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September of 2017, Dr. Greg Linville approached one of his former students about creating a podcast for CSRM & REACHgathering. Andrew Fouts had never heard a podcast before but was a trained videographer & graphic designer, so he agreed. The REACHextended podcast lasted 5 episodes, but out of that came the CSRM Podcast. Andrew & Dr. Linville released weekly episodes on this platform over the next few years, in conjuction with Overwhelming Victory. In 2020, Andrew began writing for the OVBlog as well, writing a series of blogs on the Theological lessons behind the 2019 Astros Scandal. Then COVID came.
During the chaos of COVID, Elections, and Racial Divisions of 2020, there was no shortage of voices in evangelicalism sharing their opinions on one side or the other. But what was lacking were voices in ministry, speaking to ministers, without any of the political rhetoric of one party or the other. Why? Because doing so puts you at risk of losing your job. This led many pastors to have to ask the question "How do I keep my job, and fulfill my calling?"
Andrew and Dr. Linville began discussing this lack of resourcing, and Dr. Linville advised Andrew to begin writing out blogs to begin fulfilling the need. In this process, they also discovered that there were no appropriate channels for distribution. So they continued to look for options, while continuing to grow the OV Resources department, including the creation of OVRadio.
JANUARY 6, 2021
January 6, 2021, a group of Trump supporters, singing hymns & carrying crosses, stormed the US Capitol Building to try and prevent the certification of election results. As horrible as that in itself was, the most frightening thing was the amount of Christians and Church leaders that were present and in support of the entire event. Christian Nationalism and Cold War Theology had reached a new high in the US, and unfortunately, it showed signs that it was not prepared to slow down.
At this point, Dr. Linville and Andrew realized they could not just wait for a platform to present itself, and began the building of a platform to provide the resources needed for these newly found misfit ministers to help navigate a Post-Covid and Post-insurrection world. To do this, we began talking to expert misfits on various topics surrounding the current issues the Church is facing, and using the Three Tier Paradigm to pull out Christo-Centric Theological Truths, to be able to Biblically address them apart from the political ideologies that have infiltrated the American Theological Systems.
APRIL 6, 2021
On April 6, 2021, the first episode of the Ministry Misfits Podcast was released featuring Bradley Barnes talking about his childhood growing up in Apartheid South Africa; and the Ministry Misfits Podcast was born.
In May of that year, a member of Andrew's small group began exploring a potential call to
ministry. He left his job to explore it deeper, and both he and Andrew felt like the first step on this journey, was to talk to Ministry Misfits of various specialties to be able to ask the questions he had himself. A month later, Brandon Simmons joined the team, and in July, Brandon officially joined Andrew as a host for our show, and in September, the Misfits began reworking an upstairs in room in Andrew's new home, and in October they began working out of their new studio. In 2022, a rebranding occurred featuring new cover art & a new theme song.
We continued to grow out the brand creating other shows like 12 Days of Misfits & Is It Pagan?, and developing an online community of survivors of different areas of Spiritual & Theological Abuses. In 2023, we also began to offer Bible Studies to our Patreon Supporters, and began the planning of a new network of Podcasts with Joe Dea & Anthony Wilson. The team continues to grow as well, as Karen Browning joined in 2022 & Temeko Holness in 2023.
The format, audience, & team has changed over the years, but our commitment to see a place for ministers & believers to be able to show & speak the truth without political interference or marginalization has not changed.
