Translating Ministry Experience Into the Language of Training

So you want to apply for a job in training and you want to know how to translate your ministerial resume into the language of training. Here's some (hopefully) helpful tips.

Begin with research. To translate, you first have to learn the language. Do so here: http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/sat.html

The material available for free at that link will teach you about the ADDIE process of curriculum development. This is also known as Instructional Systems Design. Having read and studied that material, you can now claim familiarity with ADDIE and ISD in your skill set.

Structuring Your Resume
You always want to structure a resume so that you highlight what you want to draw peoples' attention to. For example, new college grads put their eduction first, right at the top, because that's their biggest achievement. On the other hand, if you're a good 10 years out of school, you for sure want to put education last.

Most people include three basic parts to their resume: Summary (or Objective), Experience and Education. So let me ask you, which one of these do you want to highlight? If you highlight your education, most employers will think it's irrelevant and they'll immediately become disinterested in your resume. They may finish looking at it, but you've gotten off on the wrong foot. If you highlight your experience, you'll probably have the same problem. And if you highlight your summary, sort of like your resume's thesis statement, you're just highlighting everything you've already determined you don't want to highlight.

In the case of a minister/licentiate/seminary student attempting to cross over into a new career such as training, I have a slightly unconventional recommendation for you.

Get rid of the summary. Cut it out altogether. You don't need it because it won't help you.

Replace the summary with a skills list. Literally start with the word "Skills" followed by a colon and underline it. Then on the next line, just start adding in your skills and separate them with commas. Like this...

Skills:
Microsoft Office, critical thinking, public speaking, writing, linguistic analysis, ADDIE process (since you clicked the link above and read it), adult learning, classroom management, committee management, collaboration, leadership, client relations, ethics, editing, presentation creation, project management, training, masters degree

Something like that. And you'll want to put them in order of relevance so that the most significant ones come first. This may be different depending on what job you're trying to get. Make sure to include as much as you possibly can in this list. Any skills you have, regardless of your proficiency, belong here. It's ok if they're overwhelmed (which is synonymous with impressed in this context).

Anyway, think about what this does. It gets right to the point. Your experience and education are significant. But it's a lot of work to get people to really, truly understand that right? So don't ask them to climb that mountain. Start right at the top of the mountain. What are they going to figure out about you if they can get past the whole ministry confusion? Your skill set is what they're actually looking for anyway. Don't play hard to get. Give them what they want right up front. Then you'll simply spend the rest of the ink in your resume justifying and supporting the claims you make in your skill set.

After your skills, put your experience first. If you're fresh out of seminary, put your education first, making sure to include dates. Avoid large gaps in your dates. It's ok if the dates aren't too specific, but be prepared that some might become suspicious at this. If you were unemployed for a year after seminary but you were studying for licensure exams, don't put unemployed or leave a gap. Add this time as an item in your experience and include dates. Call it under care of presbytery or something.

Bullets
Use bullets to say what you were up to when you had that job or were engaged in that activity. Keep it very concise and simple, using as few words as possible. Like this:

Under Care of Presbytery            (3/2010 - 9/2010)

• Conducting licensure exams
• Attended meetings of local/regional/national governance boards

You may be a little concerned to put that on your resume. But it's vastly preferred to leaving a gap or saying unemployed. If you were a student, you can put student if you want, but this is why you put dates on your education.

I've looked at resumes before and conducted interviews. I asked about a gap and it turned out to be a period of unemployment resulting from the candidate's inability to pass the (several months long) background check. He began working for the company before the check was completed, and when he didn't pass, they let him go. Experienced interviewers will always ask about these things.

But they won't even ask about what I suggested above. They have no idea what a licensure exam is, or a Presbytery for that matter, but it sure sounds very involved. And it took 6 months! If they do ask, you can just begin to describe the licensure process, and after 3 sentences or so, they'll be overwhelmed and impressed enough that you can move on to the next thing.

Specific Tips

Ok, down to the nitty gritty. Here's some specific tips on how to word those experience bullets.

• Use the language of ADDIE (see link above)
• You didn't write sermons or Sunday school lessons - you wrote lesson plans, you developed curriculum
• It's not a session/consistory/whatever - it's a governance board
• It's not a presbytery, it's a regional governance body
• You've used sophisticated computer software (Accordance, BibleWorks, Logos) to conduct complex academic and linguistic searches to aid in historical and grammatical analysis of ancient texts in multiple languages
• You conducted textual analysis of ancient texts in multiple languages
• You translated ancient texts from multiple languages into English based on grammatical, historical, cultural, linguistic analysis, consulting cutting edge software and the latest modern scholarship
• As a pastor, you can say that you moderated a session chaired a committee that oversaw a $150k annual budget (or whatever it was - numbers in your resume are always a plus)
• Use the word leadership a lot - helps you come across as strong and confident
• You regularly contributed thought leadership at meetings of local/regional/national governance boards (if you ever gave a speech at presbytery - or if not, silence can be thought leadership too)
• For education, be sure to include that your seminary degree involved 100+ credit hours (typical masters degree is 32)
• Use Calibri font because it's easier to read (yes, I know this isn't Calibri)
• Start each bullet with a nice, strong, main verb from the higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. Definitely be able to talk about Bloom's Taxonomy in any training job. Google "Bloom's Taxonomy verbs" to find a list of verbs appropriate to each level of the taxonomy.
• Don't feel constrained to one page - that's just not a rule anymore. But don't try to fill it up with a lot of words either. Be concise. If you need the space, use it, but only if you need it. The longer it is, the less likely someone will read it carefully, if at all.
• Don't try to hide that you had some horrible minimum wage job. There's no shame in taking whatever work you can find when going through a difficult time.

So that should be about it. Send your resume along with a pain letter. Send enough of these, and you'll get a call back.

One more thing
When asked why you left the ministry, just say simply that you left voluntarily. In Christian circles, we appreciate honesty and being vulnerable and confessing weakness, but not so in the world. Obviously you can't lie, but you don't have to offer the whole story either. You can just say that you decided you needed a change or that the ministry wasn't for you. No one will want to ask more. If they ask why you left, it's most likely out of genuine curiosity, not to quell their suspicions. And if they are suspicious, then they'll just want to know that you didn't go to jail for molesting a kid or something. So as long as you say something that's not very interesting or revealing and assures them you didn't go to jail, their question will be sufficiently answered. I mean, most people can't understand why you'd want to be a pastor in the first place. Walking away from it is something that actually makes more sense to them.

Do NOT worry that they're going to call your old church and they're going to say something that ruins your chance of getting the job. Pretend you're an unbeliever. Would you want to make that phone call? Not only do they just not want to, but they'd probably also be afraid you'd sue them and the company for prying into your religious beliefs and practices with the intent to discriminate against you.

No need to include references.

Remember, this website is purely anonymous: both those who post and those who comment. Comments that name people (including the name of the commenter), churches or organizations will be deleted.

Transforming a Minister into a Trainer

You're a former minister/licentiate/seminary student, and for whatever reason, the ministry is a closed door and you're wondering what to do with your life. You've got a ton of education and some experience, but it doesn't seem like any of it is very easily applicable in any job field.

Good news! It is applicable! It's applicable in the area of training. Something that is truly exploding these days is any kind of software training. There are tons of these jobs near any major city.

In today's climate, there are lots of software companies whose growth is so explosive that they're desperate to hire as many trainers as possible. Since their product is new, they aren't looking for people who already know their software - after all, no one does yet.

This means, if you have a pulse and can demonstrate some capability to learn new technology, possibly even string a coherent sentence together, you can probably get hired to do this. They'll train you on their software and then pay you to train others.

This is a great way to cut your teeth in the training world and establish yourself and your resume. Trust me - take any job in software training. I've seen guys with only a little bit of experience and no college get hired for 60-70k per year plus benefits. If you graduated seminary, you have a masters degree in training and communications (verbal and written), not to mention critical thinking. You're a training team's dream - though they may not know it if you don't translate your resume into a language they can understand. More on that in another post.

First, there are two broad areas of training you can get into.

1. Internal training: getting hired by a company to train their employees internally
2. External training: getting hired by a training organization to provide training on demand for external clients

Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking number 2 would be more exciting and would probably pay better, right? You're probably right, though I doubt the pay difference is that great, if it exists at all.

I've done both internal and external training. External training is exciting at times, especially when you get into creating custom tailored training for a specific client for a specific purpose. That can be pretty cool and can involve travel, etc. However, chances are you're going to be stuck teaching the same basic class 3-4 times a week to a different group of students each day. That's if business is good. If business isn't good, then you have to worry about getting laid off. And once you truly understand your situation, you'll worry. A lot. Especially when there's no advertising budget.

When you're doing internal training, business is always good. Plus, you'll get more opportunities to get beyond the basics with your users because you're right there in the organization, available to them at all times. Yes, you'll teach some classes, but you'll also find yourself in a resident expert role. You'll answer help desk tickets and troubleshoot problems.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, yuck, I'm not an IT guy. Right. Neither am I. But I answer help desk tickets. Granted, some of them are rather tedious and the need to document everything gets old fast. However, some of them are really interesting problems to solve and people need help doing some really advanced stuff. This is where you'll really learn a lot and prove your value to the organization.

People who do good work in these kinds of jobs have tremendous job security. They can lay off a couple salesmen, but they can't lay off the guy who enables ALL the salesmen to do their job.

For example, let's talk about SharePoint. Lots of people have all kinds of notions about SharePoint. Usually it's that they hate it. But they only hate it because they refuse to take the time to learn it. With a little time, it's actually really quite easy. If you can use Microsoft Office proficiently, a Windows PC and the internet, you already have the skills you need to learn SharePoint. Nothing about SharePoint is hard, there's just a lot to learn. Your ability to memorize is very sharp, though, you who have studied Greek and Hebrew, so you'll find it quite easy.

I had about a year of training experience (teaching writing, public speaking, critical thinking, etc) before I got a job doing software training. I was able to get that job based on my training for the ministry, my small amount of experience as an intern and my year of classroom training experience. After doing that about a year and a half, I took a job doing internal SharePoint training. I had no SharePoint experience at all. My new employer simply gave me an account to access online videos. After 2 weeks of thorough study, I was all ready to go and began building curriculum, answering help tickets and troubleshooting problems.

And five years ago, I would have said that anyone who makes as much money as I do is rich (though I now realize how naive I was, especially about money). Now, I'm not greedy, and I'm sure you aren't either. Nonetheless, there's probably a little part of your heart somewhere that's secretly glad you're not in the ministry making 35k at some tiny church in a small town with 3 stubborn families who refuse to acknowledge that theirs is not the only true church in the universe, and all because it was the only call you got and you needed a job.

You have a masters degree and some very sharp, very marketable skills. Once you learn to market them properly, you can join the my-wife-doesn't-have-to-work-nights-anymore club. Don't you want to call the Dave Ramsey show and do your debt free scream? I sure do. And that day is coming soon. I will be 100% debt free in just a couple more months. No car payment, no school loans, no credit cards, nothing.

When I'm debt free, I'm going to save up for a sizable down payment on a house. But I'm also, for the first time, going to be able to respond when the announcement is made in church that "the deacons have a special need for $500 for a worthy individual in need." I'm looking forward to that day. Much more than buying a house.

Sorry, I got distracted. Where was I? Oh yes, SharePoint. Like I said, 1-3 years, you could very possibly be making low six figures. The secret is this: competence and motivation. If you do a good job (which you are more than capable of) and you have an ongoing reason to want to continue to do a good job (such as a desire to provide for your family and please your God), you're pretty much going to get promoted and excel, so long as you don't offend people and make enemies. By the way, don't aim at making everyone you work with your friend - that's impossible. Just aim at making some friendly acquaintances and not making enemies out of everyone else. And of course, make opportunities to pay your boss respect and show initiative in any way you can think of.

SharePoint is easy. But it's a great example of an opportunity for you. SharePoint is easy enough that it won't make you crazy trying to figure things out. You can get answers to any question within 30 seconds if you have access to Google. But SharePoint is complicated enough that most people won't spend the time to figure the thing out and they'd rather pay you to figure it out for them and just point them at the easy button. Sure, if they'd only spend a week getting great training (which you'd be happy to provide), they could do this for themselves. But they know they're far too important to spend a week doing that.

SharePoint is made by Microsoft and is used by just about every large-ish enterprise in the US. It's not as ubiquitous as Office, but it's up there. Companies use it to provide structure for their company intranet, which is just like the internet only it's inaccessible outside the company's network. People use it to store documents and collaborate on them (like Google Docs). They can store other files as well (like Google Drive).

Let me give you an example of a use case that will be more familiar to you. Suppose you're back in seminary and your professor, in the week leading up to the exam, hands out this huge list of 100 essay questions he may ask you on the exam as a study guide. As soon as he exits the room, 20 of you collaborate and divvy up the questions, taking 5 questions each.

When you were actually in seminary, you probably used Google to do this. We did at my school. But that was definitely a pain.

Now imagine you have SharePoint...

You could build a site, accessible by only the students who actually collaborated. That one guy who said he needed to do his own work or some such thing and refused to participate wouldn't be given access. If he's logged into Windows, you won't even be able to navigate to that web page.

You could have lots of tools for your use on this collaborative site. You could have a calendar where you could post times when you were planning on getting together for discussions and study groups. You could have an announcements list that anyone could contribute to, to let people known that a new event has been posted to the calendar or something. You could have a discussion board where students could debate answers to questions without having to put 50 comments in the Word document. You could have a document library, which is in some ways kind of like an online folder to store documents. But it's also more than that. You can view a document or edit it right in the web browser, or you can download it and edit in on your computer. You can also set the documents so that people have to check them out to edit them, which prevents anyone else from editing it until it's checked back in - though they can still view it.

You can do more too. You can set up a workflow, which is simply an automatic process. You can also set up an ability to have draft and published versions of your essay answers, and each person can start out with their own document for their five questions. The workflow would come in when you say to yourself, ok, I think I've got good answers now, I'm going to publish this. Then you can turn on the workflow (or it can kick on automatically whenever you upload a document to a document library you decided to call the "done" library) and it'll automatically email all the collaborators, signaling them that your document is done and ready for them to read.

Do you think something like that might come in handy in today's workplaces? Oh, you betcha. Man, companies are eating this up. But like I said, it's kind of a lot to learn for most people, and since it doesn't directly contribute to earning glory for yourself by impressing a client, most people can't be bothered to learn much more than the very basics. So they'll always need you and your expertise.

But why don't they just use Google Drive for free? Because Google Drive is...well, where is it, exactly? Your data I mean? When you upload a document to Google Drive, where does it go? No one knows for sure (probably to a server on some barge off the coast of San Francisco), but wherever it is, Google owns it. That literally terrifies company executives. They want it stored in their server in their building where their IT people can babysit it and assure them that no one else can see it. SharePoint provides the structure that allows them to do this.

You'd be surprised how easy it is to learn SharePoint with just a week or two of concentrated effort. You're willing to do that because you can make a living from then on. You may not be able to land a job like that right away. You may have to establish yourself a bit first. But it won't take as long as you think.

Maybe SharePoint won't be your thing. That's ok. It's just an example. There are lots of opportunities out there in software training. There are lots of opportunities in other areas too. Reach out to everyone you know. If you can get someone on the inside, that helps tremendously. And everyone you know that works at a good sized business has people that do their training that they can put you in touch with. Who knows - they might be hiring. And if the person you know has a good reputation with them, they'll be much more inclined to hire you.

You'll also want to target certain software companies or whatever organizations you're interested in. And when you do, be sure to Google "pain letter".

Resume tips coming soon.

Remember, this website is purely anonymous: both those who post and those who comment. Comments that name people (including the name of the commenter), churches or organizations will be deleted.

Training: the Perfect Career for Former Ministers

So you've walked away from the ministry, and now you're thinking, how on earth am I going to make a living? If you're anything like me, you have a mountain of college and seminary debt and the very last thing on your mind is adding any more education to that mountain. You're ready to earn a paycheck. Besides, your wife is probably sick of working nights in the hospital, right?

But what do you do? Who appreciates the skills of a minister/intern/seminary student? What good does it do you? There's pretty much no application for these skills outside the church...right?

When I walked away from the ministry, I couldn't even get a call back from McDonalds. I ended up taking a job in a factory as a general laborer for minimum wage, despite having a Masters degree that required about three times as many credit hours as a typical Masters. I was just desperate to take whatever work I could find.

To be honest, I was scared. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to provide for my family. I was extremely discouraged and sure we were doomed to poverty forever.

I reached out to literally everyone I've ever talked to and asked them for ideas or leads. Would you believe that about a hundred people between them couldn't come up with even one job opening that might work for me? But at least half of them said I should be a teacher.

A teacher?! My mind raced back to my days in public school growing up. Those poor teachers! Overworked, underpaid, unappreciated, forced to teach from lousy curriculum. No way! Not me. Besides, I had actually thought about that before, and like everybody else, I knew several guys in seminary whose wives were teachers. So I knew enough to know that if you want to be a teacher, you need to be certified, and to get that, you need an undergrad degree in education - which I didn't have and had no intention of getting. And even then, you'd have to start as a substitute teacher or a teacher in some tiny, non-accredited Christian school for about 25k a year. No chance of supporting a family on that income, especially with my school debts. Teacher indeed!

So all those people, those many people who knew me who said I should be a teacher - they received a snarky response about how they were uninformed or hadn't really thought their idea through and why can't you give me a useful idea? Like me, they didn't think my skills were of any use either outside a classroom.

And then it happened. Someone forwarded my email to someone I used to work for in my distant past who remembered that I did good quality work, and they said, hey, I'll give you a job doing training! And it wasn't a job offer for 25k either - in fact, it was more than three times that! I felt like I won the lottery!

It turns out there is a kind of teaching you can do that's actually fairly lucrative. It's just not called teaching - it's called training.

You see, businesses employ people, and those people need training. They need training in simple things like: writing, critical thinking and public speaking. As a former minister, you wouldn't know anything about those things would you?

Now, you may not be all that confident in your thinking and communication skills. After all, there were people in your church that criticized you, and you weren't as good as the other guys in seminary, and you're just not sure that you are capable of very much whatsoever.

Well, I'll tell you a secret. If you could examine the thoughts of most people, you'd find that they're mostly completely confused and incoherent. This is why they'd just rather watch sports or Fox news or something. Trust me, after graduating seminary, you're pretty much a samurai master of critical thinking.

And no matter how bad you think you write, you're probably light years ahead of most people. I'm convinced that most people stop learning anything about writing somewhere around junior high. They begin with incoherent, inconsistent thoughts, so it's probably no wonder that their writing is a mess. Ask any college graduate to show you one of their papers from college. I'll bet you won't even be able to discern the point of the paper.

And let's talk about public speaking. Jerry Seinfeld has a great comedy bit about it. He points out that surveys consistently show that public speaking is peoples' number one fear, ranking even higher than death itself. That means that, for most people, at a funeral, they'd prefer to be in the coffin than delivering the eulogy.

You've no doubt mastered public speaking. Even if you think you have room to improve (of course you do), just being willing to do it at all puts you ahead of most people. You can stand out in a crowd, literally and figuratively, just by being willing to stand up in front of people and speak.

Now when it comes to training, it turns out that in order to do it well, you need these skills in spades. You need to have sharp critical thinking skills because you need to be able to understand the material and explain it to others. You also have to be able to handle odd questions from students and recognize that they're asking it because they didn't really understand a concept properly that you had taught earlier. As a samurai master of critical thinking, you can see how the concepts all hang together in a coherent system and how pulling out a piece here or there will affect the whole.

Obviously, training involves a lot of public speaking in classrooms, so skills in this area are super valuable and essential. Your skills are so sharp, in fact, that you can probably train the trainers.

It turns out that you need writing skills as well. In the training world, we write lesson plans. You used to write sermon outlines or manuscripts. Now you can write lesson plans. And lesson plans have to be well written.

But, you say, I don't write well at all! My writing is quite atrocious! My seminary professor said so. Yes, but your seminary professor held you to a very high standard. Most people today write like 13 year olds. No, I'm not just being funny or even exaggerating.

I'll tell ya what. Do this little test. Ask someone at random who has never been to seminary if they can explain when to use I or me in a sentence. Oh sure, any child can probably tell you which one is correct in just about any given sentence, but I sincerely doubt any adult can explain it to you conceptually in the abstract, with the possible exception of a few over-acheiving alumni from some storied private school run by very old and very strict Dutch people or something who still hit kids on the hands with rulers.

But perhaps some of you may not know either eh? Shame on you! You can translate Greek and write exegetical papers, but you can't explain when to use I or me in a sentence? Ok, I'll tell you, but you're going to feel quite silly. It's simple really. You use I when it is the subject, and me when it is the object. See? I told you it was simple and that you'd feel silly.

Now here's where you'll really be surprised. Again, choose any adult at random. Ask them to explain when to use I or me. When they can't tell you, explain it just exactly as I did above. No cheating. Do you think it will help? I have taught writing classes to recent college graduates. Granted, most of them were math, science and engineering majors, but some of them had humanities degrees. I have yet to come across anyone who can tell me the difference between the subject and an object in a sentence.

And of course that means they can't tell you what the passive voice is, but they're pretty sure it should not be used by them (ahem). You recognized that that sentence was a lame attempt at humor. Most people wouldn't get it if you held a gun to their head (nor if a gun was held to their head by you).

Not only can you write, but you can concentrate, you can focus, and you're not lazy. This means it's possible for you to write curriculum from scratch. Lots of people out there claim to be curriculum developers, but they accomplish very little. Almost no one volunteers for this either. It's tedious, labor intensive, requires a lot of intense focus for days or weeks at a time, and it's not sexy. There's very little glory in writing curriculum. Most people simply won't do it, and those that do take about 3 times as long as it should take because it's just that hard to concentrate. Worse, the finished product is often boring, not detailed enough, incoherent and largely the same as the old curriculum.

If you go in and make a concerted effort to the glory of God, you'll be a superhero and they'll still be using your curriculum 10 years after you've left. Most curriculum developers don't write new curriculum from scratch, they just make small changes to pre-existing curriculum and repackage it. It's the blind leading the blind in most cases. They spend a lot of time surfing the internet.

Alright, I know what you're thinking. I'm not saying all this to be arrogant and make fun of the poor, unenlightened souls who haven't gone to seminary (not exclusively anyway). I'm trying to encourage you. You're far more educated than most people, much more so than you realize. You have amazing, marketable skills. Your critical thinking and communication skills in particular are sky high. These are highly prized in the marketplace.

Once you've established a little training experience outside the ministry, and you do an excellent job and can prove it, you'll be able to get an even better job, possibly even managing other people conducting training. Training can be very rewarding and satisfying.

One area that you should really consider is software training. Did you know that people can make a really good living training people how to use Microsoft Office products like Word, Excel and PowerPoint? In a big enough organization, this is a full time job. Yep, they'll hire you to update their curriculum and teach whoever needs it. You'll probably teach 2-3 days a week for about 4 hours and "update curriculum" the rest of the time.

There are all kinds of software companies coming out all the time. Many of them are trying to sell their product to enterprises, organizations of various kinds. Were you a teller once upon a time before you went to seminary? That experience, believe it or not, plus your training experience as a minister makes you a very strong candidate to teach tellers and other bank employees how to use the new software the bank just purchased. Why? Because you understand their job and you understand training. The software company will most likely be able to train you how to use the actual software - that's easy. But you'll probably get trained by a software engineer who has no idea how the actual end users will use the software. But you do, because you used to be a teller. Sure, it was a long time ago, but you could pick it up quick. The job hasn't changed that much and you've experienced it for yourself.

Or maybe you were a paralegal. You can train software to lawyers and paralegals.

Heck, maybe you worked in a McDonalds in high school. You know what? You can train people at McDonalds' corporate headquarters when they send their store managers to learn the newest version of their software so that they can return and train their employees.

The point is, you can take your education/training for the ministry and any ministry experience and call it training experience. And that's certainly not dishonest by any stretch. You have those same skills. And you can pair that with just about any other experience you have on your resume, and you've just become the golden unicorn that someone's been seeking for their training team. It's your job to figure out who these people are.

Don't go searching on Indeed or Glassdoor. Go to Google and find the companies selling the software you want to train on. Find the hottest new Silicon Valley darling in the industry, go to their website and look for the tiny link at the bottom of the page that says Careers. Click it and apply.

In another post, I'll talk about how to rewrite your resume and talk about your skills in a cover letter and interviews in the language of modern training. First, build a list of companies who might be interested in adding you to their training team.

And by the way, it's ok to dream again. And it's not a bad thing to want to make money either. You have debts to pay, no doubt, and a family to provide for, not to mention your poor wife's night job. The sooner you pay off those debts, the sooner you can make a bigger monetary contribution at your church. Maybe you can even buy a house someday and be free from the sound of neighbors' feet over your head and the deep bass line that's felt as much as heard.

There is life after the ministry. You can survive. You can even thrive.

Remember, this website is purely anonymous: both those who post and those who comment. Comments that name people (including the name of the commenter), churches or organizations will be deleted.