New pastor enjoys talking with people about God

“My entire family on my father’s side was from this area, and I found out some of my mother’s family are from the Hamilton area. I truly am coming back to the land of my forefathers we’ll say.

“I was doing some research because I didn’t know a whole lot of my father’s side of the family to be honest,” Mutzfeld said. “Digging back a little further, there was a worldwide evangelist by the name of Charles Reign Scoville that was born right here that is part of my father’s grandmother’s family.”

He’s hopeful to be able to make connections and meet more of the Mutzfeld lineage.

“As I go back through my family tree on my father’s side, I find a long line of pastors. I think of all the likely candidates in the family, I was the least likely to be a pastor,” he said with an easy chuckle.

Jovial by nature, Mutzfeld said there is good reason for his joyful outlook.

“I believe that Christians should be the happiest people in the world. We have the good news,” he said. “The world sees Christians as dour and judgmental, and they’ve earned that. Now, we’re changing that.

“We should be happy and laughing and joking and understanding pop culture without being sucked into it,” he said.

Before coming to Butler, Mutzfeld served as pastor simultaneously at churches in Kimmell and the Tri-Lakes area near Columbia City when one day, he received a curious email.

“I received an email that I didn’t think I was supposed to get,” he said. “It was about changing churches. I have children in high school, and usually they don’t move you when you have children in high school.

“Things were going well, and I thought, ‘Well, I wasn’t supposed to get that (email).’ As time went by, I was praying and thinking and I asked God, ‘If that was for me, show me a sign.’

“I was reading in Genesis and it said, ‘Return to the land of your forefathers.’ My dad lives in Muncie, and there were some churches on the list in Muncie, so I thought I was going to Muncie.

“I contacted my conference superintendent and he said yes, I was supposed to get that email.”

Reviewing the list again, he saw Butler’s church was in need of a pastor. “I looked at my wife, and I said, ‘Honey, I think it’s Butler.’ She said, ‘Good, because that was what I was thinking too.’

“My conference superintendent said, ‘Oh, good, because you’re going there Tuesday to meet them,’” Mutzfeld said with another chuckle.

“My family’s here, but I don’t know them that well except for the Strong family. I probably wouldn’t be a Christian today if I didn’t know grandma Strong and grandma Steckley. They’ve been praying for me through a lot of my life when I needed it,” he said. “Here I am today a pastor.”

Mutzfeld believes God uses him to spread His message.

“I’m not smart enough to say the things I say on Sunday,” he said in self-deprecation.

In a more serious vein, he continued, “Every Sunday before I preach, I pray that Jesus would be in my heart and forgive me of all of my sins so that my prayers that are going to the father on the throne would be from a righteous man. Whatever comes out of my mouth is from the Holy Spirit, not me.”

Growing up with his father in Muncie, the church they attended went through a split, and they followed the pastor, Mutzfeld explained. At age 14, he can remember hearing the words, “You’re going to be a preacher some day.”

“There’s a distinction between being a preacher and a pastor,” Mutzfeld said. “A preacher gives the word. A pastor cares for a congregation.”

Three years later, he was living with his mother in Fort Wayne and had gotten completely away from God. “We were nothing but troublemakers,” he said. “There were bad things going on, and I was enjoying all of them.”

He had married, divorced and had a son to raise when he met his second wife, Diana. They have two children together, Conner, now a sophomore, and Coral, a senior.

One day, they attended his sister-in-law’s baptism at a church in Bluffton. “I just remember feeling at home in that church for some reason,” he said. “We started traveling from Waynedale to Bluffton for church every Sunday.”

Another time, they were running late and opted to attend services at a Methodist church in Waynedale. “I had never set foot in a Methodist church in my life,” Mutzfeld said. “I was sleeping one night and I heard the call come again, but this time, it wasn’t that I was going to be a preacher.

“Even though I had forgotten about it, I know God did not,” he said. “I woke up and I was terrified. I don’t scare.

“In my mind, I started calling out to God in prayer because I had just been baptized in the Wabash River. I just remember calling out, ‘God, if you hear me.’

“As soon as ‘if’ was in my mind, (I heard) this voice. I’m 37, and this voice was different. It was the same voice, but it was so loud it had like colors with it, and there were two words, ‘Have faith.’

“Instantly, I wasn’t afraid any more.”

Mutzfeld said God “let me know that through everything I had done through the time He called me to the time I answered my call, no matter where I had been, no matter what I had done, no matter what had happened, He was always there.

“If became my doubt, and He removed that for me on that night. My doubt was gone,” Mutzfeld said. “Within three years, I was a pastor.”

His first church assignment was in Andrews, with a congregation of nine people. For outreach, that group began community meals. Within three years, the weekly gathering grew to about 40.

“I’m still learning. I’m not an ordained minister,” Mutzfeld said. “I’ve had a rocky road in life but anybody that I get around, I just want to talk to them about God.”