I’m a Deconstructed Pastor. This Is the Story I’ve Never (Fully)Told.

I've never publicly told the full story of my journey away from Evangelical Christianity until now. I will do it in this post and the ones that follow. It all begins with a preacher named Pokie.

“He has one foot in the baptistry and one foot in the pulpit.”

That’s what Omar “Pokie” Miller, Senior Minister of First Christian Church in Russell, Kentucky, said to my dad just moments after he baptized me.

It was Easter Sunday, 1980.
I was 8 years old.

My parents and I had all walked into the water together, each of us wearing a white baptism robe. Pokie, a kind and gentle man, stood waist-deep in the baptistry, dressed in duck-hunting waders and a shirt and tie.

I was standing on my toes just to keep my mouth above the surface.

And then I was under.

I came up soaked, saved, and—apparently—destined to become a preacher.

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How I Got Here

My family hadn’t been going to church before that. We weren’t against it. It just wasn’t part of our routine. I was an only child, happy at home with my Big Wheel and Star Wars toys.

But then Pokie came to visit. Uninvited, yes—but with a smile.

He told my parents, as gently as he could, that without Jesus we were all headed for eternal punishment. We found out that day about the conscious endless burning that awaited each of us on the other side of the grave. Pokie wasn’t angry—he was concerned for us. He truly believed it.

And so, not long after that, we believed it too.

And before I knew it, the church became my home.

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The Boy Preacher

From the very beginning, I loved everything about church.

I devoured every Bible story with wide-eyed wonder and amazement. I read my children’s Bible at home and corrected the Sunday school volunteers when they got a detail wrong. (I’m sure they loved that.)

Looking back, I didn’t have the words for who I was, but now I’d say: I was a performer, an introvert, a storyteller, a thinker, and a kid with a big heart.

That all adds up to “future preacher” in a small-town Kentucky church.

By the time I was ten, I was giving little sermonettes in front of the congregation in a JC Penney suit with a clip-on tie. But by the time I was a teenager, I was preaching full sermons about once a year. And everyone—including me—was convinced that I had been chosen for this.

It wasn’t just a calling.
It was my identity.

And so I did what everyone expected. Happily. It’s who I was.

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From the Mouth of (Heretical) Babes

Here’s the twist: you could make a case that what we now call my “decline” began as early as one year after my baptism. At least, that’s when the questions began.

At age nine, I sat in Sunday school as they told the story of the Tower of Babel from Genesis—the one where God confused the languages of humanity as punishment. It basically explains why there are so many languages in the world.

Even at nine, I asked: “Couldn’t this be a story that teaches a lesson, not something that really happened?” (We had been studying Aesop’s fables in school. I saw similarities.)

The teacher’s answer was clear. “No. It all happened. Everything in the Bible is true.”

Okay, I thought to myself. Guess I won’t ask that again.

And that’s how the pattern began: belief, followed by doubt, followed by silence, followed by performance.

I was good at it. Too good, maybe.

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Bible College (Where Questions Grow)

Of course I went to Bible college. Where else would I go?

I had a full-ride preaching scholarship offer at one school, but I chose Cincinnati Bible College at the last minute because I liked the city and had some friends going.

Before school started, they gave all freshmen a Bible knowledge exam. The idea was to take it again senior year and see how much you’d learned.

I got the second-highest incoming score of all time. (And I still remember one of the questions I missed—I said Sarah’s servant was Hannah, not Hagar.)

Four years later, I took the test again… and missed six more questions than I had freshman year.

Apparently, I forgot more than I learned.

But really, that’s what study does. It breaks things open. It raises new questions. It complicates what seems so simple at first glance.

If you want to find a room full of practical agnostics, try a seminary classroom. The more you learn, the less you know.

Still, I was a gifted speaker. I had charisma, at least on stage. And I believed I was meant to reach Gen-X with a new kind of church—authentic, raw, full of community, original videos, and rock and roll.

And I wasn’t going to do it in Ohio.

I needed out of the Bible belt…

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Viva Las Vegas

After marrying Debbie, we moved with friends to Las Vegas to start a new church.

It worked. It grew. And it felt different.

We weren’t pretending to be perfect. We welcomed everyone. We had strippers and drug dealers and runaway teens sitting next to young suburban families.

We were creating real community, Vegas style.

But I began to notice something.

I was preaching a version of the gospel—the one I had inherited from Pokie. But the more I preached that gospel in my context, the less it felt true.

Here’s one example: I had not told anyone this, but I stopped believing in a literal hell. I wasn’t even sure about a literal heaven anymore. Yet I was still giving sermons where people accepted Jesus in part to “go to heaven” when they died.

And I thought to myself: I don’t really believe that’s where they’re going when they die—but I know this community is helping them escape the hell they’re living in now.

That felt good enough.

I justified it.

I would justify every sermon from there on similarly.

The truth was I needed to figure out what I really believed about, well, everything.

So I started reading. And reading. And reading.

For four years I devoured theology, philosophy, early church history, biblical scholarship—anything I could get my hands on. A book a week, sometimes more.

And when knowledge didn’t satisfy my questions, I tried to “prove it” by taking even bigger steps of faith.

At one point, I even started a Christian commune. It fell apart after six months. And nearly cost me everything.

I was clinically depressed. And I felt like a fraud. A conman.

Not because I was preaching something I didn’t believe—but because I didn’t know what I believed anymore, and yet kept preaching. Because people were getting better, yes. But also because it was my job. The only job I had trained for. The job I was destined for. I had babies. And bills. I needed a job.

Exit Stage Right

To cheer me up, Debbie signed me up for an improv class at The Second City in Vegas.

Studying and later performing improv became my therapy.

Within a year, I was hired to do it professionally.

Turns out that I could have a job that wasn’t church work.

I was performing comedy six nights a week on the Las Vegas Strip. Comedy, creativity, storytelling—it felt like the truest version of me.

After three years of performing in Vegas, I moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting for film and television.

But, it turns out, I couldn’t fully leave church behind. I still preached some weekends. Still carried the identity. Still answered people’s questions as honestly as I could—if it was safe to do so.

One of my “survival jobs” in LA was speaking to a large recovery community at a church in Orange County.

Each week I told Bible stories and connected them to the 12 steps. And people found healing. Much like they did in Las Vegas early on.

But then they’d ask the questions I hated:

“How can I trust the Bible is inspired?”
“How do you know there’s a God?”
“Is it okay to be gay?”
“Do you believe in heaven?”

And on and on and on. All the questions I had myself. Except by this time I also had some answers. I just couldn’t be honest.

And I was back to walking the tightrope—measuring my words to not technically lie about my own emerging beliefs while keeping the part-time church gig that was actually helping people stay sober.

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Maybe I Just Need to Stop Overthinking It

I decided that thinking was my problem.

I am good at speaking at church. When I do, people get better. That should be enough. I convinced myself that I was done with my questions. They weren’t serving me anymore.

Eventually, I thought I was even ready to try being a pastor again. To return to ministry—but this time on different terms.

I told myself: I don’t have to get wrapped up in theology. I’ll just focus on the heart of the message—grace, hope, compassion. Just tell the stories. Let them land. Let people find what they need in them. Get over myself.

I accepted a role of Teaching Pastor at a respected church, The Vineyard in Cincinnati. It was (and is) dynamic, healthy, focused on love, kindness, and service to the poor. I remember thinking that’s what really matters. People getting better. It felt like I had a new start. A second chance.

And for a while, it worked.

Then came Christmas my third year there.

I was assigned to preach about Mary. A beautiful opportunity, in theory.

But by that point, I no longer believed in the virgin birth as a historical event. I saw it as metaphor—a powerful one—but not something that had to have literally happened to still carry meaning.

I didn’t want to surprise anyone from the stage, so I brought it up with the senior pastor—a man I deeply love and respect to this day.

I asked if it would be okay to approach the story symbolically.

He said, kindly, “Joe, you need to decide if you believe this. Because belief in the virgin birth is pretty central. I mean, it’s in the Nicene Creed. If you don’t believe it, you may need to ask yourself if you still consider yourself a Christian.”

He wasn’t being harsh. He was being honest. And he deserved my honesty in return.

But I couldn’t give it to him. Not in that moment.

Instead, I went home and convinced myself—truly—that I could believe in a literal virgin birth. I didn’t want to cause drama. I didn’t want to disappoint Dave. I didn’t want to admit I might not belong anymore.

Not just to that church. But to Christianity.

I wasn’t ready to be homeless.

I came back the next day and said I was just confused. That I believed it. And in that moment, I meant it. I had willed myself to believe it.

At least until December 26th.

Ultimately, that’s when I knew in my heart that I had to get out. Again.

Because as much as I wanted to keep willing it to be true, I was no longer an evangelical Christian. I couldn’t pretend to be.

I was, yet again, clinically depressed.

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If You Doubt It, They Will Come

The church was wonderful to me. They helped me leave and start my own business, a creative agency. I didn’t tell them it was because my beliefs had changed. I found other true, less troubling reasons to move on.

After I left that job, I didn’t go back to pastoral ministry.

I would preach here and there once in a while, but I stayed away from church roles.

But I couldn’t stay away from the unresolved questions.

And neither could the people around me.

Week after week, year after year, people would find me. Pastors, church members, doubters, seekers. They’d say, “Can I talk to you about something I’m not sure I believe anymore?”

And I always said yes.

I wasn’t posting online about deconstruction. But I was living in it—conversations, questions, doubts, and grace.

People were drawn to me—not because I had answers, but because I wasn’t afraid of their questions.

And I sat with them. Without the title. Without the fear of needing to say the right thing.

I was just Joe. And all I seemed to have that they didn’t was that I had been questioning longer than them. I understood.

And that seemed to be enough.

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The Truth Shall Set You Free

Eventually, I stopped speaking in churches altogether.

But I still found ways to tell the stories.

I developed five one-man shows—John, Luke, Acts, Genesis, and Exodus. I told the stories as an actor, not a preacher. And it felt right.

Even still, I was cautious about my true beliefs. I didn’t want to confuse people. I didn’t want to upset the good Christians who made me who I am—including my family.

But the conversations never stopped.

A decade of quiet conversations.

And then, a year ago, I made another vocational change. I sold my company. I was burnt out, unhappy, and not living the story I wanted to live.

So I started Called for Adventure to help people find their calling and say yes to whatever’s next. I teach others to see their life as a story. I lead workshops to help leaders see what really matters. I coach people to have a clear vision and go after it.

And something unexpected happened.

I started to feel that old familiar feeling from back in Las Vegas.

That thing when you are teaching people something, but not really doing it yourself.

In helping others find their voice, I realized I had purposely muted mine.

I had never publicly told the world my faith story, the most important story of my life. I had never honestly let myself speak freely about the answers I had found that work for me—or the questions that I still have unanswered.

I had been afraid to do that.

But I heard my own advice come back at me.

Your story matters. Tell it fearlessly. Your story will help others. Don’t be afraid.

So three weeks ago, I started talking about my faith journey on TikTok. The response was overwhelming.

And it made something clear:

It’s time for me to tell the whole truth.

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The First Rule of Deconstruction Club

So here we are.

This is where I will spill the beans, and more importantly ask the hard questions. I am calling it Deconstructed Pastor.

This is a Substack for doubters, seekers, deconstructors, agnostics, curious Christians, quiet atheists, and anyone of any faith background who has ever asked, “What if I don’t believe this anymore?”

It’s for those of us who have felt alone.

It’s for those of us who asked one question too many.

It’s for those of us who used to be pastors or deacons or priests or worship leaders or Sunday school teachers or small group leaders or dependable church members…and aren’t quite sure what to call ourselves now.

It’s for you.

This is a space for honest questions. I won’t proselytize here. Not because I’m afraid to—but because I have no desire to get you to believe what I believe. I earned my beliefs by asking questions. You can’t have mine. You have to earn your beliefs the hard way.

And I can’t explain how freeing it is to have zero obligation to convince anyone to believe what I believe—or worse, to make them believe what I’m only pretending to believe.

No conversion attempts here. Not from me. Not from anyone.

The first rule of Deconstruction Club is: no evangelizing.

This isn’t a place to win arguments.

It’s a place to tell the truth.

Starting with mine.

Oh, and one more thing…

The Tower of Babel?

It never happened.

It’s clearly just a story to teach us a lesson.

And maybe not even a very good lesson, at that.

I mean, maybe one language isn’t so bad—if it’s rooted in love, honesty, acceptance, and valuing the questions more than the answers.

That’s the only language we’re speaking here.

P.S. I know I didn’t say much about what I actually believe now—or where I’ve landed. I’ll share all of that as we go. But honestly, that’s not the most important thing. What matters is that we’ve found one another. We’ve got this.