Mobile youth pastor now focuses on writing ministry

Jeff Kinley may be 41, but he is still a big kid at heart. “I love to work with kids and just hang out with them,” he said. “They have a hunger to have the Word of God explained to them on their level.”
   
No doubt, that passion is proving instrumental for Kinley as he pursues a career writing Christian materials for youth. Kinley, former pastor of students at Dauphin Way Baptist Church, Mobile, has written a total of nine books on discipleship, along with devotional and study guides.
   
The founder of Main Thing Ministries Inc., he has written articles in national magazines geared toward teenagers and has spoken across the country. While he isn’t working with youth daily as he did as a youth minister, Kinley said he is using his experiences — both professional and personal — in an effort to remain involved in the lives of teenagers.
   
“I’ve always written my own study guides during my 15 years as being a minister to young people and it was a natural progression for me to combine my work into a book format,” he said.
   
The tall, spectacled minister with boyish good looks projects the image of a person with a trouble free, pristine past, but Kinley said the image is far from realistic. Kinley said his teenage years in Anderson, S.C., were on the tail end of the hippie generation, when long hair, drugs and rock music were passports to acceptance. “And of course, I wanted to be accepted,” he said, confessing his parents were “clueless” to his experimentation with drugs and alcohol.
   
“I was an all-star athlete, I was popular, I was in a rock band and they had no idea as to what I was involved with. I was using drugs for social purposes like a lot of my friends were doing,” he said.
   
Kinley was 16 when he became friends with another student in his high school physical education class by the name of Greg Wilson.
   
“He was a Christian and he didn’t have a need to pursue the drug scene like the rest of us. He played the guitar, and so did I, and a friendship started to grow,” Kinley said. “He had a great impact on my life and he led me into a relationship with God.
   
“I’ve never been the same since,” Kinley said, noting that sentiment is the title of his second book for teenagers, “Never the Same — A Disciple’s Journal on Knowing God.”
   
Kinley became involved with Campus Crusade for Christ while a student at the University of South Carolina, where he also participated in summer missions work. During one of the summer missions trips he met his future wife, Beverly.
   
Because of his experiences, Kinley felt a desire to share his life with other youth and gravitated toward student ministry. His first job was as a youth minister while attending seminary in Dallas. He later became a youth minister in Little Rock, Ark., and held that position for 10 years before coming to Mobile. 
   
Having begun his writing during his years as a minister, Kinley realized he was being drawn toward writing and speaking full time. He submitted book proposals to 12 publishing houses and found two that were interested. They are now requesting books from him on specific topics and one publisher asked him to write four discipleship books in a series of 19 that are being produced for teenagers.
   
“The more I wrote the more gratifying I found it,” he said. “I felt like there was water building against a dam in regard to my desire to write,” said the father of three. “I realized that this yearning was God’s calling for me during the second part of my life. I want to minister to youth, to parents and to people who minister to them,” he said.
   
“I can impact so many lives and reach kids who may not be Christians. I want to help them fall in love with Christ,” he said. “Writing is my passion and reaching out to kids is my mission. I haven’t had one second of doubt that this is what God wants me to be doing.”