Family Life Church | Pastor Amos & Melodee Self
Pastor Amos and Melodee have been the lead pastors at Family Life Church in Verndale, MN for twelve years. They’ve been married for 23 years and have three kids.
Amos was 13 when he gave his heart to the Lord at Staples Assembly of God. Ever since this time, he knew God put the call on his life to go into ministry.
While studying at North Central University, Amos worked and ran the youth ministry at Real Life church in Roseville before heading to Wadena as youth pastor. He worked there for a few years until the small town of Verndale had a Lead Pastor position opening in 2010. “It’s definitely a small town, I think one of the population signs says 602”, Amos recalled. The church was ready to close with about 12 people still attending. Amos and his wife prayed about it, and said “OK, we’ll give it five years and see what the Lord does.”
Initially, the district church health team helped restructure them, and a couple of churches helped financially. They changed the by-laws, and changed the name of Verndale Assembly of God Tabernacle to Verndale Family Life Church. With a community-focused passion, the town was really excited to see them involved. Five years flew by, and the health of the church began to turn around.
In 2012, the church building burned down from a faulty plug, and they considered moving to an abandoned building on the edge of town. Amos recalls, “We went from 5,000 square feet to 28,000 square feet and never imagined we would be able to use it all. But now we have to add on and find room in every possible space we can.” Much growth continued from that time to today. Consistency showed the community they were serious about having this church in Verndale and committed to growth.
Working toward being a healthy church, they have learned a lot along the way. There are four main principles they keep in front of their church: God-honoring community, Spirit empowerment, Biblical engagement, and Mission advancing. Amos emphasizes, “Love people, cast vision, and stick to it. Have that strong personal devotional life and pray in the Spirit every day ’cause you can’t do it on your own strength.”
The new location gave Family Life the foundation they needed to support their vision. Providing resources and being missionally minded, they get to partner with other churches in town, including the coordination of the prayer schedule for City Council meetings. Family Life Church also runs a Christian school and childcare out of their facility. Their kitchen team serves about 100 meals a day. They also have a food shelf, with about five-thousand pounds of food given out every month for almost ten years!
Amos shared, “One of our prayers 12 years ago was, ‘Lord, establish a foundation strong enough to handle the ministry that you put on us.’ We’ve always said that we want to be a resource in our community We never imagined it would literally be a change of foundation!”
