Rogue Missionary
Tim Mitchell’s Unplanned Path to Parker Street
PHOTOS BY JORDAN RANDALL | INTERVIEW BY JASON JACOBS
Simply put, Parker Street Ministries is all about building community and sharing the love of Christ in a very specific geographic area.
Started in 1996 as a ministry of Shepherd Road Presbyterian Church, Parker Street Ministries aims to cultivate connections, foster spiritual growth, stabilize the neighborhood and support lifelong learners. Parker Street provides year-round after-school programs for neighborhood students, as well as programs throughout the summer for K-12 students. Through a strong volunteer base and dedicated staff, the ministry helps stabilize families and maintains and beautifies the neighborhood located just north of Downtown Lakeland. Throughout the year, Parker Street Ministries offers a variety of community-building and life-giving events including family dinner nights, Easter Celebration, Summer Splash, National Night Out, Fall Festival and Christmas Store.
Executive director Tim Mitchell is a man on a mission to help people find the “abundant life” God promises in the Bible, but his journey to being so deeply integrated in one of Lakeland’s most established ministries was not his great plan at all. It was God’s re-direction that has lasted nearly three decades and counting.
Jason Jacobs recently caught up with Tim to hear more about how his heart for serving people became a call to being a local missionary—even if that’s a title he never wanted.
The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
“I did not want to be a missionary. I didn’t think missions sounded cool at all. So God made me a missionary. It’s comical.”
THE LAKELANDER
So I know most of this, but for people who don’t tell us about yourself.
TIM MITCHELL
I’m from Stuttgart, Ark., I graduated from Stuttgart High School. Married to Christy. We’ve been married for 25 years. We have one adopted son, James, who is actually living in the neighborhood now. He’s married and has three kids.
I grew up in a Christian family—both my parents are believers. I was raised with a strong sense of who I was in Christ and how that played into the way I look at the world. So I knew early on that people were our responsibility, that our neighbors mattered, that other people’s problems are our problems. Every year when we’d go buy our school clothes, my parents would have me and my sister pick out clothes for a kid our size to give away. And that was normal, I didn’t know there was any other way. I grew up with a really rich family devotional time. We always did dinner, prayed and read Scripture, and even sang Psalms.
I felt a real strong call my senior year of high school to do something, you know, for a gap year. I was going to go and spend a year doing ministry, and then go to college, and do my normal life after that. My sister lived in Lakeland before I graduated high school, so I had a free place to live. So Lakeland was not the place I felt God calling me to. It was just a free place, and I thought between Tampa and Orlando and the largeness of Florida, I could find somebody doing something that I could join.
I had done a lot of short-term mission trips and a lot of traveling to locations, sharing the Gospel and coming home. I did not want to be a missionary. I didn’t think missions sounded cool at all. So God made me a missionary. It’s comical. So it was that early kind of exposure to a life that God will call you to a place that’s not yours. I think God was already planting seeds for me, even before I knew it. I could go anywhere, kind of do anything. And I think God really uniquely skilled me with the ability to pretty much navigate any person, any group of people.
TL
What is the history of Parker Street Ministries?
TIM
I wanted to stay with people. If I had introduced them to Christ, I wanted to be able to be with them in their journey. When I moved to Lakeland, I started floating around, meeting with different people, and there was nothing really that I thought was “my spot.” Then my aunt, who also lives in Lakeland, heard about the Shepherd Road Presbyterian Church, which was the church that planted the Parker Street Project. Parker Street Project was a mission from the church to the Parker Street neighborhood. They bought some property and developed this place they called the Shepherd House, which was a tutoring center, and they invited college age students to move into the neighborhood as intentional residents. I was a part of the first wave of students that moved into the neighborhood. It was pretty loose, as they had hired a guy from Atlanta who worked with (well-known Christian community developer) Bob Lupton’s organization, and he was an associate pastor of Shepherd Road to the neighborhood.
The crazy college students were the ones who lived in the neighborhood. And so I joined that, still with the thought, I’m gonna be here a year and then go on to college and do whatever else. And, obviously God had bigger plans than that.
I had always, from an early age, known that I wanted to care for people. My grandparents are missionaries in Jos, Nigeria. My dad was born and raised in Jos. He was a missionary kid, and his life was something I did not want to have.
Then we went through two pretty quick executive director changes. The board came to the staff and said, “We need to know if you’re staying or leaving the staff.” We took a week to fast and pray to decide what we should do. We committed not to talk to each other for a week and just really prayed and fasted and asked God if we were supposed to do it. So we came back and I said I was staying and everyone else said they were leaving. At that point, I wasn’t trying to be the executive director. This was just me saying, I feel God’s calling me to stay in the neighborhood. I’m here. We had one board member staying around. That was John Tucker. So it was me and John Tucker and my wife, Christy. We got married right after this and they turned the ministry over to us and said, “Here you go.”
“The Gospel broke through to people. I had been telling people about Jesus for 10 years, [and] now we are meeting every Sunday, worshiping together, listening to the Word together in a physical place. I realized something about a church gathering made all the difference.”
TL
So you became the director by accident. Lots of great stories happen that way.
TIM
God has somehow given me the ability to just connect with people. And so, moving into this space, while it was totally not mine, and not a place I was from, I just thrived. I am comfortable talking to anybody, and I had a real passion for marginalized spaces, and a lot of it was built out of sinful arrogance and pride, you know? I love the way God cared enough about me to let me stay in that. I wouldn’t have moved into the neighborhood, but as soon as I did God just made me love it.
I had a real passion for marginalized spaces, [but] a lot of it was built out of sinful, arrogance and pride, you know? [In my mind,] all the churches weren’t doing their jobs, so I was gonna come fix what the church wasn’t doing.
Then, He flooded me with (partnering) churches...who were the people I wanted to “hate” but I realized quickly, they were caring for me, and making the ministry happen, [they] were sustaining us. And it was just like this horrendously difficult dichotomy of I want to hate these amazing people who serve Parker Street, and I just wanna love the people who live in the neighborhood. And God was like, you don’t get to pick. It wasn’t instant, and He didn’t wait till I was ready, right? I mean, I came into the neighborhood ill qualified, sinful and broken, and God was like, this is gonna work. It’s fascinating to think back on. I was 19 years old and I had nothing to offer the neighborhood, but God knew he could do something, and He just chose to do it through me.
TL
Tell me about how Strong Tower Church has affected Parker Street?
TIM
Strong Tower was birthed out of a conversation with me and Ben Turner when Ben was on staff here as a classroom leader. He was feeling called to something pastoral. I initially thought it would just be a traditional church pastor [and] church planting was starting to kind of come on the scene for him. He was starting to hear stuff about, read about it. He and I were really considering planting a church. We had met with [Trinity Presbyterian Lead Pastor] Tim Rice, and I actually was going to seminary classes just to see if I could even get my head wrapped around what it would take, whether I had to do alternative credentialing or whatever it was. But could I actually be the church planting pastor?
Pretty shortly after diving into that I realized I did not want that but also felt very strong that we needed a church. So, we kept praying…kept meeting with people. I spent a lot of time chasing people down and just never found anybody that was like, man, this, this is the guy. So I met Ben. Ben was excited about it, and so Ben and I started praying together about it. So we met with Tim Rice and said, “Hey, we wanna do this.”
Ben went to seminary and we were doing Bible studies and Person of Jesus studies and all these different things in the neighborhood. Kind of as we’re building this core and really getting excited about it, we are feeling like this is God moving, and we ultimately said, “OK, God, this is what you’re telling us to do, so we’re gonna do it.” So Ben finished seminary and jumped through all of the hoops of becoming ordained.
So we planted Strong Tower. (History: Trinity Presbyterian Church started Strong Tower Church and allowed Parker Street Ministries to rent the space from them.)
It’s an amazing process that I would never wish on anyone. But what was so cool about it was we were sharing the Gospel with people for years. They’re coming to Bible studies; we had a weekly Wednesday night Bible study in the neighborhood where people are hearing me and Ben share the Gospel. The first week we had church, those same people were like, wow, hey, come on, have a seat. We now had a place, a sanctuary to meet in. [These people] were listening to the same guy tell [them] about Jesus, but now it’s from the pulpit. The Gospel broke through to people. I had been telling people about Jesus for 10 years, [and] now we are meeting every Sunday, worshiping together, listening to the Word together in a physical place. I realized something about a church gathering made all the difference.
So place matters. We’re not trying to serve Polk County. We’re trying to serve the Parker Street neighborhood and North Lake Wire neighborhood. [It is] specific in a location and then strategic in how we interact with people. With the afterschool program, the kids are enrolled, the parents have made a personal commitment to have their kids there. Summer camp is another program the kids in the neighborhood love. Parents know those are two programs they can count on. Those are highly academic with a Gospel piece throughout the whole thing. We’re really trying to bridge that educational gap that is consistent in neighborhoods like ours with the statement that everybody has divine value, meaning they’re creatures created in the image of God. His plan was life and life abundant.
