Earl Mills: a Pastor's Pastor

by Jacob Clagg, with Earl and Kim Mills

Dr. Earl Mills retired from the position of Executive Director of the Great Lakes Conference (GLC) on the last day of 2022, having faithfully served in the position for a little over a full decade. Now a year out from retirement, and while recovering from a serious and unexpected illness, Dr. Mills (or General Mills, as some call him) is reflecting on his work at the GLC and his whole ministry career.

As he recalls it, Earl’s entrance into the GLC wasn’t anticipated, at least not by him or Kim, his wife. Just prior to that, Earl was the lead pastor at Chambersburg Church of God in Chambersburg, PA, (now Grandpoint Chambersburg) before the church went multisite. Things were going well for Earl and Kim, and at the time, they really didn’t see a reason to leave. As Earl said, “We were so happy, things were going well, and we were growing. It was the largest church in the denomination, that doesn’t mean a lot, but you feel good about it.”

Yet, he was aware of how long he and Kim had been there and that the time to leave might be soon approaching. “I saw way too many people that stayed too long,” he said, referencing pastors who had perhaps overstayed their calling at a church and caused discord and division. “I didn’t want to outstay my welcome... I had been the pastor at Chambersburg for 19 years. I was 59 years old. If I didn’t take another position, I would need to retire.” Around that time, Dr. Bill Reist called from the GLC. They were looking for their next executive director. “We’ve been looking for some time. It hasn’t worked out. We all think you’re the right person for this. Now don’t tell me no!” Bill had said.

“Well, I can’t say I won’t pray…” Earl responded, remaining unconvinced.

A couple of days later. Dr. Bill Reist sent the job description and as Earl recalls, [Kim] asked, “Why would you want to leave here?” Do keep in mind Kim was present for this interview and kept Earl on track. “I didn’t say I wanted to leave!” he said. But they were already about to go away for a weekend to pray and fast anyway so they figured they might as well add this to the list of things to pray about. While they were praying, Kim read the job description and said, “No wonder they think you’re right for the job. This is who you are!” So, they spent the whole weekend hiking and enjoying nature, but all the while they were wrestling with what to do. Finally, they settled to go out and talk to the GLC search team. They would be noncommittal, but still serious. Seriously non-committal or not, the talks went smoothly, and by the end of the year, about six months later, Earl had stepped into the position of Executive Director of the GLC.

Moving from a lead pastor to an executive director wasn’t an entirely seamless transition. Earl seemed to recognize right away that the roles were going to be quite different, so he took an opportunity to get administrative training from Duke University. The professor told Earl, “When you were at Chambersburg, you were a player-coach. You were the star player, and you were the coach. You are no longer the player. You are just the coach.” This analogy seemed to be really helpful for Earl as he considered his new role. He’d have to trust the pastors and leaders in his new region to “play” their role. “If you can’t deal with that, you are in the wrong position,” the professor said.

Even with that knowledge, it was a tough transition for Earl and Kim, who had moved far away from home, from their church family. As a pastor in the community for 19 years, Earl had done weddings and funerals for countless people, dedicated children and baptized babies. “I was a part of every family in the church,” he reflected. “What a tremendous privilege… then I came out here and I’m not even a part of a church family.” Kim also felt that she had lost her own ministry. Kim was heavily involved with the ministry of Chambersburg. For about two and a half years in Ohio, Kim felt lost without a purpose beyond her tax job. It wasn’t until she got involved with Campus Ministry at UF that she found her ministry again in mentoring and meeting with young women from the campus.

Earl next spoke about how Chambersburg dealt with their transition as he left, but Kim interjected and said, “Can we get back to Great Lakes, please?” so you can thank her for getting this interview back on track.

When Earl arrived in the position, he found that the churches were getting along well, and they could do ministry well together. Even the relationship between Ohio and Michigan was solidified and going strong, which isn’t something that all regions, perhaps even now, can say about the relations between their states. He gave credit to Dave Green, the previous executive director who “did a great job of helping the pastors fellowship, and most of the pastors liked each other.” But that didn’t mean that there weren’t conflicts within churches. In fact, on his first week of the job, a church called and told Earl that they wanted to get rid of their pastor. “The first Sunday I was at a church, and they had basically kicked their pastor out… that happened a couple of times that first year.”

Earl’s first goal was to help churches discover why they existed, and what their vision was. “Every church needs to have a vision for their community,” he said. “If people don’t know where they're going, they don’t want to be a part of it.” Earl talked about a special balance that needed to be played in these conversations.

Helping churches find their vision wasn’t about him telling them what they ought to be, but about genuine discovery and guidance. This gets to the core of Earl's philosophy of what it means to be a regional director, the hard limit of what his job entailed in the office.

“We aren’t where the rubber meets the road, that’s the local church,” he said. “Our job is to teach them how to be the best they can be... To help the local church know that they have vision, so they can discover that and develop that themselves.” Each church is unique and has a culture of its own. Earl didn’t want to force on the church a vision contrary to itself.

Earl’s second goal was to focus on raising young leaders. It was immediately apparent that, like most places in American Christianity, the leaders are getting older, not younger. A couple promising churches closed, and Earl felt strongly that the GLC had a lack of pastors, especially young pastors, to fill roles. And so he began to work closely with Winebrenner Theological Seminary to recruit up and coming pastors, and Earl admits he didn’t care “what denomination they were from.” Largely, the strategy seemed to work. Anecdotally, I was, myself, a product of Earl’s mentorship through seminary at Winebrenner and he recruited me for a pastoral role. But we don’t just need anecdotes. The data confirms it. By the end of Earl’s tenure, the region was trending 6 years younger on average, which is pretty tremendous considering there was a 10-year gap from start to finish.

From this push toward a younger conference came the LIFT initiative, which you can also read about on page 15 in this issue. Initially called the Leadership Fellowship Initiative, LIFT is an initiative to see local churches select young promising leaders, to train them up into ministry, and then to send them out and release them. The GLC has seen a number of churches receive grants from The Foundation of the Great Lakes in order to support these interns and fellows. The goal is to see each church in the region have an intern, a fellow, or a trainee in training through this program. Ultimately, this is discipleship by another name, and it takes the intentional model of Jesus, pairing eager learners with capable mentors.

Even still, there are fewer young pastors coming up and Earl attributes this to a lack of respect among pastors. When asked why he thinks this lack of respect exists, Earl didn’t mince words. “A lot of people don’t think that pastors believe what they are saying. Pastors aren’t honest about their own doubts or concerns,” he said. “And the younger generation, if they don’t trust you or respect you, they don’t want anything to do with you.” He did admit that it’s not just pastors, but all forms of leadership are under scrutiny right now. Authority of all kinds is suspicious and high-profile public failures, from clergy to Hollywood execs, are damaging the very idea of leadership.

Earl emphasized that pastors are just like everyone else, and they struggle just like everyone else, but they aren’t candid about that with their congregations, and this creates false expectations and unreasonable standards. Reflecting on his time at Chambersburg, Earl mentioned that he tried hard to be open about his faults and weaknesses, and asked Kim if she thought that was true, to which she responded, “Pretty much.” Kim calls it like she sees it.

Earl and Kim’s pattern was to go to a different church every week, and that way they were in each church of the region at least once a year. He felt that, over time, he developed a reputation with the congregations that he was present, and he cared. Through connection with the churches of the GLC, Earl and Kim reclaimed that church family feeling they had at Chambersburg. Strangely enough, though, Covid brought about some of Earl’s best connections with the pastors. As churches came online with weekly livestreams, Earl used Sunday sermons and worship services as his daily devotional, picking out one sermon for each day. Whether they knew it or not, Earl was listening to every sermon he could get his hands on throughout the week, and frequently calling and encouraging pastors about their messages. “I felt like I was more a part of the local church. I felt like I connected to the churches that way.”

Coach, Player, General, or Director, what many still call Earl is a pastor’s pastor. What he missed in leaving a congregation, he found in cultivating a new congregation of pastors to help guide and support. A year after his retirement, it’s still easy to see the legacy of ministry that he has left. By helping the churches establish clear visions for ministry, by raising up young leaders, and through meaningful connection with his pastors, Earl has set the Great Lakes Conference on a course to do faithful kingdom work, and we couldn’t be more grateful.