Women Who Inspire: Natalie Runion

Natalie Runion: We lived in the parsonage, which was right there by the church and so the church family became our family. We would have visitors all the time bringing goodies and stopping by. We saw them more than we saw my biological or extended family. There were days that I would walk over to the church and play the piano. I would be sitting in the sanctuary banging away during the day when it was dark and no one was there. I would invite my friends over to swim in the baptistry. We didn’t have a pool, but we had a baptistery. We went to church camps and revivals were part of my entire life.

Natalie: I was supposed to go to Lee College in Cleveland, Tennesee but at the last minute I changed my mind. So from there I got my degree in exercise physiology and kinesiology with a teaching degree in physical education. I was there for five years and thankfully there was a ministry called Crusade for Christ that was on campus. I thought, you know if I’m not gonna go to church; because I had no intentions of actually going to church, then I should just go to Campus Crusade. It seemed like a good option and that’s really where I found my faith. I think as an adult I was realizing it wasn’t my parents’ faith, it was mine.

One night the church called me and said, “Hey, we heard you lead worship for Campus Crusade, we’d love for you to come lead worship for us.” I was just kind of like, well as long as it’s just once because that’s not what I do. It’s not what I’m gonna do. And it was that night I led “Revelation Song,” a song by Jennie Lee Riddle. I felt my life change. I felt like I had a purpose that I didn’t know was mine and so after graduation, I went into full-time teaching.

I was a gym teacher, but there was a church in Dayton Ohio that hired me to be an intern. So for a good – seven years I was bi-vocational, gym teacher by day, and worship leader by weekend. And it was so humbling.

Natalie: At 33 I was teaching at a private Christian school and the owners, who owned this giant organization, came to me and said, “we’re starting a church. And it’s for people who are the wealthiest in our communities who don’t feel safe at regular churches, and we’d love for you to come and be our worship leader.”

 I spent my first five years of only ministry in that church, from 33 to 38. It was the best 5 years of my life. Just getting to learn the Scriptures, to remember why I love Jesus, and why I love the people.

Then I got called to Colorado Springs. So in 2017, my family (the kids were four and eight), packed up the car, and we came here to Colorado Springs for me to be on staff at New Life Worship as a Worship Pastor. It felt like a dream because it was like everything I had been (maybe not knowing) working up toward just kind of happened. Now I’m part of this amazing global worship movement that had a reputation and had really great leadership. I did that up until now.

Now I have started #raisedtostay because it was in the last six years, even though it was great, I wanted to quit more times than ever in my life. And so #raisedtostay was a response to my own wanting to quit.

Natalie: I would have to say, my parents. They live with us now. My dad wasn’t a seminary guy. He had been a drug addict and alcoholic in Over-the-Rhine Cincinnati throughout his late teens and 20s. He got saved and he and my mom started going to a Pentecostal church even though my dad was kind of raised in a Baptist denomination. So they start going to a Pentecostal church that had an evangelism explosion movement. If you remember the evangelism explosion, it was tracks that people would leave everywhere. So my dad knowing that he had left all of his people in Cincinnati, would take us down with these tracks, and we would hand them out in the parks. Then we would leave them under the lid of the coffee cans in the stores. My dad was just constantly telling people about Jesus and there was never a platform that he needed. And then he went through the ministerial program through our denomination and that’s how he became a licensed minister. My mom was a health aide throughout all of it too, they were bi-vocational most of my life. They just demonstrated so beautifully how to preach the gospel everywhere we went; from my dad’s Bible smuggling into China to my mom just being a school nurse and loving on kids. Really taught me that ministry was wherever I was, it didn’t have to be in the church. So, I grew up with a very wide lens, it wasn’t all about status and how much money you’re going to make, and how many people see you, it was, just how many people can you get to heaven with you. Even now, they are on staff at church here. They’re in their 60s. My mom is the nursery coordinator and my dad is the special-needs pastor. They’re doing their thing still in their mid-60s. He was a car salesman for several years and then went back into ministry, and so, I just think their love for the church has just been something that I’ve carried with me. 

CKG: I am not sure a lot of our readers know what #raisedtostay is so if you don’t care to kind of expand on that and what prompted that first little black box with the white text that is so prominent in social media.

Natalie: It is still unbeknownst to me why the Lord chose to amplify that the way he did. Though I have prayed that the Lord would give me authority in the areas that he wants me to have authority. But in 2019 I was with New Life Worship, and one day I walk in and it was told to me “You’re no longer going to be New Life Worship we feel like you need to move departments and we want for you to be a Women’s Pastor.” 

I was isolated from my friends. I don’t even know if the church knew that they were causing me to mourn so much. It was a season of isolation and I just remember writing in my journal every day, “God I don’t wanna do this,” “don’t make me do this,” “please, I just wanna go back and be a gym teacher.” Forty years feels like a really good time to tap out, it’s a good holy number.

 I was walking the dog on a hot summer day, and I was having this conversation again with God. And I said, “I’m done.” “If this is your people,  and this is what we do to each other, and we control people’s lives. Then I’m done.” I was having this temper tantrum on the sidewalk. 

 I promise you there are probably five times I’ve heard the Lord give me an audible word, and I heard the phrase Raised to Stay drop into my spirit. He said “you know you keep fighting for yourself, you keep going to the same Egypt and you keep leaving a lot of things on the table. And if you would just let me fight for you, I’ll show you what’s next. But you had to come to the end of yourself so that I could really begin in your life. And this had nothing to do with worship, me making you, me creating you. Worship was a catalyst, but it wasn’t why I made you.” I couldn’t stop hearing that phrase #raisedtostay. And He said, “you know I had to get you to a point where you wanted to quit so that you would be able to preach for the rest of your life while others can’t.” And I start bawling. 

So, I ran home and googled the phrase Raised to Stay, and there’s nothing. There’s not a blog, there’s not a book, there’s not a social media account, so I just bought all the domains. I wrote my first black box. I don’t even know why I chose black and white because I’m not black and white. I’m a neon 1980s kid. I threw it on my social media account and I walked away from it. 
I had like 500 followers. I said OK I’m gonna post one black box a day and if it keeps me in the game, maybe it’ll keep somebody else in the game. That was really the heart behind it. 

Natalie: He said you know it’s interesting you shoot you chose black boxes to write your words, and he said because you know really the only other place we hear black boxes and airplanes the right before the plane crashes they record what’s happening in the cockpit to teach other pilots, what not to do to avoid further crashes. He’s like it’s like these black boxes are prophetic warnings of what we can do to change so we don’t keep hurting people. 

Natalie: I talk about this all the time. We aren’t in control over what our childhood looks like or how we were raised by our families, but the minute that we say yes to Jesus and become his child, whether that’s when we are literally children or in our 30s or 40s we become “stayers.” It’s what I call us. Because we’re not necessarily raised to stay in the church, we’re raised to abide. If raised to abide actually looked good on merch, I would have probably gone with raise to abide to help kind of unmuddy some of those waters of like “what are you telling us?” Do we have to stay in unhealthy churches? Are you telling us we have to stay even though we know it’s time to go? No, no I look at John 15 where Jesus is saying I am the vine you are the branches, My Father, He is the one who does the pruning, and you will abide in Me and I will abide in you, then when the Father begins to do the pruning, though it’s uncomfortable, is to produce good fruits. And Raised to Stay is simply “we’re gonna stay abiding in Christ” and we’re going to allow the Lord to prune us, to challenge us, to go through the hard things, to have hard conversations, and watch Him develop good fruit.

The heart cry behind Raised to Stay is not you had to be raised in a church but that we are going to stay connected to Jesus no matter what happens. 

Natalie:  I was noticing a trend in that one reason GenZ was not interested in women’s ministry was because they are so turned off to celebrity culture. Women’s ministry in the 90s, 2000s even up until I would say 10 years ago really centralized the focus around one woman being the face of the of the ministry. And then women would come and hear that one woman speak. The feedback I was getting, was – we want to talk to each other we want to be in community with each other and if we only have one night a week for two hours with our kids in kid’s ministry so we can sit, we want to be with each other, we want to talk, and we want to worship. So I really changed the focus of women’s ministry at our church to be more small group and women leading women models. Whereas I modeled “how do you lead a small group?” 

And then we released them and we grew exponentially because now women were running to come together, not just sit in silence and listen to one person speak. Now that’s not to say that having a once-a-year conference wasn’t beneficial because those are also really great, but it was for our day-to-day or week to week, we just had a flip the script a little bit. And we started seeing women in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, coming as well as 50, 60, 70, and 80s, and now we have multigenerational ministry happening. Where moms and babies are now with these great grandmothers, and we’re seeing the Eunices, the Lois’, Timothys, and the Pauls. We are seeing that coming to play so that’s what I feel like the win was for being in women’s women’s ministry the last three years.

We ended up doing “Emotionally Healthy Relationships” and “Emotionally Healthy Spirituality” by Pete Scazzero and Jerry’s Scazzero out in New York. They have a series called “Emotionally Healthy” and it taught men how to have hard conversations by climbing the ladder of integrity. When you have a small group where somebody’s dominating a conversation how do you pastor them through that? And so it was just a great launching pad for us to offer this 9-week, emotionally healthy course. We have 150 women in a room, sitting around a table and those women took care of each other. They were there for birthdays and babies and deaths and that became like their small group in a lot of ways.

Natalie: What’s really cool is my publisher actually owns Integrity Music in Nashville so that’s also ironic. I song write all the time with good writers from Integrity and Centricity. I get to sit in writing rooms with some of the best because as you can tell from my black box I love words so I am more so the lyrics person in a room yeah I hope so. The very first song I ever wrote I was 20 and it’s called Stained-glass Windows and that is a title of one of the chapters in my book. I have a feeling I’ll end up playing that when I start to travel with the book; I have a feeling people are gonna want to hear that.

Natalie: I feel like I’m in that now. It is one of those things where I am unique in ministry because I’m an entrepreneur too. I think my generation is entrepreneurial. I think some of us saw our parents struggle financially. I think some of us watched our parents go into debt because they were just wanting us to go to college so badly. The baby boomers wanted us to have what their parents couldn’t give them. And so, I think my generation has grown up with a little bit of a fear of money, but also a respect for money; in that, we will work five jobs if we have to make ends meet. That’s what I’ve done my whole life. I’ve worked so many jobs and when the Lord said it’s OK, you can leave the church and just do Raised To Stay. There was a visceral fear in me of “oh my gosh I’m gonna make my family poor” because now I am the starving artist in ministry who’s just going to be selfish and do this thing that I want to do. When my husband came to me and we had not been talking about it and he said I think it’s time to make the changeover, I just thought “OK” if my husband is on board then I think that we are in unity so this has to be from the Lord. So now I am 100% dependent upon the Holy Spirit right now to provide speaking opportunities and to elevate this book. There is nothing I can do to control any of that right now. We are trusting the Lord that if He calls us to it, then He is going to equip us and give us a way to do it. But in the flesh, I feel like I need to be doing more like I need to be working at Starbucks. But then little miracles pop up or somebody calls and asks me to do something and they pay really well. So the Lord is just always there with these little moments saying “You don’t have to worry, obedience is greater than sacrifice.” I know He has called me to Raised to Stay and I know that He gave it to me, so that’s where we are right now.

CKG: What’s your favorite part of ministry?

Natalie The people. I tell people all the time that my dad would always joke if it weren’t for people ministry would be so easy. I agree I think the worst part of ministry and the best part of ministry are people. I always tell moms who are like “well how do you keep your kids engaged and wanting to go to church?” I ask “what are your kids doing at church?” and they’re like “oh, nothing” So I’m like “they don’t serve, they don’t go to class, they don’t do anything?”They’re like “no, they wanna be with us.” 

If we teach our kids to look for the people then they will look forward to going every Sunday because not only do they get to see people they like but the people of the church will come to them and give them hugs and throw them a dollar to go get a mint. Of all the things that drew me into the house of God when I was a kid was always knowing I was gonna get to see people I loved. 

I said, “have your kids serve one and attend one.” They work in the nursery one week and they rock babies and they meet parents, they learn how to look people in the eye, they learn how to say “hello ma’am,” “hello sir,” and “hi Pastor.” Then have them attend one with the kids their own age and then on family Sundays, sure have them attend with you as a family or maybe once a month you attend as a family. But we have to teach our kids and even ourselves to love the people more than our positions.  For me, the only thing that kept me in women’s ministry was that I truly loved those women before I became a Women’s Pastor.  

CKG: What are the biggest challenges of women in ministry today or are there challenges?

Natalie: There always will be. I think as long as we are human in our flesh suits, we’re gonna have this conversation of ministry and women. Everywhere I go, if I’m sitting on a panel this is the question I get. I always tell women like you are one of God’s best ideas. He didn’t forget to make you a man. You’re supposed to be where you are, but I think the biggest challenge is just the definition of what a woman’s role is in the church. That is an argument from days on of what is it that 1 Timothy scripture is really saying. What is Old Testament? What is New Testament? What was law but is now under the new law? 

I am definitely not going to say that I think women need to be like senior pastors of a church. I don’t think any woman is really asking for that.  I think what we’re asking for is mutual respect and I tell our guys all the time that women are actually really easy to celebrate. We just want to know that you see what God has put in us and that you value it and that it’s worth celebrating. We don’t need corner offices and we don’t need titles. We are very easy to please, but when we feel unseen, when we feel devalued,  when we feel like what we carry is not equal in the anointing, not invisibility, but in the anointing or whatever we are asked to do in the church that is going to see our holy hutzpah or Deborah or Esther whatever you wanna call it to come out. Because we do know what God has placed inside of us and it burns just as badly as it burns in them, it burns just as passionately. I think we fight this thing that women are trapped just waiting to ensnare our brothers. We’re not some red apple standing in the water cooler at the office waiting to have an affair with you. That is not what we are going to do. Also, I have to think about what I’m wearing and I have to think about if  I have somebody with me when I travel. There are things, for women, that we have to deal with such as aging out and we don’t talk about that. I think we have a couple of factors that affect us as women. 

Natalie: Junior high and high school is hard for people who aren’t pastors’ kids. I think being a pastor’s kid in junior high or high school everybody just put you on this pedestal that you’re bound to fall off of. It’s like every kid hates you because they’re like “why does my mom want me to be you?” Maybe that’s different now, but for me, that was the hardest part. Just wanting to have true, authentic relationships in the church. At that time, churches only usually had one or two pastors, there wasn’t a staff of 50 pastors who all had kids. So all eyes were on you and you should be able to do anything.  You should be able to play an instrument, you should be able to have a gift or talent that’s worthy of the church. I think my sister who’s three years younger than me, I think she struggled with this even more so than I did. Because my sister was super artistic. She wasn’t ministry minded as much as I was feeling myself being led. She wanted to be an art teacher. She was kind of feeling like she was called to the marketplace versus the church place. So it is interesting how you have two pastors’ kids being raised in the same home and they had two very different experiences. For me, that pedestal didn’t scare me, it just made me a people pleaser. So my goal was to stay on that pedestal as long as I could, and not rock the boat just don’t do anything to get knocked off of it and nobody will have anything to say about it. My sister was like I will smash this pedestal and you can write a story about it. 

Natalie: I think listening is our number one ministry that we need to have. 

CKG: So would you say that Raised to Stay is geared to help overcome church hurt? 

Natalie: I state that the mission of Raised to Stay is to challenge the church and to equip the Saints. So how do we challenge each other to say, “okay, abuse is happening, and hurt is happening. So let’s do better and let’s stop hurting people. That’s not putting people in positions because they’re talented and put them there because they’re anointed.” that’s the first part of  Raised to Stay. Let’s stop doing things that aren’t working.  Then to equip the saints, we acknowledge that you’ve been hurt, we acknowledge that you’ve been abused. We’re not saying it didn’t happen, but you can’t live your life living as a victim. So what are the necessary steps for healing and how can we as the church rally around you?

Natalie: I realized I was raised boundaryless. You know when you are in the church parsonage, it is an exact opposite of a boundary.  I mean you’re given you’re giving an entire congregation instant access to the pastor. It’s on the church property, so yeah, like we had a lot of dinners interrupted, we had a lot of family time interrupted. My parents were very good at making sure they knew that we knew we were loved and protected but yeah, a lot of in and out. There were no boundaries when it came to when we were in that place; from Sunday morning to Sunday night, Wednesday night, and summers were nothing but ministry. 

I think we all want to earn our wages, we want to be what we need to be, and to do our job well. But I think that the congregants thinking that they have constant access to pastors or ministry leaders is a dangerous boundary because at some point either the pastor burns out or they start to disappoint so many people that unmet expectations come out as church hurt. So I have established with the people that I lead, that I will answer your text message from 9 to 5, which is my workday. Friday is my Sabbath and Saturday is my Sabbath;  Sunday I’m in the church if you need me I’m at the church. But I do not answer texts at night time, I do not answer phone calls that are not from friends and family after dark, and that helped my people know that I wasn’t ignoring them but those were my boundaries. With my staff, I would tell them the same thing don’t you dare email me about a work thing on a Friday, I’m with my kids or I’m at the spa, or at the gym. I think this generation is better at it than we were 20 years ago maybe a little too good at it. I think that sometimes we can use boundaries as a weapon, and so I think that there is a balance of Sabbathing and then being irresponsible. 

CKG: With technology the way it is, it’s so easy to access people. Instantaneously we are talking to people and we didn’t have that years and years ago. I think sometimes that’s why we can’t have boundaries. We have to say no I cannot. This is my day.

Natalie: Yes, you know an example of this is I didn’t wanna travel in April. because it’s Easter and my kids are going to be doing some fun spring things but I knew that I needed to make an income in April. So, I went ahead and booked one thing that I knew would cover me for the month and then we’ve been getting inquiries now every week asking “can you come in April?” and I had to keep saying no. I’m doing one local event and then that’s it and people are OK with that. I think we think people are going to balk at our boundaries.  

Natalie: First of all, I’m kind of a freak of nature, I love writing. I love it so much!  When I was a kid that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to write short stories and fiction. It was before the computer so I had the writer’s pad on my finger. I would just write and write and write. So I loved all of the theories around writing; like, go to a coffee shop and sit with your computer with your coffee and write for hours. My favorite part of it was just the honor of getting to do it for the first time. It’s like a dream coming true and you have to pinch yourself. 

I think the hard part for me was wondering if people were gonna like it. So, the people pleaser in me was needing people’s affirmation. I had never written a book before. I remember the very first chapter I wrote was actually the middle chapter, chapter 6. I don’t write in order. So, chapter 6, “Don’t let your Judas keep you from your Jesus” came first. I wrote the entire chapter and I’m looking at it and I love it. It’s like when you give birth to a baby. I love my baby, but what if it’s ugly? So I sent it to my publisher, and I said look, I know that I am being so rookie here and this is probably something you do not do, but will someone please read this and tell me if it’s even close to what you guys want? A day later my editor messaged me and she said “Natalie this is unbelievable. If the whole book is like this, then it’s a gem,” That was what gave me the wind in my sail to just go ahead and write the other 11. 

It’s fascinating how we can use words to communicate things that give people a new language to what they’ve been feeling but haven’t been able to say it. I think it’s prophetic, honestly. I think it’s the hand of a ready writer, it’s that psalm that I’m gonna write; I’m gonna pen my worship to the Lord. I think it’s it is a definite prophetic bend, and I think English just lit that fire under us. You’ve read Shakespeare and Tolstoy, and you read all of those you were like. ‘oh my gosh if I could just have a portion of this.’

Natalie: Jesus is like the compass the whole time. Someone actually messaged me this last night, and they said, “where do I even begin?”
I started these black boxes from a place of wanting to write because I wrote from a place of my own poverty. I wrote from a place of my own need to write. Writers write. When you’re a writer you write, and if you’re writing for a book with the hopes of a book deal, it’s like writing a song hoping to get a Grammy, it takes the fun out of it. It takes the life out of it. When we write we write because we have to say it. So I would say whatever the message is that is burning in your soul, start sharing it. Whether it’s on social media or a blog or a mom blog or whatever you’re doing, just find an outlet or platform. Just see what God is telling you to say no expectations, no hope of anything beyond just being obedient to say it.

However, with that being said, as you are writing and you know that there are things that have to be hit, like platform numbers, you have to think about that as well. Are you gonna do everything on Instagram? Are you gonna do everything in blog form? Are you gonna do everything on Facebook? Then you have to start intentionally building an audience around that message. And for me, I just knew because most of the people who followed me were people that were in our congregations.  I knew that my people from 1985, 1990, and, 1995 were gonna rally around me because they wanted to hear how little Natalie had grown up. So I knew who I was gonna be writing to. For a lot of us, we’ll kind of be throwing a dart into the night sky and seeing what gets hit. Start writing the message God’s given you, but be intentional as an entrepreneur to know what you’re trying to do; if your goal is a book deal then you need to start hitting some of those markers that would make publishers look at you.
 
I will say, when I got signed with my publisher, I only had 1200 followers, and there were other publishers who loved the book, but because I didn’t have a following, they wouldn’t sign me. And I remember when David C. Cook came to me they just love the message so much, and the Lord said, “go with the person who champions my words, not your numbers.” And I said “that’s it” and they have been a godsend to me . Now I have the numbers above and beyond what I would’ve needed to hit for all those other publishers, but they weren’t the ones God had for me. So don’t be too hard for numbers, don’t be too driven, don’t buy followers, and don’t get desperate. But I would say, to be obedient just to be faithful with the message that you’ve been trusted with.

CKG: Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers? 

Natalie: I do –  you know the book comes out July 4 and I  have this God dream of seeing a book of a reconciled church hit New York Times bestseller. So I am crushing the marketing game right now; we’re just trying to get ten- thousand pre-orders. And it’s funny because I know enough about sales to know what I have to have broken into each month to get there.

The book is just the thing that I’m speaking about when I travel.

CKG: So you talk about your speaking engagements being about the book, do you do other engagements, or is it all wrapped around the book? Do you speak at conferences or small, intimate events? 

Natalie: I’m going to Texas and I just speak once on Friday night and I’m speaking on the Hebrew midwives. I love it when people give me prompts it actually helps a little bit but then I have my standard Raised to Stay ministry that I speak about.

 And I have a 12-week cohort that started March 6 and I’ll probably do these twice a year. Where people can pay to be part of this ministry group, participate in live zooms, and I send videos and homework.  

That’s for anyone who just wants to have better language around what we are  hearing in the church from hurt and abuse

CKG: Natalie, Thank you for sharing with me and our readers. It has been a pleasure getting to know you and the #raisedtostay platform.

Natalie: You’re welcome. Thank you for the opportunity to share!