Cumberland Road

Exploring faith journeys and inspiring ministries that embody the good news of God. This is the Cumberland Road. I'm your host, TJ Malinoski. Today, reverend Jeff McMichael joins me on the Cumberland Road. Jeff is an ordained Cumberland Presbyterian minister, and he's up in Kentucky. He is serving as a full time pastor at Freedom Cumberland Presbyterian Church. His past experience is in the world of the pharmaceuticals. He was a district manager for over twenty years and not only is he a Cumberland Presbyterian minister, but in other ways where he is serving, he is admissions coordinator, and that's Cumberland Presbytery. And he's also a regional representative for our United Outreach, which is a funding source for the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. And he covers Presbyteries Covenant, Cumberland, North Central are the three that you travel around when you're able.

Jeff, thank you for joining me today. How are you, sir?

I am doing well and, honored to be here with you. As I told you, this seems strange because I'm a faithful listener to the podcast and some of the people that you've had on before, I'm not at that caliber, but we'll give it our best shot. How about that?

Jeff, you will do just fine. Since you're a listener, you know, I like to kinda start our conversations and kick them off with asking each guest, what is your earliest experience with God?

Well, being raised in a Christian family, I guess my mama told me my earliest experience with God was when I was two weeks old and she was teaching Bible school and I was laying in the floor on, or in a little bassinet there at the church. But my earliest thing that I can remember, of course, remember going to church three times a week, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, my dad was an elder, my mom taught Sunday school and she was a part time piano player when the real pianist didn't show up and, but we, I can remember, it was on a Wednesday night after prayer meeting, when I was about nine years old. We came home, we was, family was watching TV and I was, had come down after, going to the, taking my bath for school the next day. And I asked my mom, I said, got a question and it had been bothering me. So I told her, I said, what's this?

I don't understand. I said, this thing about God and not being saved and being a sinner, it's really bothered me and I don't know how to deal with it. So which she had a conversation with me and I realized at that point, God was saying, Jeff, there's, I'm calling you. And it was that call on my life. And so I thought about it after we talked and then that next Sunday morning I walked the aisle and that was my first experience and I felt so different.

I felt a joy, a happiness, maybe it was because I was surrounded by my family and my church family. But I made a promise that day and, I really believe I had that understanding for that first moment that God had something special for me or he thought I was something special. Why, I don't know, but so that's the day I remember and I remember my baptism. And from then on, you know, I continued to grow in the church and life still continued to happen and things happened. But that would be my first experiences when I can remember it was on that Wednesday night and I can still remember sitting on the couch with my mama in the living room, not the den, on her fancy couch in the living room, you know, the one you're not supposed to sit on.

Remember sitting there talking about it.

Isn't it amazing how some of our earliest experiences are very, very normal, very non extraordinary and we go to people that we are close to. We often think that there needs to be a lightning bolt experience or conversations of faith are only contained to the professionals who have all the training and the education and the experience but often that is not the case. It is people that are close to us and who know us and who will take the time to be patient with our questions, parents, and grandparents, those are just some examples of of people who are willing and to to share the faith and try to answer our questions. Jeff, can you think of other people that have been formative in the formation of your faith?

Well, my dad is probably the most important person in my faith journey. He is now 87 years old. His faithfulness, his love, I found out that he taught me a lesson. He, the lessons that he taught me were, he has a, I said he is probably the weakest man I know. He had a weakness from my mom and he was so proud to be married to her for fifty seven years before she passed.

And their relationship of how they communicated and how they loved and how they care for each other. And they still enjoyed spending time together, even through those difficult moments. He taught me what marriage and what love was about in that form. And I think it's made a difference between my marriage. He's always had a weakness for his children, his family.

He taught me about the priority of making sure you you you keep those relationships strong. And he would do he whether it's showing up for ball games or whether it was just spending time and and telling a story with them. He was always great with that as far as with us kids, but also our grandkids and our great grandkids. He's still that person. He's always had a weakness for others.

He, to this day, he knows almost everybody's birthday and he sends a special card or a special shout out to them. He's 87 years old, he's become a Facebook influencer, I think. He sends out pictures. He loves to take pictures, but he's kept track of everybody's anniversary and he's the only person I know that has a sense of humor that can make him most anybody smile. And he always makes the other person feel more special than he is.

And so which in second Corinthians, Paul says, you know, my grace is sufficient and in my power is made perfect in your weakness. So which I've tried to follow some of that example and tried to look for my weaknesses and my weaknesses are found out are similar to his. I think that's where he's had the biggest influence. My grandmother had a really special place in my heart. She died of cancer when I was in the last year of high school, but she was a faith woman and she often, I stayed with them and helped Kate to help work in their country, little country grocery.

I stayed with my grandparents during that time and I would go and see her and she make me sit beside her and read her Bible to her. That had an influence on me and you know how much she, her faith was so strong going through a difficult time. And I think that was part of God's preparation for me to be in ministry is to see people and help people in that time because unfortunately, not all days are great. Sometimes you're up on the mountain, sometimes you're in the valley and but we all have the same needs and the same desires and the same struggle at times. And for me to understand that as, it made a difference in me.

So as far as ministry, I've had so many people, almost everybody I've come in contact with, I've learned to listen. As you said, I was by vocational and I didn't start out being a minister. I ran from the call for many, many years. But I was always involved in the church, whether it was teaching a Sunday school class or doing a youth group or I was an older Owensboro Cumberland Presbyterian church as I moved around the state and I answered the call of ministry in Owensboro church and they're always a special place for me. But through that process, God has always used people to make a difference.

And I can think of other people like Jim Arnold, who was the pharmacist that worked for me. He was diagnosed with cancer and it was stage four. He had only months to live or they said, but he ended up living for almost two years. But in that two years, he would go and sit at the oncologist office and he would talk to other people that were coming in that would be diagnosed with cancer and he would get them and he would pray for them and he would check up on them every day or two. And he ended up working at a, starting a free clinic in Owensboro where there was medical care and they, they were able to dispense medications that companies had given them.

And he opened a free clinic there and he worked through that. And I realized at that point that maybe life is going from good time to good time, or it might be going from crisis to crisis, but I think it's through the crises of life that we learn the most. So I realized that God gives things to us, whether it's, he wakes all things work for good and not all things are good. And as far as what happens in circumstances in our life, but it's preparing us to do some kind of ministry with it. So I can think of a lot of other people, Tim, Reverend Tim McGuire of Owensboro Church, Steve Delashment, Sammy Romans, who was the missions coordinator before I was, how he serves the church in our Presbyterian, how he gave.

I've got people in my church, can think of my local church that show Christ more to people in their personal church every day than I can ever imagine. And so I'm learning from them. So, I've realized that God uses, like you said, common people, and they're the ones that make the difference. And it's those everyday encounters that make you deal with it, make you realize that God is present in everybody's life. That's the most amazing thing to me as I thought through this time and when my wife was in the hospital, I thought, how does God use and weave everybody's lives together so that we can have so we can see the beauty in his in his awesomeness.

I said, it's just amazing to me.

So Jeff, you have mentioned people in different stages of your life in terms of age, when you were younger and then as a youth and a young adult and up to your current times. Reflecting back, and and you've had some opportunities here in the last couple months to do some self reflection, how has your faith grown, and how has your faith changed over the years?

I've always been a fixer. I've always thought even when I was in management and people would call, I've got a problem and it was up to me to try to help solve it. God has taught me to be dependent in the last few weeks or a few months. There was nothing I could do to accept pray, humble myself before God and ask for help as my wife went through surgery and all of her episodes that she had. I learned at that point that I can't fix everything, but I've got to learn that God is gonna be there with me all the way through.

I remember when my children were growing up, my daughter came in and she told me something that I could, that she had an issue that I couldn't fix. It was, her dad was not able to do it and I had to learn grace at that point because I have to be there with her. If I really love her, I don't push her away. I stay, I hang in there with her. And today, my relationship with my daughter is better than it ever was because it changes you.

So I think that in reflection, God gets us to the position where we can see his goodness and his greatness. And sometimes we gotta be humble and sometimes we gotta be lifted up. I found encouragement in a nurse that came into my wife's hospital room and she asked what I did for a living and my wife was still out of it a little bit from the I said, I'm a minister. And she said, I thought you were. And I said, why did you think that?

And she says, well, it seems like you pray a lot. And I said, well, I found out that that's the only way I can get peace sometimes. And she said, would you mind if I prayed with you? And I said, would be honored. And so which right there in the room, I found out another person.

She says, I've got something going on to at home. And I don't know if my relationship with my husband's gonna work out. Would you pray for me in that situation? I said, sure. So we prayed and I said, you know, the good thing about it is God says you're never alone and you can always do this.

So I found people all the way through this that, like I said, we're all similar and we're all the same. We all have got struggles, but God's still just so real to us all. And so which if we just learn to humble ourselves and listen, we can find God every day.

Let me ask you. Let me stop there and ask you a question that you can dive a little deeper into. You've alluded to and mentioned, struggles in life and crises that you have faced in in different stages of your life. What is it about god that keeps you coming back and identifying with the Christian faith when you've had opportunities to just go, that's enough. I'm going elsewhere.

There's something else out there for me.

I don't I don't know. I think because faith is such a journey that you take that what used to overwhelm me many years ago, the slightest problem, I would get anxious and I would get frustrated. I've learned that as those small problems come, it would overwhelm my faith. My faith would be size of a tennis ball and the problems the size of a softball or a basketball. And so which I learned at that point that I was overwhelmed and pretty soon after I learned and gave it over to God and I had to learn to humble myself and give it over to God.

What happened was my tennis ball blew up to the size of the basketball that my faith grew in those situations because just like David, when he was fighting Goliath, he says, you know, I fought a bear and I fought a lion. I can definitely fight this uncircumcised Philistine. And he says, you know, I've had faithful moments all the way through with God and God's not gonna forsake me. And it takes occasions like that for us to learn. And so which once you go through that, your faith is bigger for the next problem that will come down the road.

And eventually we're gonna have to face that ultimate issue that we've gotta have faith is, and that's where we die. And we really don't die. We continue to live, but when a loved one is hurt or something, we have to learn to have our faith grow deeper. Because I started reading the book of Job again and studying it while I was in the hospital, because book of Job is a lot of questions and a lot of questions we all have. But in the end, you just God says, I've got it under control.

Who are you to tell, question me? We're still called to be righteous people and still called to be followers, even if we're going through that struggle. But I think that that's the wisdom of life is to, is to appreciate the goodness and the greatness, and even when you go through a difficult time, don't give up and don't quit trusting. And so I've had to learn that, and so there's been a piece about all of this, but I also found other people are watching you as you go through this. They wanna help you, they call you up and they write your cards and they say, you know, I'm here with you.

And I say, yeah, I know. And so I found out that a lot of people are watching and that's your witness. How you deal with on a day to day basis, being an everyday Christian, How you follow Christ, how you how you find peace in the midst of the storm, how you just keep plugging along and being faithful.

I wanted to ask you, where do you see God working in the world today?

I see the our society is full of division right now, but I also see there's a lot of dissatisfaction out there. And I think that people are looking for validity in all aspects of their life. And they're trying to find their identity, who they are and what they're about. And so which they're looking at all the other places. I feel this is the biggest opportunity we've had to go and tell them that this dissatisfaction that you have is a, is, is, can only be filled with God in your life and you need to be, if you were to begin a faith journey, you would be able to see the world in a different way.

Unfortunately, most people are not turning to God. They're looking at other they're looking for people to satisfy that need, and unfortunately, there's needs out there that only God can satisfy. So I see that, but I see God in working in just in my church, we've got two ladies. One works with the hands program, which is a program that deals with children and poor families and how they care for those families. And so which they go and they do home visits and they try to help with parenting.

They try to help with getting them resources to make sure that the children are being taken care of. And I've got another one, which is a family resource, manager, works for the middle school. And she deals with families that are struggling too. And those two ladies, out of that, we realized that there was cracks that people were people were falling through because let's say a married husband leaves a wife and he takes all the food stamps or all the money and they can't get registered and get food under the house until might take a week or two. Well, we decided to make a food pantry that we could go and help those people.

Just this past year and out of our church little food pantry, we helped over like 63 families to be able to get that. And we were able to show the mercy to that family and help them through that. But what I found out is not just the food that we give. We learned that when we give to others that we're more Christ like that we ever have, and so which we, the whole church has gotten behind the food pantry and what we're doing, and it's made a difference in us looking at everybody else out there and saying there are things even in the midst of pandemics that we can go and do, and that we just need to look to our neighbor. And it's changed those two ladies, but it also has changed the rest of the church because we're all in that faith journey together because they shared a need and we built upon it and we were able to help fulfill it.

I think that's the way the church ought to work. That's how we're to, we're as a big church or it should help people with their personal church. These ladies have a sphere of influence that God has given them that that's their ministry field. And there's needs out there that we need to help them with. I've got another, gentleman in our church who deals with, goes around and does lay speaking at other small churches.

He says, hate being away, but I said, no, that's a ministry of our church because God has given you that ability. You can go and help our other sister churches and fill the pulpit so that somebody else might receive faith. You know, so we support those people and we're there to equip and help along. So I think I found out that all relationships are personal. We need you want to know what your faith journey about is look at who, where you, where you have your personal relationships.

And whether it's people with your coworkers at work or in the marketplace or at school or wherever. How can you make a difference in those few people in your life that in your circle of influence? And then let us if you got a need, let us as a church try to help you.

Jeff, you were talking about individuals within the congregation that you serve and some of the ministries and impact they have on people's lives in the community. As a minister of the gospel, as a minister of both the word and the sacraments, Jeff, what what aspirations do you have for the church as we move into this new year?

Well, on our person on on Freedom, at Freedom, our church, our pastor. The people we lost through the pandemic right now are the people that are older people who haven't gotten out. So which we've set up a ministry to make them feel make let them know that we're working on it. We've got ladies that are writing cards, but what we've done is we have identified some 20 couples or individuals. It's 20 different people and we're not a great big church.

We're, you know, we're average 70 or 75 on a Sunday morning. In normal times and during the pandemic, we're about 45 or 50, but those people that we've identified once a month, we're going to go and take them a meal just to let them know and we knock on the door and they and give it to them or we don't go in. We've taken them their Sunday school material and there because they were our most faithful. Many of our older adults were our most faithful. So we take them there as bible study.

Well, we reach out to them through phone calls and so we've given a list to everybody and we've signed certain people to certain other, to certain people to take care of. Then the next month we swap and we go, we go down the list and so which we're always helping. So which I think in freedom, we have an opportunity to continue to share the goodness. We've talked, we began talking about finding hope this next year and that's what I've been speaking on is teaching out of first Peter, how we can find hope in certain situations and how we can become the living stones that Peter talked about. Every time that we do any kind of ministry, we try to make sure that we share the love of Christ and we share and evangelize them and let them know that the answers and you know, that God is there and it's a personal relationship with Jesus Christ because it was God loved us so which we could love them.

So that's the ministry that I see. As far as the Presbyterians, you and I know we had a conference call or zoom meeting on Saturday. How we're gonna move forward in as missions coordinator, my responsibility to help churches in our presbytery and do whatever possible to help them with their ministry. So we've got some ideas going forward that we can go and reconnect some people with the people that we lost, but also reconnect people in their communities as we go and look for other people like the two ladies I have in my church. Maybe there's some other people in their church that has other ideas that they can reach out to.

But we just need to be there and show be messengers of mercy, God's ambassadors. And we just need to be cognizant of the fact that your gifts and my gifts are going to be different. So which we need to be listening to what people's hearts are. And if they've got a passion and where their heart is, that's where the treasure is. So if their treasure is in somebody, whether it's their family member or their school or the poor, or somebody, their next door neighbor, how can we help you reach them?

And that's what we've got to be about.

Okay. So reconnecting and connecting, listening, and sharing. These are aspirations that you have for the church. Well, Jeff, you have an interesting faith journey. I'm glad that you've taken the time to share it with with me today.

How can we continue to follow your faith journey?

If you want to follow what we're doing in Cumberland Presbyterian, I invite anybody on Facebook, go to CP Corner. That's our Facebook page and we have a website called cpcorner.org, for our Presbytery, because what we're going to start doing is sharing ideas with each other and start sharing ministry opportunities. And hopefully we'll be able to go as a board of missions for the Percumber Presbyterians, people in our Presbytery find mission works that they need to do or ways to reconnect in their churches. We're gonna go and start helping partner with them and give grants and do some things to one of the greatest experiences that we have up in the area that I am, there's eight Cumberland Presbyterian churches within 20 miles of where I'm at. And so we get together and we usually did a fifth Sunday or quarterly hymn sing, I guess it's the way it was brewed.

But we've also, over the past few years, did a joint worship service and we did it at Rough River State Park and we rented out their big pavilion out there by the lake and we gather and we bring in a meal, but we have one of the ministers we rotate who speaks. But last year we had Bethel Bluegrass Ensemble in and they played the music, but we serve communion and we did little sidewalk evangelism. We went up to the lodge and knocked on, if you want to come have church with us, please come on. And then we did baptisms in the lake and it was a wonderful time. And we've done that over the last few years and it kept growing and growing and growing.

That was, it was a wonderful time and we've looked forward to it. And so that's, I view that as a, as a model of what we're supposed to be about it. We're all people looking for the same thing and serve the same God, we've got the same faith. We ought to we ought to share it because we when we're that way. So I wanna be able to look and coordinate events like that or look to coordinate be intentional in how we get together in the relationships that we build.

Alright. And so CP Corner Facebook page and cpcorner.org would be a couple places that you could find Jeff. And it sounds like you are collecting resources and have wish list of things that could be available for the churches in the area but also really for for the denomination. You can also find Jeff connected and serving the Freedom Cumberland Presbyterian Church and also as the our United Outreach regional coordinator for kind of the what it's senate of the mid Midwest, I believe. Jeff, I appreciate your time, sir, that you've shared with me and and you share in your your faith journey and your growing with God.

Well, I appreciate you having me. It's I've gotten to know you over at symposiums and talk to you. And I've always valued our friendship, always valued your insight and your direction that you've given me. And so I appreciate you. You're, you're a wonderful person.

Also you did very well on our OUO video, so I just have to tell you, maybe you are photogenic. Maybe you ought to branch out from podcast into something a little bit more.

Oh, you you are mistaking me for someone else. I heard a guy say one time that he has a face for radio and a voice for print, and I think that's an appropriate thing to coop here. Well, Jeff, thank you for your time, and thank you for listening to today's podcast. Grab a friend and travel with us on our next journey down Cumberland Road.