so that you can spend time resourcing your leaders. Uh, I think sometimes we get stuck in the doing, and it's why our churches get stuck under 100. Is that is that helpful?

J.D. Pearring 19:29

That's fantastic. That's uh bookworthy. I'm waiting for the Paul Mince do lead, lead lead resource leaders to come out. Hey, Paul, you've been a great friend to me. You've been um just an incredible leader to so many. Thank you for your time. Uh keep up the good work, and we look forward to God doing even more through you in the future. So thanks for your time today.

Paul Mints 19:53

Yeah, thanks, JD. Love you too.

Excel Network Next Steps And Subscribe

Announcer 19:56

Thanks for joining the Leading Conversations Podcast. We hope that you found it both helpful and encouraging. At Excel Leadership Network, our focus is on the church planter rather than the church. If you'd like to find out more about us, visit our webpage at excelnetwork.org. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss any future episodes. See you next time with another leading conversation.