‘Being A Blessing’: Departing Megachurch Leader Says Love Has Been His Motivation
In January, Jon Weece, the senior pastor (official title: “lead follower”) at Central Kentucky’s Southland Christian Church, announced he’ll step down from his position in January 2026 to become just a regular member of the church.
At 51, he’s led the megachurch for 25 years, having been chosen for the job when he was only 26. He has a huge responsibility. In a typical week, Southland draws a total of 14,000 worshipers to five campuses. It has 120 people on staff and 6,000 to 8,000 volunteers. It ranks among the country’s larger evangelical churches.
Weece’s successor has already been named: Scott Nickell, 45, who currently serves as the church’s teaching pastor.
I caught up with Weece at Southland’s main campus, near Nicholasville. A condensed version of our conversation follows. It’s been edited for length, flow and clarity.
Jon Weece preaches at Southland Christian Church. (Photo via Southland Christian Church)
Prather: Why did you decide to leave the pastorate now, at such a relatively young age?
Weece: I’ve seen preachers make one of two mistakes when it comes to their tenure at a church. They either leave too early or they stay too long. I’ve tried to strike a balance with that, and find an age I felt like was a good age where the church was, first of all, in a healthy spot and stable enough that it could handle a transition.
Secondly, I needed someone to pass the baton to that had been here and had built trust with the church. Scott’s been on staff since 2017. He’s not a stranger to the church. They know him and trust him. Scott’s born and raised in this church. So he loves this place.
Prather: What’s next for you?
Weece: I’ve told our leaders I’ll serve the people here until I die. I love the people of Southland. I’ll do weddings and funerals and hospital visits and serve in any capacity that’s needed. I just won’t be on staff anymore.
So I do have to get a job and put food on the table. But I also have a ministry idea related to feeding kids here in the state of Kentucky and doing what I can to help eradicate hunger. I’m going to have a job that hopefully allows me to fund part of that ministry.
Prather: Has Southland’s attendance in recent years gone up or down? Many churches are suffering a sharp decline.
Weece: It’s interesting, beginning in 2022, we’ve experienced our greatest growth in the history of the church in terms of giving and attendance. Record numbers. Now in 2020 and 2021, that was not the case. We saw a dip, but then we all of a sudden just came roaring back.
Prather: What’s enabled Southland to grow while others are going the opposite direction?
Weece: We spend a lot of time and a lot of attention and invest a lot of energy and resources into our children’s and student ministry. I think after the pandemic, when kids were isolated at home, parents were looking for activities and places where their kids could come and participate and get out of the house a little bit. Our doors were open.
That’s one piece. I think the other piece is that our culture is so divided right now — and our church is so united. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen our church as healthy as we are right now. It’s palpable. People come in and immediately sense it. I think they’re looking for a breather from what they see or hear on social media and in the news. Our church provides that place of rest.
Prather: How have you maintained that equilibrium? You surely have members from across the social and political divide.
Weece: We definitely have half and half, you know, life the country. I think our church is probably divided politically. But we’re united around our mission. We’ve made our mission our bullseye. We try to keep everyone focused on how do we love the people of Kentucky the way that God’s loved us? Keeping everybody focused on that mission has allowed us to set the things we disagree about on the shelf, because they’re not as important as that mission.
You know it’s so hard anymore to know who’s telling the truth in culture. But we try to just stay true to God’s word and let it speak. It resonates with people. Because it doesn’t make enemies out of people. I always tell our church, people are never your enemy. We have one common enemy, and that’s Satan. Everybody you come in contact with is the object of God’s intense love, and needs to be the object of our intense love, too.
Prather: It must be stressful to be the head of an enormous ministry such as Southland. Did you ever feel burned out?
Weece: No, I’ve been worn out, but not burned out in ministry. Anyone who serves in a full-time capacity in a church is going to experience fatigue, because you’re dealing with people’s problems, and no matter how well trained you are, there’s always transference.
During the COVID years, especially, we saw a lot of depression, a lot of anxiety and a lot of suicide. I’d be lying to you if I said I didn’t carry some of that burden.
But I do a lot of things to mitigate against that. I exercise. I run everyday, and that’s a stress reliever. I hunt. Deer, turkey, dove, a little bit of everything. Bow hunter, primarily. It’s a stress reliever just to be in the woods by myself, or with my son.
And I have really good friends who like really good food, and we find, like, a lot of little local restaurants in the area, and we just enjoy each other’s company. That tends to settle me down and remind me of God’s goodness.
If you’re not intentional about where you take stress, you’ll take it straight to the people who deserve it the least, like your wife and your kids. I never wanted to sacrifice my family on the altar of ministry.
Prather: If you had to say what your best gift as a minister is, what would it be?
Weece: I genuinely love people and I don’t think you can ever have too many friends. So I enjoy building friendships one on one, but I also enjoy building friendships though preaching. So if I’m talking to one person or 10,000 people, I want to leave them with the impression that I genuinely care about them — because I do.
Prather: What are you looking forward to about stepping down?
Weece: I will enjoy having more time to be with my family. And I will enjoy being an older brother who cheers on the next generation of leaders in this community. I love seeing the next generation thrive, and I don’t want to be a burden to them. I want to be a blessing.
Paul Prather has been a rural Pentecostal pastor in Kentucky for more than 40 years. Also a journalist, he was The Lexington Herald-Leader’s staff religion writer in the 1990s, before leaving to devote his full time to the ministry. He now writes a regular column about faith and religion for the Herald-Leader, where this column first appeared. Prather’s written four books. You can email him at pratpd@yahoo.com.