By Marv Knox
People often say “nontraditional” when they talk about how Nico Moyer came to join the staff of First Baptist Church in Columbus, Ga.
Moyer is First Baptist’s city minister—director of Second Story, its ministry to college students, military personnel and other young adults. Second Story is located in Uptown Columbus, just a few blocks from the church’s campus.
Moyer, 34, agrees “nontraditional” provides an apt description of his long road to ministry. And he resonates with Jonah, the Old Testament prophet who ran from God, endured a raging storm at sea and spent three days in the belly of a fish before grudgingly accepting the ministry God planned for him.
“I recognize myself in that story,” he said. “As I look back, I can see God has always been kind of pushing me” toward ministry. That divine push made him a likely model for Called in Context, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s emphasis on helping churches find solid ministers in unlikely—nontraditional—sources, such as among their own members.
All that wasn’t evident during Moyer’s “reckless childhood” in Connecticut, when he honed skills to be “a devil’s advocate.” It wasn’t apparent when he earned an undergraduate degree from Southern Connecticut State University. And it certainly didn’t seem likely when he joined the U.S. Army’s elite Ranger Regiment.
“I served eight years in a special operations unit carrying out some of the most wild missions in some of the most extreme circumstances and places,” he said.
During his Ranger/alpha male phase, deployed in Afghanistan, “somebody asked me, ‘Do you know Jesus?’” he recalled. “I didn’t know what to say. I was like, ‘I mean, I believe in God, but I don’t know.’ So, I started reading the densest theology books I could find. I’m thinking, ‘Man, this stuff’s pretty cool.’ But then I recognized I knew a lot about Christianity, but I wasn’t actually building a relationship with Christ.”
During this phase, a career-ending tragedy indirectly nudged Moyer closer to ministry. He suffered a traumatic brain injury, which eventually led to medical retirement from the Army. While transitioning out of the military at Fort Benning—now Fort Moore—in Columbus, he faced existential questions.
“I had to figure out what to do with life,” he acknowledged. “I basically spent a year living in a van and turned it into community engagement. We called it the ‘Finding Nico Van Project,’ and it was a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. I raised money by saying, ‘Hey, if you’ll pay for me to be able to live for the day, I’ll go and volunteer for the day for free.’”
The project enabled Moyer to highlight local ministries and other nonprofits while building relationships and ministering to people. He loved it, and followers in the Columbus area loved supporting him.
During that time, thanks to the persistence of a military buddy, Moyer also discovered Second Story. Initially, he put his friend off. “But finally, I just said, ‘All right; I’ll go with you, man,’” he noted. “From the second I walked in the door, I knew this was my place.
“It was a beautiful representation of community and what church should look like. We had a couple of professional baseball players, but also military personnel, students from Columbus State and young adults who worked in the community. And we engaged in scriptural conversations and really deep stuff that I didn’t even realize I craved. From that day forward, I was bought in.”
Meanwhile, Moyer encountered life. He met and married Claire, and they found a dog. And he gave up his van ministry because “neither of them wanted to live in a van.”
Studying under the post-911 GI Bill, he earned a second undergrad degree, this time in business administration, and then a master’s degree in organizational leadership at Columbus State University. He started teaching in the university’s signature servant leadership program. He became a life coach. And he stayed deeply involved in First Baptist Church and in Second Story, where he taught Bible studies and became a steady fixture.
Moyer made a good impression, said Jimmy Elder, First Baptist’s pastor.
“From the beginning, Nico had a desire to help people,” Elder recalled, citing the ministry Moyer operated out of his van. “His personality is infectious, and his spirit is genuine. His desire to serve the Lord is very much a part of who he is.”
So, Moyer’s gifts, interests, life experiences and deep connection to Second Story made him a nontraditional-but-logical choice to succeed Second Story’s original director, Brandon Stozier, who felt he should pursue a new opportunity.
The next Second Story director “had to be unique,” Stozier said, citing a litany of necessary relationships with the church and its staff, Columbus State University, the Uptown Columbus community and “the core group of Second Story.”
Stozier realized choosing Moyer to direct Second Story would be “the perfect marriage of ability and skill, heart and someone people could trust immediately.”
Elder recalled the pivotal conversation with Stozier: “Brandon came to me and said, ‘Look, I’m going to leave Second Story.’ But he said, ‘What I want to do is tell you I’ve already got somebody primed and ready to step in…Nico Moyer.’ I thought, ‘It’s a great idea.’”
Moyer checked all the qualification boxes for directing Second Story. And the timing was right. Stozier left the job at the end of 2021, just as Moyer earned his master’s degree.
“I accepted the role initially as director of Second Story,” Moyer said. “But the real shift occurred after a year of doing this. I felt God calling me to serve in a ministry capacity — to join the church staff and to be the best steward I could be of this opportunity by going to seminary and getting ordained.”
So, Moyer asked to meet with Elder, and their conversation proved consequential for Moyer, Second Story and First Baptist.
“I told Jimmy: ‘I want you to know I did not accept this job just to be the director of Second Story. I feel called and would love to serve as a minister within this church.’ Jimmy said, ‘I’ve been waiting for you to tell me that.’ I had been praying about this for months. I didn’t want to step on toes by seeking ordination, and I didn’t want them to think it was an ego-driven thing.”
“He’s nontraditional,” Elder said, noting Moyer didn’t follow the seemingly typical college, then seminary, then church staff ministry trajectory.
“A lot of times, you go to seminary to get your degree to go into ministry,” Elder said. “Nico is in ministry, and he’s going to seminary (to Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology) to broaden and deepen his understanding of what he’s teaching and sharing. It’s kind of the opposite of the way a lot of us would’ve thought about seminary as you go along.” Moyer’s transition from a Second Story regular and lay church member to Second Story director and then also church staff member is “the New Testament way” of locating ministers, Elder added. “People were called out not because they had been to seminary, not because they had volumes of theological books … but because they were serving the Lord.
“If I have staff openings, I would be less inclined to just automatically go and find somebody who is a minister of X. I would be more interested in sitting with our people and saying: ‘OK, we have an opening that needs to accomplish this. What kind of person do you see in that position?’”
Stozier, who provided mentorship when Moyer began attending Second Story and saw in him the gifts for leading the ministry, sees in Moyer a template others may follow.
“Nico’s path into to ministry is nontraditional in a way I would assume is becoming more traditional,” he said. “Even as you look back, you see the foundations for someone who has a heart for others, which is central to being a minister. Wanting to serve others. Wanting to help others. Wanting to make his community better. Wanting to make the lives of others better. It’s pretty cool to see how this flourished into his calling to full-time ministry.”
The experience of First Baptist Columbus, Moyer and Second Story can and should be replicated in other congregations, insisted Colin Kroll and Brian Foreman, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship staff members who developed and promote the Called in Context initiative.
“Called in Context is part of a larger conversation: What does mean to foster a culture of calling in our congregations?” Kroll, CBF’s young adults ministry manager, explained.
“Our goal is to create conversations in congregations about how they may need to look right in their own church or community when they are filling ministry positions,” noted Foreman, CBF’s coordinator of congregational ministries.
“The ways we are recognizing and finding good leadership in our faith communities is changing,” Kroll said. “It’s filling ministry positions within the community; it’s calling and empowering people who are loving and leading and affirming that.”
“Just maybe, they’re right under your nose, and you don’t see them,” Foreman added.
In Columbus, folks are delighted First Baptist saw Nico Moyer.