God Is Not in Love with a Better Future Version of YouGod Is Not in Love with a Better Future Version of You

Ministry has a way of exposing what success can hide. In this conversation, Matthew McClure and Mike Klunke, co-directors of Soul Care for the Collegiate Church Network, talk about what they've learned from decades in collegiate ministry about the life beneath the leadership.

Mike reflects on handing off Cornerstone Church at Illinois State after 25 years, and what stepping away revealed about over-responsibility, identity, and the quiet inner command to just keep going. Matthew traces his own path from a spiritually restless high schooler sitting in cemeteries to a pastor learning, through every transition, that ministry was never about him.

Together, they work through the question many leaders can't answer alone: Is this a skill I'm missing, or something deeper God wants to heal? They talk about the problems that follow you from room to room, why transformation can't happen in isolation, the difference between a community that's genuinely formative and one that's just emotionally expressive, and how to build gospel rhythms that form people rather than soul care programs that prop up productivity.

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