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...
Jul 27, 2022•56 min•Ep 40•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Jul 16, 2022•1 hr 16 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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. You may read Travis's obituary here . Even though Travis is gone, his ministry goes on through 'We Are God's Masterpiece,' the book he wrote a year before his death. This book draws from Travis's 45-year ministry career...
Jul 09, 2022•1 hr 26 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 chan...
May 11, 2022•45 min•Ep 37•Transcript available on Metacast 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, Tenne...
May 04, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Ep 36•Transcript available on Metacast 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 “...
Apr 06, 2022•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Mar 28, 2022•47 min•Ep 34•Transcript available on Metacast 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, a...
Mar 07, 2022•54 min•Ep 33•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ...
Feb 08, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Transcript available on Metacast By Fall 2003, Dad knew that he could not go on any longer in ministry with the Steele Avenue Church of Christ in Ashland, Ohio. His body, heart, and mind were in total system failure. He could barely function as a human being, let alone as a minister to a growing congregation of 350 people. So on October 3, 2003, Dad and Mom walked into the Monday night business meeting of the congregation's elders and read a resignation letter. After 22 years journey together, Dad and the Steele Avenue Ch...
Jan 26, 2022•1 hr 13 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Jan 17, 2022•58 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 S...
Dec 20, 2021•1 hr 25 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Dec 13, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 t...
Dec 06, 2021•1 hr 21 min•Ep 27•Transcript available on Metacast 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, an...
Nov 29, 2021•1 hr 27 min•Ep 26•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Nov 16, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Ep 25•Transcript available on Metacast 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 t...
Oct 26, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Ep 24•Transcript available on Metacast 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 t...
Oct 11, 2021•1 hr 20 min•Transcript available on Metacast This is one of those episodes that could be boring or interesting, depending on what you like to learn about. That’s because in this episode, Dad and I “nerd out” on church leadership. We start by talking about how closely leadership organization and practice in the church of Christ in 21st century America resembles church organization and leadership in the first century. Then we talk about the classic leadership structure of most Church of Christ congregations in America, a structure that revol...
Sep 28, 2021•2 hr 31 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 chu...
Sep 20, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Ep 21•Transcript available on Metacast 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 cultur...
Aug 31, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 financia...
Aug 16, 2021•1 hr 17 min•Transcript available on Metacast In the mid-1980s, Dad was finding his groove as a minister and as part of the Steele Avenue Church of Christ in Ashland, Ohio. While Church of Christ congregations nationwide were starting to shrink, the Steele Avenue Church of Christ was starting what would turn out to be two decades of trend-busting growth. How did this conservative congregation in small town Ohio manage to do what so many other congregations could not do in the 1980s? Dad will tell you what he thinks. We’ll also talk about th...
Aug 10, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Ep 18•Transcript available on Metacast 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 w...
Aug 05, 2021•1 hr 19 min•Ep 17•Transcript available on Metacast Dad talks about what it was like to move to Ashland, Ohio , and start his 22 ½-year ministry with the Steele Avenue Church of Christ . How was Dad a different man and different minister starting with his third church at age 31 than when he started ministries at churches at age 24 and age 30? Dad will talk about what made the Steele Avenue Church of Christ really special as a place to do ministry. Finally, he will talk about what congregations and ministers should do for each other to get off to ...
Jul 24, 2021•1 hr 13 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Jul 17, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Ep 15•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, we start the difficult task of unpacking Dad’s 22 ½ years as the minister to the Steele Avenue Church of Christ in Ashland, Ohio. Most Church of Christ ministers work with one congregation for an average of three years. Dad worked with the Steele Avenue Church of Christ seven times longer than that. During his 22 ½ years there, Dad preached and taught more than 5,000 lessons and sermons and the congregation almost doubled in size. By the time Dad left in January 2004, the congre...
Jul 05, 2021•55 min•Ep 14•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, we take a break from the usual format to take one last look at Dad’s life and work in the 1970s. I’m calling this our “1970s lightning round.” The questions are quick and cover everything from Dad’s favorite movies and music in the 1970s to how he voted in presidential elections to what church controversies kept him on his toes to what lessons he learned and wants to pass on. I ask him questions like: What Bible verse did you repeat most often in the 1970s? What was the biggest ...
Jun 26, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Transcript available on Metacast The episode picks up in Cadiz, Ohio, in the summer of 1980. Dad was the new minister at the Church of Christ congregation in this one-stoplight coal mining town on the West Virginia border. Almost as soon as Dad started his ministry in Cadiz, he started counting the days until he could move on from there. What happened? Why did Dad want to leave Cadiz before he even unpacked his office at the church? Was it something Dad did (or didn’t do), or was it the church and town itself? This episode is a...
Jun 15, 2021•2 hr 31 min•Ep 12•Transcript available on Metacast This episode starts with Dad’s knee-jerk decision to quit his ministry at the West Side Church of Christ in Akron, Ohio, in the summer of 1980. His mishandling of both his resignation and the situation that followed forced him to take whatever job he could get as fast as he could get it. That job turned out to be minister to the Church of Christ in Cadiz, Ohio. At first glance, moving to Cadiz to work with the church looked like it could turn out to be a good situation, but almost as soon as Dad...
Jun 07, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
