Balancing Calling and Complexity with Catherine Mullins

About the host: 

Steve Gray is the founding and senior pastor of Revive Church  KC. He has been in the full time ministry for over 40 years and  was launched into national and international recognition in the late 1990’s as the leader of the historic Smithton Outpouring, and again in 2009 when he lead the Kansas City Revival which was televised nationally on the Daystar television network. Steve is also a veteran musician, songwriter, recording artist and published author. His books include When The Kingdom Comes, Follow The Fire, and My Absurd Religion.

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Transcript:

0:00:00    [Steve Gray]    You were made for more than the status quo. I’m Pastor   [Steve Gray], and this is the More Faith, More Life Podcast. This podcast is for Christians with an ambitious heart who want to be more for their family, do more with their career, and see more of God’s promises in their life. I’ve spent many years as a worship, artist, minister, nonprofit leader, bold, truth speaker, and most importantly, father and spouse.

0:00:25    [Steve Gray]    When I was in my early forty s, I was craving more. More from God and more from life. I’d done everything I was supposed to do. My life was good, but it wasn’t good enough. So I spent the following years diving into the word of God and searching for the biblical principles that would bring me closer to God and help my purpose and life flourish. That’s what I want to share with you. In every episode, you’ll get practical tools based on real life experiences that you can put into action to redefine your faith and ultimately your life.

0:00:59    [Steve Gray]    So if you’re ready to do more, subscribe to More Faith, More Life and hear an unfiltered biblical truth every week. It’s time to be and experience more.

0:01:12    [Steve Gray]    Hello everyone, and welcome to another More Faith, More Life podcast. I’m your host   [Steve Gray], and today I brought along my sidekick, my wife, Kathy Gray.

0:01:20    [Kathy Gray]    Hello there.

0:01:21    [Kathy Gray]    I’m his sidekick. Yes, I am.

0:01:22    [Steve Gray]    And I brought her along especially for today because we have our guest   [Catherine Mullins] with us and I thought having us three together say hello, Catherine.

0:01:31    [Catherine Mullins]       Hello everyone. So good to be with you guys.

0:01:33    [Steve Gray]    Yeah, so I thought it’d be better the three of us and you could join in and we’ll just have a conversation today about her ministry, what God’s doing, all the thoughts like that. So let me back up for everybody and go back parts of your life which I don’t know when you were growing up, you grew up in the church, you’re a pastor’s kid, and somehow you move from a pastor’s kid now to your own ministry as a worship leader and traveling and then eventually into pastoring yourself. So back us up wherever you’d like to back up of where you got the idea and what was your childhood like and how you got the idea you wanted to be a worship leader.

0:02:11    [Catherine Mullins]       Well, all great questions, great places to start. Yeah, we’ll just back up kind of to the semi beginning, exactly what you said, my pastor’s kid. I grew up in a really healthy environment and I think one of the things I’m so concerned about with just the trajectory of our nation right now is the innocence that’s being taken away from kids. And I think there’s definitely a balance when it comes to sheltering your children, but I would almost say you can’t overshelter them.

0:02:40    [Catherine Mullins]       I grew up in that type of environment. It wasn’t saying that I wasn’t aware of the issues and things like that, but I learned about them in a healthy, sheltered environment. And my parents really did a great job of addressing those issues and giving me answers and solutions of just kind of how to walk out my faith with some of the different issues that were kind of beginning to surface in our nation, et cetera.

0:03:02    [Catherine Mullins]       Whether it was abortion, whether it was the LGBTQ agenda, all these different things that are really just in our face right now. So if anybody’s listening to this, I would say shelter your kids, it’s a great thing. Don’t be afraid of making sure that you know what’s on their phone, what movies they’re watching, their friends. Don’t be afraid to say no, they can’t spend the night at that person’s house. So I’m all for that.

0:03:27    [Catherine Mullins]       And then trust your gut with the leading of the Holy Spirit on how to raise your children with that, because it’s a really big deal. And I know that you guys know that they’ll give you the red flags that you need to kind of watch out for. And so from there, yeah. So I grew up in a really great, peaceful environment, and I think it’s interesting when people usually look at their lives, sometimes even early on as a child, we pretend to be who we were meant to be.

0:03:54    [Catherine Mullins]       And I think it’s really sometimes important to kind of pay attention to those dreams that are in our hearts early on. Of course, that’s not everybody’s story, but at least that was my story. I always wanted to sing. I always wanted to lead worship. I would get Hosanna Praise tapes for those of you who remember tapes.

0:04:11    [Kathy Gray]    Oh, yes, we do remember, Catherine.

0:04:13    [Catherine Mullins]       All of the things. So I would get a Hosanna praise tape every month, and I would memorize all of the songs, and I’d have my hair brushed in my bedroom, and I would just be running all over the place, leading worship. And little did I know God had planted that dream in my heart from a very early age to eventually lead worship from there. Being a pastor’s kid, you just kind of get thrown in the deep end and you do whatever’s needed.

0:04:39    [Catherine Mullins]       And they needed background vocalists, and so I started singing and whatnot, and then that moved eventually to them needing worship leaders, and they threw me in the deep end. And so, really, at an early age, the Lord stoked the fire of me feeling called to worship, leading.

0:04:55    [Steve Gray]    Yeah. I like it when you brought up about children and raising kids. I was just on a Facebook Live and I said the same thing. I was talking about public school, and if you have any questions about it, find a way to put them somewhere else. Private school, home school, parochial school, whatever, if you have those questions. Because Kathy and I, we’ve taught in the public school, so we’re not anti public school. But I remember when Bobby, our daughter Bobby was in teenage, early teenage years, even back then, and she came to me one time when we were talking about school activities or boys or something, and she did the classic line, well, dad, don’t you trust me?

0:05:30    [Steve Gray]    And I said trust you. Of course I don’t trust you. I don’t even trust myself. And that settled it. I said, I don’t trust myself. Even you got to be careful with world.

0:05:42    [Catherine Mullins]       Well, even I remember seeing somebody post recently, and a minister was talking about cell phones. And I think we have this reality that we say our kids wouldn’t do that. Those kids would do that. They would do that, but my kids would never. And I think we have to understand that when we have a cell phone in our hands and there’s no accountability, we are just opening up our children, especially to so many demonic strongholds. And so some people are saying now, don’t even give your kids cell phones at certain ages just because it’s gotten so bad. But we need to recognize the spiritual battle that we’re in and do whatever’s needed.

0:06:19    [Catherine Mullins]       It’s more about being stable in the kingdom than popular in the world, right? You remember that?

0:06:25    [Kathy Gray]    Yeah. Well, I’m seeing right now among parents, they’re, like, falling into what’s happening in the world system, and they’re saying, well, I don’t know, maybe my child already did decide when they were in the womb what their gender was. And, I mean, these are Christian people. Well, maybe I should let my kid I maybe should let my kid just choose, just decide. And not only should they decide if they want to go to church and be a Christian, but now maybe I ought to let them. I need them to love me.

0:06:57    [Kathy Gray]    Maybe I should just let them decide their gender. And I’m saying, parents, Christian parents, wake up. You’re giving kids to protect them and not to throw them out in the lions out to the lions at all.

0:07:13    [Catherine Mullins]       Absolutely. I think it’s misplaced compassion, and the enemy is manipulating people’s compassion. And so we have good intentions, and parents, obviously, they want to love their kids. And I think what you said, parents be parents. It’s not even about being your child’s friend, although that’s a beautiful part of the process and different seasons of life. My mom’s my best friend now, but she was a parent when she needed to be a parent, and I think we’re almost unintentionally forcing kids to make adult decisions. That the decisions the parents actually need to start making.

0:07:50    [Catherine Mullins]       It’s shocking to me. I was a tomboy growing up. I have two older brothers, so I loved kind of dressing like my brothers, and I loved playing sports and things like that. Now I’m Super girly. But back then, if what was going on now was going on back then in society, people would have said, well, maybe you are actually a boy. It’s not that at all.

0:08:14    [Steve Gray]    Right? Yeah, so tell us when you so you were singing in church, back up and all that. When did it switch over? When did you sing your first song by yourself or whatever? Can you remember that?

0:08:26    [Catherine Mullins]       So my first solo, believe it or not, was in the third grade. I sang Sing Your Praise to the Lord by Amy Grant.

0:08:35    [Steve Gray]    Oh, yeah.

0:08:35    [Catherine Mullins]       And another thing with parenting, I think it’s yeah, I know that it’s an interesting direction that we’re going, but I’m feeling it. My mom picked up on what God was calling me to at a very early age, and so she really started kind of pushing that. She wasn’t super rude about it, but she was pretty diligent and pretty militant about kind of saying, okay, do you want to do this solo? And really sewing into my gifting with voice lessons and choir and different things like that. So it started at a really early age, around third grade.

0:09:06    [Steve Gray]    Yeah. So then what happened after that? You just stayed in the church, but somewhere along the line you start thinking about what you do next after graduation and what you’re going to do. Everybody asks, what are you going to do with your life?

0:09:19    [Catherine Mullins]       Yeah, that’s the question, I guess, at that age. So I actually went to college for business, and I have an organizational leadership, bachelor’s in organizational leadership. And it was my junior year of college. My mom actually got a prophetic word, and she said, catherine, I really feel like you’re going to be taking a break from school and traveling the I just I had no open door or anything, so it was a pretty bold statement. Who tells their kids to take a break from really?

0:09:51    [Catherine Mullins]       Unless it’s the Lord, it’s know, and there was an event called the Lakeland Outpouring that ended up breaking out, and I got connected with Roy Fields, who you guys know, and he I think he was on your podcast a little while.

0:10:05    [Steve Gray]    That’s right.

0:10:07    [Catherine Mullins]       Anyways, I started traveling, and so I guess that was the shift is I was planning on just doing a business degree, and if the Lord wanted to open doors for full time ministry, I was open to that, but I didn’t really have any openings. And the Lord really just opened the door and I ended up walking through.

0:10:24    [Steve Gray]    What about those listening? Okay, so you started traveling, but somehow you had to have a band or tracks or music or something, or a piano player. How did you put that together? Because you like to move around and sing, but somebody’s got to back you up. How did you do that? In case somebody else is thinking, I’d like to do that too.

0:10:42    [Catherine Mullins]       Yeah, great question. So initially we just made sure all of the bands were very informed with my music, so we did a lot of communication beforehand. So still, this is what we do if we’re not bringing a band with us and we’re working with the church musicians, like at your church. You guys have great musicians, so we don’t really need to bring a band.

0:10:59    [Steve Gray]    Right.

0:11:00    [Catherine Mullins]       So we make sure that we send them all the songs in advance. We send them a planning center request so they’re going to have all the material within plenty of time. And then we also use music tracks and stems in our sets just to kind of really beef up the sound.

0:11:17    [Steve Gray]    Right.

0:11:17    [Catherine Mullins]       Of course, I travel right now with a music director, which is my husband. He directs the band. But if I’m not going to have a band director, then I’m just going to make sure their team is very much in the know and knowledgeable before we ever even get there.

0:11:31    [Steve Gray]    What about writing songs? Because you mentioned your music, so I don’t know when you started you did other people’s music, probably, but you did your own music too. When did you start writing and how did that take place?

0:11:43    [Catherine Mullins]       I started writing at a pretty young age, and then I think I took it more seriously in my twenty s. And so the thing that was so bizarre, I was in school, I was starting to dream about worship leading, but I didn’t really tell anybody that. And I think I was in a Bible class, actually, and one of my friends looked over at me and he said, catherine, if anything could happen to you right now in life, what would you want it to be? And I don’t know why I said this, but I said, I would like this guy named Josh Fisher. He’s the Jesus Culture drummer and he lived in our area and he was a producer. But I would love Josh Fisher to call me and say, hey, let’s do an album together.

0:12:19    [Catherine Mullins]       And I said that out loud and I kid you not, within three to 5 hours later, I had a missed call on my cell phone from Josh Fisher, who I knew but I hadn’t talked to in years. And he said, hey, Catherine. He said, Give me a call. He said, I really feel like we need to make an album which is so amazing that Jesus hears our conversations. That guy didn’t do anything. He didn’t even know Josh Fisher. The Lord hears our conversations. And so just with this doing an album, it really put the pressure on me to start writing and taking it seriously. And so I think out of that, that moment was kind of when I started taking songwriting to the next level and taking it seriously.

0:12:55    [Steve Gray]    Yeah. Kathy, I’m so glad you’re with us too, because you’ve been in that position where you were a grown up and you had to change your thinking about because you were a worship leader without wanting to be one. Never wanted to be one, probably, but you ended up being one at our.

0:13:12    [Kathy Gray]    You know, I always thought I still do. I think of myself not as a singer, but as a worshipper, and then as a worship leader to help draw other people into the presence of the Lord. So when we first started out in the ministry, it was a singing ministry and I was probably the most insecure person in the whole group because my sisters in law were traveling with us and they had these beautiful college trained voices and I just had this voice that was exuberant for God.

0:13:42    [Kathy Gray]    But you know what, we listened to a tape where I sang a solo like many years ago, and I said, Steve, who’s that singing? And he said, that’s you, and you sound really good. So I guess I wasn’t that bad. But then as we moved into deeper into our traveling ministry, from church to church to church, steve started telling me, you need to start leading a worship song during this. And then when we started our church out in the country, it was just him and me. He played on a little keyboard know, and he told me, you’re going to have to lead the worship.

0:14:18    [Kathy Gray]    And Catherine, I know the same is for you being a woman and leading worship. Jesus loves it, but the enemy doesn’t love it. He doesn’t love women who rise in leadership and he doesn’t love worship. So I spent a number of years I admit it, I spent a number of years intimidated and just pulling way back until one time I heard the Lord say to me, kathy, this time when you’re leading worship intimidate the intimidator.

0:14:51    [Kathy Gray]    You know what? I just walked out off the stage and among the people and I broke the power of that thing, that intimidator, that hated worship and hated women leading worship, and I broke it. So that’s really my big dramatic testimony of how I finally realized I can lead people in worship, I can make a joyful noise, maybe I can’t do it like Catherine can, but I know there’s many women out know, I encourage them break that intimidator.

0:15:22    [Kathy Gray]    Did you ever have to deal with that kind of stuff?

0:15:25    [Catherine Mullins]       Well, I love Jesus’s ministry and we see it all throughout his time on the earth that he was one of the greatest women liberators of all time, right? He was always defending women. And so I think one of the big things is we don’t have to be our defender. The Lord will raise up voices to defend us and Jesus is the greatest defender with that, my dad always said, let us defend you, and you just keep doing what you’re called to do.

0:15:48    [Catherine Mullins]       And so I think I’ve just made a decision and it’s been to me a peaceful decision and it seems to have worked, is I just keep my eyes on Jesus. And I believe that if there’s this giant of intimidation coming against me and the voices of women in the room, we believe giants were meant to fall. And so it’s not a matter of if this battle is going to be won, it’s already been won and it’s a matter of when we’re going to see that fruit. And so we’re contending and believing for that fullness to be established on the earth. But Jesus is the greatest defender and so we just keep moving forward and trust that he’s going to bring breakthrough.

0:16:24    [Kathy Gray]    Amen.

0:16:24    [Steve Gray]    Did you find when you started then out, and you weren’t married when you started, so you had to start out on your own, so to speak? I suppose the lakeland that happened down there, like you mentioned, Roy Fields, could have been a help to connect you with certain people, that you could go to their churches maybe, but what would you say? Like some of the people, they don’t know what to do. They want to sing, they want to minister, they think they’re good, so they’re good to do it, but they don’t know, what did you do next? How did you let a church know that you wanted to come?

0:16:58    [Catherine Mullins]       This is a hard thing because I think the Lord gives different people different strategy. And so for me, by God’s grace, I never really had to ask. It just people started getting my phone number. I did create a website. People would just go to my website after the lakeland outpouring and they just started inviting me that way. And I just had an email thing that said, if you’d like to bring me out, click here, and we started connecting that way.

0:17:23    [Catherine Mullins]       But I think there’s a strategy and again, it could be different per person, so we’ve got to pray about it and see what the Lord’s saying. Sometimes it can be just reaching out to people in the area, but it could be obviously, I do think getting a website, getting social media, those are the kind of practical things that you can do. But I also think taking every opportunity that you’re given, because it’s so important, it doesn’t matter if you’re singing in front of five people.

0:17:47    [Catherine Mullins]       When you’re singing in front of five people and learning to minister in front of five people, that’s going to train you how to sing and lead in front of thousands of people. It’s the same type of concept. And so I always tell people, take every opportunity and steward it well, pray about the direction that God has for you. But then we also have to remember that it’s the Lord that opens doors. And I think sometimes we want to start things in the flesh and those things that we start in the flesh, we’re going to have to finish in the flesh. And we just have to, to some degree, trust the Lord that he’s going to open the right doors at the right time while we’re stewarding our gifting. That makes sense.

0:18:24    [Kathy Gray]    Yes.

0:18:24    [Steve Gray]    And sometimes I think that’s a key, if nothing’s opening would kind of mean nobody wants to hear you. You got to have some talent and get the backup. People sometimes are the answer. Or I meet people who they want to preach and they want to teach, but nobody wants to hear them. So they have to probably have to develop a message. If you have something for people, they’re going to want to hear you. So that’s developing that character where you take on your personality or your message or you have really something to say.

0:18:53    [Steve Gray]    I try to tell them I said, you need something to say. What’s happening with you? Okay. So you did that and you got going. I’m glad to hear that because you know how Lakeland kind of bombed out and that people that don’t know don’t care, but those that know will know what I’m talking. You know, the fruit of it lasted in that roy got his ministry based out of that. And you picked up and it influenced your ministry. So you could go forth out of, you know, that’s great. And probably others god uses so many things to get others started.

0:19:25    [Steve Gray]    So it wasn’t really a bomb out at Know. It really started other ministries that are still going today, like so and then you got married. I don’t know how that happened. I don’t know how when you met I don’t know how you met David.

0:19:37    [Kathy Gray]    Or so he told me his testimony once, and I believe Steve, he saw her, and it was love at first sight for him, but she tested him. Is that right? Did you test him for a while?

0:19:51    [Catherine Mullins]       Yes. And so he loved me from the very beginning. And we make jokes. We saw an Ashley furniture sign. This was years ago that said, like, five years, no interest. And he said, hey, Catherine, kind of like our relationship. He liked me in the very beginning, and I was just honestly, I was in my own world doing ministry. Was not really focused on that. And long story short, we met at my dad’s church, which is the church that we’re at now. And I’m so thankful for that.

0:20:18    [Catherine Mullins]       But David really fought for me, and I’m so glad that he did. We’ve been married now coming up on Nine years in Thankful, I kind of.

0:20:27    [Steve Gray]    Remember when you got married and just doesn’t seem that long ago.

0:20:30    [Catherine Mullins]       I know, it’s shocking. I mean, I’m shocked that it’s been nine years.

0:20:33    [Kathy Gray]    Yeah.

0:20:34    [Steve Gray]    So before we go then, and we’re going to hopefully do another podcast with you, but before we go, we talked about parents and children. What about girls, teenage girls, college age, young adults. There are a lot of direction lists. A lot of them feel bad about themselves and don’t know why. Got any words for them or what do you say when you go places? Because I know you must speak into their lives.

0:20:59    [Catherine Mullins]       Yeah. I think the big thing is to understand that our identity comes from Christ. And there’s a book out there that says you’re not enough. And that’s okay. And I think right now we’re teaching a generation that they are enough, but that’s just not true. Outside of Christ, we will never be enough. But in Christ, he has made us enough because he’s enough. And so I think identity is a really big deal. And when we get our relationship right with Christ and when we get that established where we can hear his voice and he really begins to guide and direct our steps, and his opinion really becomes the main opinion that matters in our life. That changes our outlook on life.

0:21:41    [Catherine Mullins]       That changes our outlook on the decisions that we make. That changes our outlook on our own opinion of ourselves. And so I would just tell a generation, don’t go looking for love, quote, unquote, in all the wrong places. We’ve got to go back to the secret place of getting to know Jesus again and having our identity grounded in Him. And it’s kind of cliche, but truth isn’t going to change, and we’ve got to get back to some of those ancient paths of identity founded in right?

0:22:08    [Kathy Gray]    Yes. Yes.

0:22:09    [Steve Gray]    Well, we’re so glad we could be together today because we’re going to do another one. I can’t wait the next one because I want to talk to you about your life is sort of in transition now because you’re doing what you’ve been doing, but you’re also focusing on the church that you’re going to be actively taking part of as a leader. And we’re going to get into what’s going on with you, that and what do you think and how’s to feel and all that kind of stuff on their Next podcast. We’re so glad you joined us today on more Faith, more life. Go to our website, morefaithmorelife.com, and there you can find out about products and you can donate and do all those kinds of things. So till next time. Bye.