Everyone has a journey. Mine is no more special than any others. It is, however, unique in the sense that everyones journey is a unique one to them and one that they alone must follow. My name is Jake Naumcheff, I’m 30 years old, have been married to Lauren Naumcheff for a little over 4 years, and am currently an owner of CrossFit Laminin. This is a story of how I dropped out of Seminary and made a 180 from pursuing full time ministry to becoming a CrossFit Affiliate owner.
At the age of 22 I became a Christian through a very Pauline type conversion (Acts 9:1-19). After that moment, my life completely changed. At the time I was working as a CrossFit coach at a gym in Huntsville and continued to work as a trainer and coach for the next several years. However, once I became saved, I began to feel more and more that the Lord was calling me into full time ministry, to leave behind fitness as a career path, and to give my life to shepherding God’s people and proclaiming His word. I still loved coaching, but, for reasons God alone knows, I started to feel as though that work was not impactful enough. So I began to give less and less of my resources to coaching and more to vocational ministry opportunities, the study of Scripture, etc…
I moved to Birmingham roughly 5 years ago after I proposed to my wife and knew that we would be in Birmingham after we got married for the foreseeable future. I was still working as a coach, but knew that my ultimate desire was to enroll in seminary. God granted me that opportunity and opened the door for me to enroll and attend seminary at Beeson Divinity School. That moment was a dream come true that was almost impossible to believe. I can still remember sitting in the first apartment my wife and I lived in, celebrating God’s goodness and faithfulness in making such a blessing possible. Following that moment, I stepped off the floor as a coach for the first time in 7 years and enrolled as a full-time student.
Anyone who has known me for even a short period of time knows that I don’t do anything half-way (that’s not a boast - it’s more of a criticism). I have two speeds: all out or not moving at all. If I find something I’m passionate about, it becomes all that matters and all I can think about. That was no different with seminary. I dove in head first and was committed to exceeding any standard that was set for me when it came to my studies and academics. On paper, the results were perfect, but below the surface, my heart was dealing with a lot of turmoil.
I’ve had a rather constant battle with anxiety and depression over the past ten years and it’s something that I fully believe and is taught in Scripture that God has ordained and allowed me to walk through for the sake of His glory and my joy. When I enrolled in seminary was when my fight with anxiety was at its highest. During this time I couldn’t shake the feeling that God was somehow disappointed in me. He ‘felt’ distant and as the months and years wore on, I began to doubt His goodness and whether or not I would ever get any relief from the spiritual darkness that seemed to hover over my life.
I don’t bring any of this up to draw attention or sympathy to what I walked through. I know many people who have dealt with far worse and weathered those storms with faith that was so much more sure than my own. I bring it up because it was this feeling that God was disappointed in me that set me down a path of self-righteousness. I couldn’t see it at the time, but a lot of my desire to enroll in seminary, leave coaching behind, and enter into full-time ministry were really all attempts to clean myself up. To be ‘good enough’ that God would lift the darkness.
All of this came to a head after a couple of years in seminary. I eventually became so worn out, discouraged, and just spiritually beat down that I was forced to take a step back. All I knew was that how I had been handling things wasn’t working and I simply couldn’t do it anymore. I dropped out of Seminary, started seeing a faith-based counselor, and slowly (very, very slowly), my heart was making its way back to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel that denounces all of our ‘good deeds’ as filthy rags. The Gospel that proclaims there are no good people, none. That there are only sinners desperate for a Savior. And that, praise God, there is a Savior.
The Scripture that pierced my heart during this time of renewal was a passage in John 13,
“Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.” Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” Jesus said to him, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.” For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said, “Not all of you are clean.”
This passage still brings tears to my eyes. I became overwhelmed with Peter’s self-righteousness and Jesus’ tender reply to Him. Peter took the stand that I was taking myself. I didn’t need Jesus to wash my feet, I didn’t need Jesus to serve me. This Scripture revealed my false humility and taught me that we do not serve Jesus. He serves us and until we surrender to the King of Kings as He bows down in humility to wash our feet, we have no share with him. Jesus doesn’t come to those who are clean, He comes to those who are dirty, who know they are dirty, and who know that they can’t begin to clean themselves. He comes to those, who in faith, have come to the end of themselves, and have no other option than to surrender to the mercy of Christ to kneel and make them clean.
It took a long time, and in a lot of ways, is still very much ongoing, but Christ was bringing me back to the Gospel. He was tearing down my walls of pride and restoring my heart to remain in a place of utter dependence upon His grace and not my own works. It was also during this time, as I was brought back to Christ’s mercy, that my passion for coaching and helping others was starting to be rekindled. After I left seminary, I ventured out on my own for a while to do individual programming for athletes and start my own business. The business was doing well, by God’s grace, but I was still struggling with making a connection between my vocation as a coach and the Gospel.
Here I was and in a matter of six months I went from pursuing full time ministry to being an entrepreneur and coach. Along the way I had a lot of questions and struggled with finding purpose in what I was doing with my life now. It’s easy to think you’re having an impact when you’re preaching and teaching the Scriptures. It’s fairly straight forward - you labor faithfully in trying to rightly proclaim the Word of God, let Him give the growth, and rest with the results. But now I was back to teaching people how to squat, hinge, push, pull, and compete in CrossFit and various other sports. While I was able to see how that impacted my neighbor from a physical standpoint, it was still fuzzy as to how this had an impact on God’s kingdom.
Then, by the Lord’s sovereignty, I picked up the book Luther on Vocation, by Gustaf Wingren. It essentially served as an IV of clarity when it came to the theology of vocation. If I could sum up in one sentence what I learned, it would be Luther’s own quote, “God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does.” This one sentence has given me an enormous amount of clarity in my life the past couple of years. God doesn’t need my works. He didn’t need us when He created us. He needs nothing that we could ever give him. However, the hungry need the farmer. The sick need the physician. The weary traveler needs the inn-keeper. And those battling chronic disease, movement dysfunction, and physical disabilities need the trainer.
God has granted each of us unique talents, abilities, and gifts that ultimately come from and belong to Him. Yes, God has gifted these things to declare His glory, but He has also gifted them so that we may be a blessing to our neighbor. Surrendering the use of our gifts to God’s purposes will always mean employing our gifts to the good and service of our neighbor. I am not gifted as a coach so that I can merely make enough money to live how I want to live. I am gifted as a coach so that I may, in love and service to my neighbor, be a blessing and helper for them to achieve what they cannot without me.
It was a combination of these truths and others from Scripture, that led me to become a CrossFit gym owner this past year. I realized that a job or vocation outside of full-time ministry is not a ‘lower-order’ calling. Rather, there is something righteous and beautiful about a man or woman who wakes up day in and day out to be faithful over the normal, every day vocation that the Lord has entrusted them with. Laboring in utter obscurity for the glory of God and the good of one’s neighbor is nothing short of a high and holy calling. And it is cherished in God’s eyes.
To say the last few years have been a bit of a whirlwind would be a bit of an understatement. There have been a lot of changes, times of absolute confusion, and brief moments of clarity and direction. However, after all is said and done, I have come to see the truth and the beauty of vocation as a gym owner in the service of Christ and His Kingdom. I love being a coach and I believe it’s something God has gifted me for, but not for my own purposes. Rather these gifts carry with them a joyful responsibility: to be a blessing to my neighbor who needs my gifts in the same way I need their gifts.
