Michael Clary grew up in Huntington, West Virginia, in the shadow of the Marshall University plane crash that marked his hometown. Ministry ran deep in his family line—his great-grandfather and grandfather were both Baptist preachers—but his own childhood was shaken when his parents divorced at age seven. Shuttling between households, Michael experienced both the steady example of his Christian father and the destructive influence of a tyrannical stepfather. Those early wounds left him with a deep burden for healthy, Christ-centered homes.

Though he professed faith from a young age, Michael’s spiritual growth accelerated through Campus Crusade for Christ at Marshall University. Immersed in Bible study, evangelism, and worship leadership, his heart for ministry took root. It was during a summer project with Crusade that he met Laura, the shy young woman who would later become his wife. Married in 1999, Michael and Laura went on staff with Crusade before sensing God’s call to local church ministry.

In 2010, with nothing but faith and a handful of families meeting in his basement, Michael planted Christ the King Church in Cincinnati. Over 15 years, the church has grown, planted daughter churches, and recently moved to a new facility in Fort Thomas, Kentucky. Along the way, Michael’s convictions deepened around biblical manhood, womanhood, and family life—shaped by both his wounds and God’s grace. Today, he continues to serve as lead pastor, husband to Laura, and father to four children, proclaiming God’s good design for households and the church

Well, welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Today you're going to hear the life story of Michael Clary. He's a pastor of Christ the King Church in the Cincinnati area, author of God's Good Design. He's going to be preaching at our national conference in May. I hope you can come and hear him, but first of all, get an idea of who this man is and where he came from.

Hope you enjoy the discussion. So Jason, we've got Michael Clary here to tell his life story, and I'm really delighted he's going to come and preach at our national conference on manhood and womanhood. He wrote a great book called God's Good Design that everybody should read and we'll talk about that later. We're gonna do a whole podcast with him on this book, God's Good Design, so I can't wait to do that. But you know, we want to hear a man's story, how God worked in his life.

We want the people who hear him preach at our conference to know a little bit more about him, other than that he is Joe Blow from church whatever, you know, but he actually has a life. Let's get to know him. Let's get to know him. Michael, the floor is yours. Yeah.

Hey, so start the beginning. We, you know, we were assuming that you were born somewhere. Yeah, so I was born and raised in West Virginia, so rural country area. Huntington is the town, the closest city. Marshall University is there some people know the movie we are Marshall and Actually, the movie was based on a bit about the plane crash of the football team back in the early 70s and that happened right before I was born but I was raised right beside that airport, just a couple minutes from that airport.

And so it's part of the lore of the town where I grew up, certainly has had an impact on that town. But grew up in a rural area and my great grandfather was an independent Baptist preacher and my grandfather was an independent Baptist preacher. So it goes back, just ministry goes back in my family, a few generations. But I would say, probably the most relevant place to kind of a waypoint on my story is I would say that the most, the event of my childhood that had the greatest impact on my life from a formative standpoint would be when my parents got a divorce. Now, I'm not, obviously I'm not, I became a Christian at an early age, so I'm talking about things other than my faith in Christ.

My parents got a divorce when I was about seven, and that Really affected me because at the time I I didn't know anybody else in school I didn't have any of my friends that had divorced families and so I really felt very much like just an oddball And so then that that set up a pretty unusual circumstance to where did you Did you have siblings at that time or are we the only child? I have three sisters. Some of them came later, but I had an older sister That was our family unit, so she and I went through this divorce together. What that set up then was kind of growing up in two households because I would go back and forth. There's a lot of kids do.

The first few years, it was 50-50 split time. I'd be two weeks at my dad's house two weeks at my mom's house two weeks two weeks two weeks two weeks and that went on for a couple of years and Eventually, I think I Remember I remember a moment getting in an argument with my dad and just like, okay, I'm just going to go live with my mom. That's a big thing for a child to decide. I was maybe 10 or 9 or 10 or something at that point. The contrast between the two households was pretty vivid.

My mom remarried a man that was a tyrant. Pretty much everything that you would want a man not to be. The exact opposite of a good role model was this man. And then my dad, have extraordinary respect for my dad, and he is a good Christian man, faithful churchgoer, godly husband and father and he is everything you'd want a father to be, a good man. But I lived with my mom and stepdad.

So I grew up kind of having over here with my dad a good picture of godly masculinity, just a good father, but I was raised most directly by my stepfather and just this awful guy that I despised him. Whether or not that was righteous anger or whatever the feelings I had about him is probably more complicated than I'm able to really discern, but I certainly did not care for this man. So I grew up just feeling this anger towards the family that I felt like was taken from me. And that was such a formative experience that it's kind of lingered on and God has used it into my adult years to put me on a path of advocating for good biblical Christ-honoring households, manhood, womanhood, children, legacy generations. And so, I'm thankful for how God used that in my life, although at the time, you know, I didn't like it, didn't want it to happen, but I'm thankful for the way God did use it in my life.

So that's a big waypoint of my childhood. So you were, so what happened after that? So You were bouncing back and forth, and then you come into your, I guess you just did that into your teen years, right? And then what happened when you matured? So as long as I can remember, I considered myself a Christian and wanted to walk with Christ.

I remember going to church with my dad. So, the deal was my dad would let my sister borrow his pickup truck on the weekends and the deal was that she would have to bring me and both of us come to church on Sunday to return it to him. And so, we would go to this church. And as long as I can remember, I wanted to walk with Jesus, but the church was a small church plant kind of a church, and there were no other kids our age. And so we would do a Sunday school class, and the Sunday school class was, my sister and I would meet with the Sunday school teacher and it was kind of therapy because the teacher there was a couple different people that did it.

The one woman in particular stands out and we would just tell her this is what's going on and we would tell her stories, horror stories about what it was like in our house and she would be like, oh, I can't believe what you're having to go through. And she was very, very caring and warm. And that was healing for us because there was a godly Christian woman that loved us enough to listen to us and let us share our story. And so that was very great. But since I didn't have peers, there wasn't a whole lot of real community as a Christian.

But as I got towards the end of high school, There's a Campus Crusade for Christ, they call them CRU now, a Campus Crusade group that met at Marshall University, which is in my hometown. And so, some of those kids were going to this church. So, they're a little bit older than me, but they took me under their wing and invited me to go to their weekly campus crusade meetings, which I did. And so by the time I was a senior in high school, I was very involved. I had a huge group of friends with this campus crusade group.

I was leading worship at the weekly meetings, and so by the time I went to college, I'm like, I want to go to this college just because I knew so many people there and had friends there. And then in college, that was where my faith became my own in a very powerful way for the first time. I mean, I was saved before that, but that's when I really came into my own spiritually. But there was this desire to do ministry. I would lead Bible studies, I would lead worship, I would go on their summer trips or spring break trips, and just totally immersed myself in the Campus Crusade world.

In 1997, on a summer project to North Myrtle Beach, that's where I met my wife. And so, she and I got married in 1999. But because Campus Crusade was so formative for me and because my church experience was a good church, good people, but it was not really other than the kind of therapeutic Sunday school class. It was not really where I grew a whole lot as a Christian. So Campus Crusade became my church and that's not a good thing.

But I ended up going on staff with crew and we were assigned to the University of Louisville, my wife and I were, and so we reported there and about, we joined staff in 2001 and reported in 2003 after we raised support. And so during the time that we were in Louisville, a couple things happened that put us on the trajectory to where we are today. One of those things is I became increasingly disillusioned with the parachurch world and how it had become a substitute, a replacement Church. It was very narrowly limited to college kids. As I'm cycling through college kids every year, all the people that I'm in community with are 18 to 22, but I'm getting a year older every year.

I'm like, this isn't sustainable or healthy or good. Simultaneously, I started taking classes at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary there in Louisville, and my affection for the church really started to balloon. I started to realize that I had not really had a good doctrine of the church and I came to the conviction that the church is God's plan A for the world and the Parachurch has a very narrow mission and God uses it, but the church is really where God's purposes are fulfilled in the life of Christians. So, I joined the core group of a church plant in Louisville, And that was when a lot of different things converged towards, okay, I love ministry. I love what I was doing with Crew, the actual ministry itself, but I was in an organization that I did not feel was really, to put it, I guess it was not the best fit for me.

I did not feel like this was where I belonged. I belonged in the church world. And then being a part of a church plant, I was able to see all the things I love about crude ministry and all the things I love about church ministry converged in this idea of church planting. And I had never heard of that before. I was like, I didn't know where churches came from.

I was just kind of oblivious. They're born. That's right. We have a mommy church and a daddy church. I fell in love.

You know? So that I really caught a passion for church planting and The the elders of that church, you know affirmed gifting and calling and so as I Went all in with seminary finished a degree and was sent out in 2010 So I was on staff with crew about six, seven years in Louisville, but they sent out in 2010. People always ask me, ìWhy did you end up in Cincinnati?î because I didnít have any prior connection here. And basically, it was we lived in Louisville and the seminary is there, so a lot of people are planting churches around Louisville right at a seminary. And I thought, well, what makes sense is, You know, I've always lived on the Ohio River grew up in Huntington and then lived in Louisville And so a Midwest rust belt city and so I was thinking okay.

Well, there's Indianapolis there's Louisville. There's Cincinnati. There's Columbus. There's Cleveland That's five cities or so but Cincinnati was very close so we could take a day trip up from Louisville to kind of see and get a feel for the town. And as we took some day trips to Cincinnati, It just really grabbed our hearts.

If you've never been to Cincinnati, there's a really cool place where if you go to the airport, you land in Kentucky. And then if you drive into the city, the highway that you take in, you're just driving along and it's just kind of suburbia. And then all of a sudden you go around a hill and then out of nowhere you just see this huge skyline that just sort of pops right over the hill very suddenly. And I came at nighttime and just the lights, the way it was lit up and it was beautiful. And I'm like, man, I love this town.

And so through a number of other things, I could tell you more if you'd want to ask about it, but through a number of circumstances, God confirmed that that was the place to be. So, this was 2008 is when we moved to Cincinnati. Got it. So we're exploring it. We did a giant conference in Cincinnati in 2009 called the Sufficiency of Scripture.

Oh really? We did, right downtown, Yeah. Did you do it at the Duke Energy Center? We did at the convention center. Yeah.

Oh man, that's fantastic. Yeah. I had no idea. It was so neat. The place was packed.

It was just, it was, it was such a joy. Anyway, go ahead. Cincinnati. I know the lights you're talking about and the river. Yeah.

Yes, yeah, very beautiful town. Yeah. So right around 2008, it's like we decided, okay, this is where God is leading us to be. And so we, me and Laura, and we had two children at the time. We had a third on the way.

We were like, okay, move to Cincinnati and burn the ships. So we bought a house in the inner city. We're like, okay, we're going to go all in and just stake our claim in this and trust God that even though we don't know anybody here, somehow the Lord is going to work to produce a church through us. All by yourself, just you and your wife. Me and my wife and our two kids.

If anybody told me, hey, I'm thinking about doing that, I would say, do not do that. It was the dumbest thing. It's a great thing about being young. You can do dumb things and there's recovery. There's recovery.

Yeah, it was pretty dumb. But I mean, the Lord did orchestrate things. So I knew a lot of people from the crew world. I knew a lot of people from the crew world. I knew a lot of people from the seminary world.

I knew a lot of people from the Southern Baptist world, which is who we planted through. I was able to network enough to where people would say, �Hey, I have a friend that lives in Cincinnati. Maybe they would join.� That's what we did that first. Between 2008 and 2010, we just had a Bible study in my basement. It's on Wednesday night and I would every week people would come and I'm like we're here we're going to study the book of Galatians together and if I'm here to plant a church if that's something that would be interesting to you I'd love to talk to you about it.

But for now, we're just going to study God's Word and I would really make sure that there was meaningful content, helpful Bible teaching that was edifying for people. That was the focus. They liked it and they kept coming. So about a year and a half later, enough people had kind of signed on that we said, ìOkay, we have enough here to form a little core team.î So, we rented a place close to the University of Cincinnati, a little rec center there. They let us use a it was a karate dojo They was a we could meet in there so we launched January 10th of 2010 and That's been 15 years ago we had a building given to us a couple years later, and then we've planted a church in another part of town and they had a building given to them and that was about 2014.

And then now 10 years later, we've moved to our new location where we are now in Fort Thomas, Kentucky, which is about 10 minutes from our inner city Cincinnati location. Now we're in Kentucky. So that's a thumbnail sketch of some of the big... Yeah. I know that your church embraces the Baptist confession of 1689 now.

Was that along with the church plan or did that come later? That, so I would have said I'm Baptist and Reformed, But I did not know enough about the 1689. It was not really on my radar. So once I discovered it and learned about it, I was like, this is great. And we have not officially adopted it as a church but all of our elders hold to it And that's the perspective from which we teach But it was it's it's you know with the church plant you've got Usually it's a young guy So you know, I mean it is a young man's game for the most part and so you have this guy who's kind of Untested and he's been trained.

He's a lot of them been to seminaries but there's a lot of his own doctrinal stuff that's being worked out and if you're If you take a job as a senior pastor in a church, then you're inheriting the traditions from that church, right? But if you're a church planter, it's It's like you as the church is growing along with you Yeah, and as you as you understand doctrine better as you study better as you preach through the Bible you're like, oh, you know, I'm learning this thing over here. I want to help incorporate that into the life of our church. I would say that happens in every church plant, probably seven out of 10 times. There's a lot of bad that comes with that.

Because you have guys that they discover bad doctrine, they lead their church in a bad way but the church is growing with them. But occasionally, you have guys that are noticing God's grace, they learn good doctrine and are able to grow in maturity and you all grow together. So I think that's been a big, my own growth as a Christian is reflected in the growth of our church too. So that's been a real blessing, but it does go bad a lot of times So Michael I'm blowing up the timeline here a little bit and taking you back, but yeah, you mentioned that you married a woman named Laura What was it that made you have to marry Laura? I'm the kind of guy that notices the girl who does not want to be noticed.

And so we're on this summer project. And it's funny because that's a funny story. So she had heard about these Campus Crusade summer projects from a friend of hers But they didn't have a Campus Crusade group at her college She was raised Lutheran and she became Christian just through a evangelical Bible study In high school, so she was not saved in church and knowing her church, there's a reason for that. They don't really teach the gospel. But she got saved in this Bible study, but in her naivety, she's like, well, I'm a Christian now so I guess I'll go to a Christian college." And so she just picked one, Calvin College.

Didn't know really anything about it spiritually, but she went to this college and a friend at college told her, hey, you should go to this Campus Crusade summer project. And she at the time was like, well, I don't want to go just to meet a boy. I don't want to go with bad motives, but a boy came into her life that spring and she thought, well, I've got this guy in my life now, so now I could go with a good motive to this project. But he never actually asked her to make a commitment. And he's like, well, we'd like each other.

We'll pick things up in the fall when we get back from our summer break. Well, that's the summer that I met her. So I go on the project and I'm the opposite. I'm like, okay, I've got a plan. There's this project has 50 or 60 kids.

So probably gonna be about half of them will be girls. And this is a great place to meet a wife. And so you know, within the first couple weeks, I'd narrowed down to a list of like, I like her and you know, this girl's cute. But what I noticed about Laura was she was super shy. Whenever I tried to talk to her, she would just kind of, you know, turtle up.

It's like, why are you talking to me? She just got really shy. But then one day we were doing a beach outreach And this girl that would hardly talk to anybody that was just trying to avoid getting noticed I saw her taking her little for spiritual laws booklet and approach total strangers on the beach and stand there share the gospel with Them and I was like that is a special girl who is taking steps of faith and so it just she won my heart I get emotional thinking about it she won my heart right there and so we as we got to know each other I played guitar I was leading the music and what so the guy that she was hanging out with at school is the kind of guy that was similar to her. He did. They he was a kind of they didn't they didn't talk about deep things a lot.

And whenever I'd talk to her, I'd ask her deep questions. What's your walk with God like? How did you learn this? And she just saw there was something... She liked the guy that played guitar, but also the guy that asked her questions.

She was drawn to me because of, and she would say this, she thought this is somebody who kind of compliments me, so we complemented each other. And so, There were several couples that kind of paired off that summer but we're the only one that actually ended up getting married. So we dated long distance for two years. Her school is Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her hometown is Cleveland.

So from my hometown, it was five hours to her hometown and eight hours to Grand Rapids where she went to school. There's no texting and a phone call was long distance so we would have to buy long distance cards. We'd write each other paper letters. My favorite part of the day is when I got home in the evening and I could like log into AOL and listen to the little motor noises and download whatever email she sent me that day and just kind of hang on every word and read it over and over and over again, print them out, you know, put it in my books and stuff. You did have a band.

Wow. You've got mail. You've got mail. Yeah, it was a very, very, very sweet time. And so She did not want to go on staff with crew, but that took a bit of coaxing.

But I think looking back, we'll both say, man, we've got the best life. We're so blessed, so thankful for just all the ways that God has blessed us. We have four children. They're 20, 19, 17, and 14. Wow, okay.

Oh, That's great. That is so great. Your favorite dead author and your favorite living author. Oh, goodness. Favorite dead author, I'd say for my sermon prep and commentaries, Calvin is my favorite resource.

I like Matthew Henry too, but Calvin is very rich. Other than Bible commentaries, Jonathan Edwards is one author that I've read multiple. I've read The Religious Affections three times. Probably the book that has had the single most biggest impact on my life would be the religious affections. Favorite living author, lots to choose from.

I really like John Frame. He's a Presbyterian, but the way he thinks, I really appreciate just the way he thinks. So I've told people before, if I had to trade brains with anyone, I would trade brains with him. Wouldn't he be surprised? It would not be good for him.

Michael, thank you so much for telling us your story. And I can't wait to be with you at our national conference in May. And for the rest of you, hope to see you there as well at our national conference, Manhood and Womanhood in Ridgecrest, North Carolina. See you there. Church and Family Life is proclaiming the sufficiency of Scripture by helping build strong families and strong churches.

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