From There to Here – A Spiritual Journey

As I travel the country speaking in different venues about church transformation, I am occasionally asked about the influences on my life that led me to this point. So, in response to those questions, this is my story – and I'm sticking to it.

My best friend told me upon first meeting me, "I think we could be friends, you're not very spiritual." He meant that I am not phony. The truth is I am not very spiritual. But I am a still a phony.

I was born September 20, 1946 in Louisville, Kentucky; the fourth in a family of six children. Five of us grew up together. My younger brother was adopted long after the rest of us were grown and out of the house. My father, William T. McConnell, Jr., was an attorney and Vice President of Lincoln Income Life Insurance Co. My mother, June Redding McConnell was a homemaker, seamstress and artist.

As a young family man, my dad was fresh from surviving WWII (See picture). In thankfulness for having survived the war of all wars, he promised God he would go to church and insisted on taking me and all my siblings with him. I lived a rather idyllic home life. I grew up in a beautiful home in the country with miles of countryside to play in. I had good parents, attended a three room grade school and we lived well. We had well water (We did have running water.) a woods and a creek to play in, a great dog, lots of great food to eat and didn't have to live under the constant observation of an adult. I graduated in 1964 from Eastern High School in Louisville, Kentucky. While in high school I participated in many sports: baseball, basketball, cross-country, and football and dating a great gal. My older brother and I were one year apart in school and shared sports, friends, social life and a room. He was the good son and I wasn't.

My brother, sisters and I went to Sunday School and church and most everything else in between. It was not a bad experience. The pastor was a family friend and a very nice guy. The sermons were boring and not what I could call deeply spiritual. He used to put his hand on my head and say, "This one is going to be a preacher." I am told that I would respond by slapping his hand and giving him a good cussing.

As I entered my teen years, life became difficult between my father and me. I wasn't exactly rebellious, but I certainly wasn't compliant. I did just about whatever I pleased and then paid the consequences for my behavior. I was an A-B student with some C's scattered around and played several sports – football and baseball seriously. I had a very tumultuous and painful high school romance with one of the prettiest girls in school. Late in our senior year she was angry with me and ran off and married someone else. As they say, that left a mark.

When I went away to college, I went away to college. No suit-casing, weekend visits home for me. I also left the church, not because I disliked it, but because it was irrelevant. God just didn't really factor into my life. Because of injuries, I didn't play sports. I replaced those interests and activities with politics and drinking. I was deeply involved in both and held many political offices on campus culminating with being elected President of the Student Body. My plan, my dream, was to go to law school, become involved in Kentucky politics and become a United States Senator from the state of Kentucky. All of that changed.

In the summer of 1965 my older brother and I spent the summer driving across the country. It was an amazing experience. We bought a used Chevrolet station wagon (See picture), loaded it up with camping equipment and took off to discover America. We ate one meal a day and usually slept on the ground in roadside parks along to the way. We bathed once every other week whether we needed to or not. We looked bad and we smelled bad. But we were having a ball.

During our trip my brother spoke to me about knowing God. He explained that it wasn't about religion; it was about having a personal relationship with God. I became a born again Christian that summer. Not much changed in my life. It was a slow start. Just before my senior year I sensed a call to ministry. I struggled with that because I had other plans. I went on a three month drinking binge and was thrown out of school. I connived my way back in and graduated. I made peace with God and agreed to go to seminary.

That Fall I married and started seminary. We were married about two years before we had our first child, Mack (William Thomas McConnell, IV). I worked at night and went to school full time in the day. Life was all a blur those years. While at Asbury Theological Seminary I experienced the revival of 1970 and that caused me to start stop viewing God as theoretical and to experience Him as real. I saw miracles. Even after graduating in 1971 I still didn't get ordained or work in the church. Soon our second child was born, Meg (Margaret Francis McConnell).

In the fall of 1972 my home church called me to be a Youth Minister. That changed my life. My time at Beargrass Christian Church in Louisville was amazing. We saw God do some great things in the lives of dozens of kids.

After leaving Beargrass, I took a small church in a tiny town in Iowa. The church flourished and we made some great friends. Two more wonderful children were born into the family. I went for more education and l and received a Doctor of Ministry degree from Kingsway Theological Seminary. I also worked at the Iowa Training School for Girls and the Iowa State Juvenile Home. My marriage got crappy but I didn't notice. Things finally got so bad that I quit the church before I was asked to resign.

We moved to a small church in an even tinier town in central Illinois. We both had a great time and made some good friends. The church won awards for church growth. But the marriage still wasn't coming together. While in Illinois I suffered some catastrophic health problems from undiagnosed lead poisoning and was a semi invalid for several months. In hopes of saving the marriage we decided to move back to Kentucky, closer to family to see if that would help.

The next four years were horrible. For the first time in my ministry, I was totally mismatched with the church I served. It did not work. I didn't like them and they didn't like me. It was a "country club" closed church that had suffered a huge split not long before I came which they didn't tell me about. My wife and I went to counseling and struggled for a couple of more years. She finally divorced me. I thought I understood why, I just couldn't fix it. I found out later that there was more to the problems than we understood at the time of the divorce. Even though I was relieved to be out of the marriage I was devastated.

While in that community I worked in the fire service and EMS, which was nothing new for me. I had become a certified firefighter and Emergency Medical Technician in 1980. I also served as the Oldham County Police Chaplain and worked in the Kentucky prison system. I drowned my sorrows in hard, dirty work. Two years of deep dark depression followed. I had had three basic goals in life – to be a good husband, to be a good father and to be a successful Pastor. And I had failed miserably at all three. I was suicidal most of the time. I left that church, went to another for a year as an associate and was fired from that church. I was unemployed and basically homeless for about six months and I was a complete basket case. I knew God was somewhere near but I could not find the energy to seek find Him.

I then moved to Falmouth, Kentucky, and had a nice pastorate. The people were a blast to work with and the church enjoyed some nice growth and did some wonderful ministry. When the private ambulance service that served the area closed down, the county took it over. I ran the EMS system for the county and got my life back. After a few years I married Nancy. In one 24 hour period I went from living alone to living in a household of eight. It kinda freaked me out.

We moved to the church in Harrison, Ohio, in December of 1991. It was a thrill to see it grow from a total membership of 265 to 870; average attendance grew from just under 100 to just under 500; grew from one Bible Study group to over 25 groups; and went from one traditional worship service to a traditional and a contemporary service. It was fun, challenging and exciting to go to work every day. I was privileged to watch God do some wondrous things in people's lives and families, to see people catch the vision and do meaningful ministry. I was challenged as never before to grow in my relationship with God.

The only thing that hasn't changed is that I am still a phony. I expect to, any day, be arrested for impersonating a minister.

Copyright © 2012, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved