Olujimi (Olu) Brown, founder and lead pastor of Impact Church, recently announced his retirement and transitional year during the church’s Sunday worship experience.
Brown, who founded the progressive Atlanta-based church 14-years-ago, confirmed that he is retiring in June 2022 to pursue entrepreneurial and consulting endeavors, full time.
“With any call that God gives us for our lives, there will always be a vision. And as we move toward realizing that vision, it becomes clear that the call is much greater than we can ever think or imagine,” Brown said. “Impact is part of my call, and when God gave me the opportunity to partner with 25 launch team volunteers to start this ministry, I knew there would come a time where God would call me beyond Impact Church.”
This transition will position him to help grow churches and businesses all over the world, just as he has through his leadership at Impact.
Brown will continue to serve Impact for the next year as the lead pastor and will help orient the new lead pastor, once appointed by the Bishop of the North Georgia Conference, Sue Haupert-Johnson.
With a thriving congregation in the East Point community of Metropolitan Atlanta, Impact is ranked the fifth fastest growing United Methodist congregation in the United States.
Since its founding in 2007, Impact has grown from a team of 25 people to more than 2,400 in-person attendees each Sunday and 1,600 online.
“It goes without saying that a change like this can be difficult to understand, but change does, in fact, happen, and when it does, we embrace it and move in the direction where that change is taking us,” said Sheldon Snipe, Impact’s Staff Parrish Relations Committee chairperson.
“This is a very exciting time for Olu, and for Impact, and we are confident that our plan to transition the leadership of our outgoing and incoming pastors will ensure undisrupted continuity to our ministry.”
Brown said that when he started Impact, he set himself on a 10-year plan that mapped out key milestones of accomplishment and even his retirement from the local church.
Now leaving, he hopes to start a movement of Normalizing Next™ where succession planning, retirement and pastoral transition are celebrated.
“I count it an honor to have been the founding and lead pastor of Impact Church and I will always be grateful for my time as a pastor and servant leader in the local church,” Brown said. “Over the years, I have had the opportunity to serve in ministry with phenomenal people and travel the world.”
“I will always cherish my wonderful ministry experiences and the people I have been honored to know and serve. Life and living is a continuous journey and a series of next and I hope to help people ‘Normalize Next’ and embrace tomorrow with hope and expectation. When I think about one of the most important themes of my ministry, it has been about helping people change, transition and embrace their next.”
