Former Fortune 500 Businesswoman: How Churches Must Change After Pandemic

Former Fortune 500 businesswoman Jamie Rohrbaugh believes the church is going to have to find new ways to engage people during and after the pandemic. As with any sales pitch or transaction in the corporate world, she says it’s all about one question.

“Every consumer wants to know, ‘What’s in it for me?’ before they consume a meal or a church service or a book or anything else,” Rohrbaugh says. “So we’re really going to have to change the way we communicate the need for the local church, to explain to people that not only is it about the fact that we’re obeying God, but also the weight of the glory of corporate worship is only available here at the local church [as well as] the kind of relationships that we want to build, covenant relationships between brothers and sisters and Christ and families. Those can only be built when we’re together in the church body with people of like faith and like anointing.”

Saved in college, Rohrbaugh experienced the Holy Spirit in a radical way at a Joyce Meyer conference.

“I call myself an example of the foolish things that confound the wise because God has literally raised me up to the use in His kingdom out of nowhere,” she says. “I didn’t come from a ministry family. I wasn’t even saved until I was 21 years old. I didn’t have a mentor for many years and so God just discipled me Himself. When I got saved, I was hungry. And He started just to teach me the Word. At first, I couldn’t even read more than one or two verses in the Bible and just had no appetite for spiritual things, but I prayed and I asked the Lord to teach me and to draw me closer to Him. And so over the years, He taught me and He healed my mind. I came from a very broken background, where my mind was just very messed up. … The Word heals us.”

Rohrbaugh is committed to the Word because she knows its power.

“The Bible is the inerrant, infallible message that God has for us,” she says. “I love the Word. I eat it for breakfast and lunch and dinner, and that’s really what it’s all about because people don’t need me, and they don’t need any of us who are in ministry. Really, they need the Word of God, and they need the presence of God and the touch of God, and it all comes [from] the ministry of the Word.”

After spending nearly 15 years in the corporate world, she founded From His Presence, which is based in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Called to preaching, intercession and prophetic ministry, she also helps apostles and pastors amplify their voices by maximizing their ministries online. She says that e-commerce is “the vehicle God has invented in order to bring the great transfer of wealth into the kingdom,” and her ministry trains fivefold ministers to “tap into that river.”

“Jesus said to do business,” she says. “He said, ‘Occupy till I come’ [Luke 19:13], and that word in the Greek means to ‘do business.’ The church is always supposed to be honest and ethical, of course, but being honest and ethical in our business doesn’t exempt us from doing business.”

During the pandemic and the resultant unemployment, giving at many churches is down.

“Many pastors are panicking right now because they were not equipped for their churches to be shut down—but the bills still have to be paid,” Rohrbaugh says.

Rohrbaugh offers hope for future ministry funding.

“Every pastor and church can and should be involved in e-commerce,” she says. “I believe that’s where the great transfer of wealth that’s been prophesied will happen.”

Learn more about Rohrbaugh’s business and ministry on the Charisma Connection podcast.