We recently connected with Jason Williams and have shared our conversation below.

Jason, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Do you take vacations? Why or why not?

Our culture bases our identity off its activity (for instance we almost always begin a conversation with a question like “What do you do?” or “How are you doing?” which is immediately answered by how tired we are. We base so much of who we are by what we do. Jesus is different, He would always answer questions about Who He was with the answer “I am.” He could have said I heal, I rescue, I care but He said I do because to God our identity informs our activity instead of our activity informing our identity. When you look at things God’s way you realize how important regular rest breaks are. Rest is a scheduled re fueling of our souls I take regular scheduled vacations and encourage my staff and volunteers to do the same. I go to a lake house twice a year because being around water dramatically affects your perception of your day. If you don’t think you can take a long break take a short break but put those breaks on a schedule and stick to them. If you are asking what will happen to the business if am gone? I would push back with the question What will happen to you if you don’t rest?

Jason, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I started Church In The Wild in a CrossFit gym with some friends who like to lift. We are a church that really cares about Westerville. We spend time weekly in prayer with one another., we provide Free Sports Camps to our community, we have family nights and events to help families, encourage and coach entrepreneurs, and we write books to help equip those in our church.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I had two strokes just over two years ago. In the follow up it was discovered I also had a hole in my heart that needed surgery to fix it. I went through months of exhaustion, memory loss, confusion, and depression and was just recovering when I go Covid. I still suffer from occasional memory loss and confusion from the strokes but our church has grown through the entire process

Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?

We wanted to do sports camps for our community to help families but we wanted to make them free. Most sports camps are around $250 and we set our to provide this as a free service to Westerville. This was a massive gamble for a small church because camps cost so much in space, time, and gear. We also really wanted to make the camps a quality product where kids learn a lot about themselves and about sports. We worked with other churches and asked other churches to work with us. A couple weeks ago a man was sitting at Benihana with son and we came in to eat. He walked to our table and told us how our camps had helped his son so much when they were in need.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.citw.faith
• Instagram: @church_n_the_wild
• Facebook: Church In The Wild
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEFcvntP9jLu5LXEPGKaU1A

Image Credits
Tess Kellogg