Beyond The Ordinary

Midwest Church Supply began long before there was a company by that name.

My introduction to the church-supply business came in 1997 during my first volunteer trip to Our Lady of Consolation Shrine in Carey, Ohio. I had recently met and would soon fall in love with and marry a girl whose father, Jim Durbin, had been supplying the Shrine with candles and other church goods for nearly 30 years.

Each August, Jim, my soon to be wife and the rest of his family and sometimes a few friends would travel to Carey to help the Shrine prepare for the thousands of pilgrims who would arrive for the vigil of the Feast of the Assumption on August 14. That year, I joined them.

I was hooked.

There was something special about being part of the work behind the scenes—helping a parish prepare, making sure people had what they needed, and seeing firsthand how something as simple as a candle could become part of a much larger expression of faith.

By 2004, I was working full-time alongside Jim, serving churches throughout Ohio and Indiana.

Learning What Service Really Means

The original plan was fairly simple. Jim would train me for a few years, hand over more of his territory, and eventually retire.

Instead, something unexpected happened.

As I took more responsibility off his shoulders, Jim began to fall in love with the work all over again.

And I loved having him there.

Over the years, I learned the church-supply business under his watchful eye. Eventually I was handling much of our service territory independently, but Jim's experience was always there to guide me.

Together, we grew the territory by combining two things that worked remarkably well: his decades of experience and my eagerness to serve.

Jim taught me that selling church goods was never simply about moving boxes.

It was about knowing your customers.

Knowing what candles they used.

Knowing what was sitting in their sacristy.

Knowing when something needed to be reordered.

Knowing when a product wasn't right.

And, above all, doing your best to serve the Church with high-quality products and exceptional service.

That philosophy stayed with me.

A Difficult Turning Point

About five years after I began working alongside Jim, he was diagnosed with lung cancer.

Six months later, he passed away.

Suddenly, the territory we had built together was on my shoulders.

Through our work together, we had grown an already successful territory by more than 20 percent. That success was something to be proud of—but after Jim's passing, it also meant there was an enormous amount of work that now had to be done by one person.

For the first time in my life, I was genuinely terrified.

While Jim was ill, I was traveling through eastern Ohio making sales calls when I happened to attend a weekday morning Mass at a church in Tiltonsville.

The pastor at the time, Father Dan, preached about placing our fears and worries at the foot of the Cross and trusting that things would work out as they should.

I'm sure everyone has experienced a moment like this.

Given everything that was happening in my life, it felt as though Father Dan was speaking directly to me.

From that point forward, I tried to do exactly that.

I placed the fear, anxiety, and uncertainty of carrying on without Jim at the foot of the Cross and trusted that Jesus would be there for the ride.

And what a ride it became.

Carrying the Work Forward

The years following Jim's passing were some of the most challenging and rewarding of my professional life.

It was an honor to continue serving the churches Jim and I had worked so hard to support.

A few years later, Jim's son—and my brother-in-law—Andrew Durbin began helping me part-time. His help made it possible to keep all of the plates spinning that Jim and I had set in motion together.

As the years passed, my appreciation for this work only grew.

Serving churches never felt like simply selling a product. It meant helping pastors, parish staff, sacristans, volunteers, and others solve real problems so they could focus their attention on something far more important—the ministry of the Church.

A New Direction

After COVID, circumstances began to change, and I felt called to take a different path.

I stepped away from my church-goods territory and began serving the Church in another way: helping parishes improve their digital communications and better engage their communities through my work with a wonderful company called eCatholic.

It opened an entirely new world to me.

I began learning more about websites, digital communication, online engagement, technology, and the many new ways parishes could connect with the people they serve.

But after some time, I began feeling another pull.

This time, it wasn't necessarily a call to leave one thing behind for another.

It was a call to bring everything together.

Midwest Church Supply

As I continued learning and growing in technology, I began to feel the Holy Spirit pulling me toward an opportunity to combine the different skills and experiences I had been given.

I could continue helping parishes evangelize and communicate with their communities through my work with eCatholic while returning to the church-supply business that had shaped so much of my life.

That calling eventually led Andrew and me to create Midwest Church Supply.

Our goal is to carry forward the lessons Jim taught us while adapting his philosophy of service to the way parishes operate today.

The products still matter.

Knowledge still matters.

Relationships still matter.

And personal service matters perhaps more than ever.

But technology now gives us ways to provide that personal service far beyond the territory Jim and I could once reach from behind the windshield of a car.

A parish can send us a photograph of a candle they cannot identify.

A sacristan can walk us through a supply room using FaceTime or Zoom.

A parish office can call with a question and receive knowledgeable help without waiting for someone to make a trip across the state.

We can help identify what is needed, coordinate an order, and arrange for products to be shipped directly to the parish.

The technology has changed.

The way products move has changed.

The territory has gotten much larger.

But the philosophy Jim taught us all those years ago has not changed at all.

Serve the Church well. Offer quality products. Know your customers. And be there when they need you.

That is the foundation of Midwest Church Supply.

Personal Service. Wherever You Are.