Mitchener Interview with Outpour Magazine

Ministry, Career & Calling: Interview with Mary Ann Mitchener Meet Mary Ann Mitchener, Adult Ministries Pastor at Crossroads Church in Concord, NC. She talks about serving in ministry, and the joys of taking care of an aging parent.

OM:Tell us a little about yourself and describe your ministry role at Crossroads Church.

Mary Ann Mitchener: I moved back to Concord after being in Boston for 30 years and I started out as the equipping pastor and now I’m over the adult ministries, the Bible studies, small groups, and the women.

OM: Which parts of your ministry do you enjoy the most and which do you nd most challenging?

MAM: I’ve never enjoyed filling out reports (laughs). I’m much more comfortable teaching a group of maybe 20-30 [people] because there’s dialogue. I’m a dialogue teacher and I like the feedback and the interaction. Preaching is a monologue and I’m not as fond of that but I love teaching, I love studying the Word, and I also teach the membership class. I love meeting all the new people. I would say I love most of it and God has gifted me with a wonderful assistant who happens to be the senior pastor’s wife.

She really makes my life go well as she deals with all the administrative details.

OM: Like paperwork? (laughs)

MAM: Yes, and I can just focus on shepherding, pastoring, counseling, teaching and mentoring.

OM: When you left the corporate world and went into ministry, was there an emotional shift for you when that happened?

MAM: I worked as a bridge person for my church to inner city ministries for 20 years [...] and I was very passionate about it. So I wanted to leave [my corporate job] Xerox [to work fulltime in ministry] before the Lord said I could. I kept saying, “Can I leave now, is now the time Lord?” He said, “Well, you can leave now, but it won’t be blessed. You’ve got to wait for Me.” So it was three years later that the Lord really opened the door for me to go to seminary and leave Xerox. Usually [the company] will give you three months leave, but they granted me a year and I knew that was God’s way of saying, “Go explore.” My boss was extremely supportive. He said “I know you’ve been torn between ministry and your career here. Go nd out which one you really want to pour into." It took me less than a month to decide “I’m not going back.”

OM: How have you seen the needs of the congregation change in the last 18 months with the pandemic? And what are some of those needs?

MAM: People have more fear and anxiety. [Yet] in many ways, I do think there’s more openness to the Word. People want hope; they want to be hopeful. But they’re frightened. With the un-

certainty in our country, I think that people are just looking for an anchor. People need a lot of encouragement, a lot of reassurance and to know just how do they trust God when things are so uncertain? And [as far as] Bible knowledge, there’s just a lack of real Bible knowledge.

OM: Well not long ago, you preached on a Sunday morning, a difficult message in calling people in the church to repentance. at must have been tough. But there’s power behind confessing our sins to one another. At the altar call you said, “Come…in con dentiality and confess your sins.” What is that power behind confession and what was the drive behind you feeling the need to call people to repentance?

MAM: I have witnessed many addictions, especially online, among people in the church that have ruined families, have ruined lives. I just thought people don’t know where to go to confess because there’s so much shame. We were encouraging people to come forward to some of the pastors and confess because the Word of God says, “Confess your sins to each other so you may be healed” (James 5:16). You cannot be healed if you have hidden sin. e Psalmist said, when I kept silent, I groaned, I wasted away (see Psalm 32:1-5). It eats at you because when you start getting convicted you have such guilt and you don’t know what to do with it. But if we come forward and repent and confess and turn [to the Lord], we have a chance at starting over. And

that can be true with the worst sinner. Anybody can start over.  at’s what the Bible says, “if you confess your sins, He will cleanse you. He’ll forgive you and cleanse you from all unrighteousness” (I John 1:9). So it’s a promise; [and] when we don’t confess and we carry it around, then it festers and can make us sick, and the enemy wants to destroy us.  e Catholic church does confession, and though we believe you can go to God directly, there’s something about confessing to another human being that’s very liberating.

It’s biblical.

OM: Repentance is very important in the world we live in where we’re directed to be politically correct and tolerant. I always think, Jesus was not tolerant, He called sin what it was, sin. Yet He loved people to confession, conviction, and conversion.

MAM: We’re not to pretend that we’re righteous or holy or perfect people; we are to walk in humility. Really, for anyone walking closely with the Lord, you should have daily confession. I know I do.  ere are all kinds of things we need to confess, even if it’s just in our thoughts. We were studying the Kings of the Old Testament in our women’s group and I just saw that Solomon had everything and ended up with nothing; it was all meaningless, he even said so. Just the contrast that we need to be careful with all the luxuries we have because they can truly lead to serious temptation.

We're not to pretend that we're righteous or holy or perfect people; we are to walk in humility.

OM: Very true, especially in this blessed country we live in. So to shift topics…you have a pretty special roommate. Your 95 year-old mom. How do you balance taking care of her needs with full time ministry? Taking care of an aging parent can be a full time job. (**Note: at the time of this publishing, Ms. Mitchener’s mother passed away, at age 95.)

MAM: I have prayed long and hard that God would send me the right caregivers because while I feel very committed to my mother’s needs, I also feel called to ministry. So right now I coordinate four different caregivers. God has provided for us, they are all very good. When one of them can’t make it or gets sick or quarantined, I just step in and ask God to give me the energy. I try real hard to keep her healthy and I try to keep myself healthy, which means I don’t do a lot else. is summer, I would take a day when I had help, and go to the lake. It was like my Sabbath day, you know?

OM: Is going to the lake how you practice what they call self-care?

MAM: I try to do water aerobics a couple days a week, but going to the lake, it just re-fuels me for the week. When I didn’t have people to stay with mom, I just gured I wasn’t supposed to go and then He would provide. I try to eat right, I try to get a good night’s sleep so I can stay healthy and care for her.

OM: I’m sure it’s challenging at times. What are the bene ts of taking care of your mom?

MAM: Honestly, because I have good helpers it doesn’t feel as burdensome to me as people that stay home all the time. ere’s much more “up” side than there is “down” side. She and I are super close; we understand each other. We’ve lived together now 16 years as adults. She trusts me and

I know she loves me. Love covers a multitude of stuff. We have a sweet, harmonious home and you can’t put a price tag on that.

OM: You also have a very strong spiritual relationship with your mother. at, to me, is such a treasure. At Bible study you told us that you started taking communion together every night as a way of preparing yourself to pray for the healing of the worship pastor at your church from cancer. Tell us what that has meant to you to have that communion with her.

MAM: My sister is part of it, too. Literally every night, the three of us go through some Psalms and have a devotional together. We read the Psalms together, mom’s favorite, 103, Psalm 91 for protection, Psalm 100 that we grew up saying, and some others that I really like and rotate. en we make declarations about our health and our life from scripture, [that] “our strength will equal our days,” (Deuteronomy 33:25); [that] “we will have full vigor, completely secure and at ease, our bodies well nourished, our bones rich in marrow” (Job 21:23). We thank God "for being fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:14). We speak life to the parts of our bodies. en we have a prayer book and we pray for all the people that have prayer concerns that we know about and we pray for all our missionaries that we support. en we go from there into thanking God for communion, for the death, cruci xion and resurrection of Jesus. We might

read Isaiah 53 or something just reminding us of the debt Christ Jesus paid. What it does is it softens our hearts to forgive people who have offended us or hurt us, because when you stop and think about what Jesus has done for you, naturally you want to give that to other people. at’s when we lift up our good friend, Walter, and pray for God to touch him. en we end with “when we lie down, we will not be afraid, when we lie down our sleep with be sweet. For you alone O Lord make us dwell in safety” (Psalm 4:8). We read Psalm 121 and mom gets involved in that and then my sister does a benediction which is “the Lord bless you and keep you” (Numbers 6:24).

OM: A lot of people are entering that stage of life where their parents have health challenges.

What have you learned that helps people who are in the season of life where they are caring for their parents?

MAM: I think people that have the hardest time are doing the full time care giving and when that person’s gone, they don’t have anything else. It’s a huge hole. I’m not married; I don’t have kids, so mom is my family. I treasure every day. I thank God every day [that] we do have a sweet relationship, a spiritual relationship. It’s very valuable to me and I’m grateful and I am embracing every day that we have. But I think people have to take breaks. For example, her caregivers were able to get together and they let me go to the beach for six days which was the rst time in a couple years.

Mom was great about it too, she said, “please go, please go.” Just to have that six days with good friends where I didn’t have any caregiving or anything.  ings like that enable you to go on.

OM: Do you see your role in ministry changing with everything that’s changing in the world?

MAM: Oh, (laughing) I think it’s a day at a time!

I think if there’s anything the Lord is teaching me, which I have not mastered [is to] live in the present.

OM: What is the best way for members of a congregation to support the pastors that serve in their church?

MAM: I just think appreciation, encouragement and more than anything a commitment to praying for them. It’s hard being a pastor; ministry is very diffi cult. It’s wonderful, but there’s so much work and there are people that come against you.

[By] saying, “I’m going to pray for you every day, I’m part of your prayer network” is probably the best thing you can do for a pastor.

OM: Finally, are there any verses that give you daily strength, in this season of your life?

MAM: “My heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord, I will have no fear. In the end, I will look in triumph at all my enemies” (Psalm 112:7-8). - interview by Beckie Hudson for OM