Tom Vollmer has worn many vocational hats during his career, but all of them led to an understanding of how God is in all of work, whether in or out of the church setting. He says: “one of the things I’ve noticed through the years is that the call is actually much broader than (just church work). That has developed in my life to understand that you can be called to medicine, politics, business, education. When I started out, I really thought that ministry was confined to the church. I knew that God was working outside of it, but I never really realized how intentional he was in actually working in these other spaces.”
Tom felt a call to ministry at age 16, which to him at the time meant a profession in some type of church work. As a result, after graduation, he attended Bible college where he earned a degree in missions. He says, “I worked as a senior pastor for a number of years, and also in the corporate world. So I was considered what is known as a bi-vocational pastor. I was pastoring a church. I was also working at Toyota Financial Services, supervising a team, learning business planning, strategy and everything else that comes with a really large company. It started to distill that you could have a mission for the marketplace as well as a mission in the church. They weren’t mutually exclusive, but they were very complementary.”
He continues, “after that, my wife and I moved to Columbus, Ohio where we pastored, and then eventually made our way overseas where we were on a Christian worker’s assignment in Belgium. And that’s where I got my PhD in theology. When we came back, I taught for ten years at Cincinnati Christian University, and, when it closed, that opened some doors to get into the space where I am now, which is working for The Elemental Group. I think my life really prepared me for this position because it’s all about helping churches and nonprofits achieve the vision and dream that God has for them. That can be in fundraising, in advancement, in strategic planning, church health or coaching. We do all kinds of things around that area. So that’s the short snapshot of my journey through the years.”
Tom’s journey in vocational ministry and ministry in the marketplace has brought him to the understanding that “God’s work for us is to be an integrated life, not a compartmentalized one: to integrate Christ in the entirety of our lives, our faith, our community, our work, our health. And so for me as an academic as well as an entrepreneur, this helped me develop what I would consider an integral theology of mission. How do we actually live our faith in the world around us and build bridges of understanding because, as you know, so many people have different views of Christianity, and they sometimes are negative. Part of our challenge in the marketplace is to show Christ in positive ways to people.”
This theology of mission became real to Tom when he had an impression to reach out to someone he hadn’t talked with in a long time. He says, “they immediately got back to me and said, wow, this is great timing. You would not believe what I’m going through. It started to open my eyes that these are the moments I’m looking for: these normal day to day events where we impact people and help them. My epiphany moment might be to find God in the ordinary daily life that we lead every day. And now, every day I look for an opportunity to impact somebody positively for Jesus.”
Tom Vollmer and his family live in Loveland, Ohio. He works for The Elemental Group.
