Marty Grubbs Steps Down as Crossings Community Church Senior Pastor After 45 Years

He was 26 years old, had no seminary degree, and told the church board plainly that he was not qualified. On Sunday, October 25, 2026, that same man — the Rev. Marty Grubbs — stood before Crossings Community Church in Oklahoma City and announced he is stepping down as senior pastor after 45 years.

Grubbs will become senior pastor emeritus, according to a statement on the church's website, and he will continue to preach on occasion as part of the church's teaching team. The statement framed the move as a chapter he had prepared for carefully.

After 45 incredible years of leading Crossings, Marty has thoughtfully and prayerfully prepared for this next chapter. He has invested deeply in building a gifted leadership team. He and his family will remain an integral part of our church family.

The scale of what Grubbs is handing over is hard to overstate. When he became senior pastor in 1985, the church drew about 143 people on an average Sunday. Today, Crossings is a prominant Oklahoma City megachurch with a sprawling main campus near Memorial Road and Portland Avenue, plus satellites including Crossings Edmond, Crossings-Mayfair, Crossings Community Center and Bethany Children's Hospital.

Marty Grubbs Crossings Community Church: From 143 People to a Megachurch

Grubbs has told the story of his unlikely start himself. In the fall of 1985, he sat around a table with the church board as they asked him to be their senior pastor.

The church was 26 years old. He was 26 years old. He had no experience and no seminary degree, and becoming pastor was not on his list of life goals.

I was not qualified. No experience. No seminary degree. And it certainly was not on my list of life goals.

Some members left over the decision, though Grubbs has said they remained his friends. The rest stayed, and the church grew: 200 people, then 500, then a new sanctuary built to seat 500 that filled almost as soon as it opened. By 1994, with growth showing no sign of stopping, Grubbs wondered aloud whether it was time to find a capable, qualified and experienced pastor to lead the church instead.

What kept him, by his own account, was a summer day in 1994 in the Willow Creek auditorium, listening to Bill Hybels speak with unusual transparency about feeling unqualified and exhausted by weekly preaching. Grubbs has said God used that moment to nudge him to trust Him and continue leading the church in Oklahoma City. He stayed — for three more decades.

Crossings Church New Senior Pastor Vote: November 1 Announcement, November 15 Vote

The transition now follows a clear timetable. A member of the board of elders will share the name of the board's unanimous choice for the church's new senior pastor on November 1. The congregation will get two weeks to get acquainted with the board's choice before coming together to vote on the matter on November 15.

In the meantime, Crossings' leadership team will oversee day-to-day operations and decision-making, according to the church. Grubbs transitions out of those responsibilities but not out of the church family: his emeritus role includes continuing to preach on occasion, and his family remains part of the congregation.

The ministries built under Grubbs reach well beyond Sunday services. Crossings Christian School opened as a ministry of the church in 2005.

Its ministries also include prison ministries at 25 prisons, a community clinic, and Crossings Community Center, the missions hub of the church. Whoever succeeds Grubbs inherits not just a pulpit but a small city of ministries, each with its own people, rhythms and needs.

Grubbs' departure is one of several major pastoral transitions drawing attention in American church life this season, alongside Pope Leo XIV's Yemen appeal, the Ukrainian prisoner list delivered at the Vatican, and the World Assemblies of God Congress in Accra. But the Crossings story is quieter than most: no scandal, no split, just a 45-year pastor handing the keys to a leadership team he spent years building.

And the open question, as November 1 approaches, is the one every congregation in transition eventually faces — who will the board name, will the congregation embrace them, and can a church that grew from 143 people under one unqualified 26-year-old keep growing under someone new?

For a congregation that has known one senior pastor for 45 years, the next three weeks will feel strange and hopeful at once, as the board's choice steps into view and the church decides, together, what its next chapter sounds like, and who will help them sing it.

But the most surprising part of this story is yet to come — keep reading.