From ‘Chasing the Wrong Things’ to Living a Life of Ministry

When Mario Hood graduated high school, he knew exactly what he wanted to do. He was going to go to college, get a business degree, and open a club in Las Vegas. But God had other plans.

A good friend encouraged him to apply to Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee. The school was Christian, and for Hood, faith was not something he was interested in. But he wanted a college degree, and Lee University seemed to be the way to go.

“I’d never prayed, but I’d seen it in the movies: You got down on your knees in front of your bed,” Hood says. “So a month before classes were supposed to begin, I did that prayer. I said, ‘All right, God, if you’re real, if you get me into this school, then I’ll give my life to you.’ Somehow they accepted me.”

Hood was baptized halfway through his freshman year of college. After a yearlong period of wrestling with his calling, Hood finally surrendered and changed his major from business to Bible. He’s now the co-lead pastor of Church on the Living Edge in Orlando, Florida.

“I really believe that when you live into what God is calling you to do, then no matter your past, no matter what’s going on in the present, he can redeem that, and he can empower you to do that,” Hood says. “A lot of times, I feel like it’s not me doing the work; it’s me fulfilling the call that God has given me to do the work.”

A Long Road

Fulfilling God’s call has been a lengthy process for Hood. Growing up in South Carolina with a single mom, Hood struggled during high school to stay focused on academics, especially due to moving from a small, private school to a public high school.

“The world opened up to me, and I ended up getting into bad things,” Hood says. “Drugs, chasing the wrong things, living for the wrong things. Four years went by really quick.”

He also hated public speaking.

“My senior year, I was in a public speaking class, and I wouldn’t do a speech – I never would,” Hood says. “The last speech, my teacher told me I had to do something or I wouldn’t get a passing grade. So I did the speech. But I remember telling her, ‘I will never be a public speaker in my life.’”

As someone who tries to be a man of his word, Hood struggled with his emerging call as a pastor partly because of this vow.

“I had a lot of people telling me, ‘You’re definitely called to ministry,’ and they were right,” Hood says. “One of the reasons I was running from the call was that I remembered the words I told my teacher. But I realized that I was listening to the wrong voice at that time.”

After finally accepting the call to ministry, Hood started out as a youth pastor, growing a program from six students to around 120 over the course of six years. To Hood, this growth was a reinforcement of his mission.

“When I came to the church, the pastor and the church were so open to whatever way leads people to Jesus that’s holy and righteous,” Hood says. “I was able to bring ideas, have them be received, and have them be implemented in the youth ministry at the time. That made me feel validated in my call, and I got to see the fruit of that, which was to reach a generation through a different way.”

Back to the Classroom

Hood’s calling expanded as he transitioned from youth and young adults pastor to the executive pastoral team. It was during this time of transition that Hood decided to go back to school.

“Even while I was the youth pastor, I could see that God might want me to lead this church at some point,” Hood says. “If I was going to have that honor, I needed some degrees. I had no scope for how to think critically. So I started praying.”

In the end, the lead pastor of Church on the Living Edge at the time, Mark Chironna, encouraged him to look into the Master of Arts in Ministry program at Portland Seminary, as he had previously achieved a Doctor of Ministry at the seminary. After meeting with Loren Kerns (who was serving as director of doctoral programs at the time), Hood was sold.

“I knew from that conversation, ‘I’m supposed to do this,’" Hood says.

 “So I ended up applying for the masters program.”

After spending a year in the program, Hood knew he wanted to continue his degree with a PhD.

“As I took that one step of faith and went back to education after being out of school for 10 years, God just kept allowing those dominoes to fall to make it easier,” Hood says. “I knew it would be beneficial if I ever took over the church one day. What I didn’t realize is how much personally going through the programs would shape me and change me and help me grow. I saw how I would intellectually improve, but I didn’t realize how much personal transformation I would go through as well.”

A New Perspective on Ministry

Coming from a Pentecostal church, the Quaker tradition was unfamiliar territory for Hood.

“To me, the infusion of the ethos of rest, the idea of slowing down in order to speed up, was so countercultural to what I was used to that I was a little resistant at first,” Hood says. “But as I began to lean into those things, I saw how much God was in those spiritual rhythms. It changed the way I do ministry and changed the way I saw other people change.”

Hood’s time at Portland Seminary also expanded his view of the world, as he was able to attend intensives in London, Hong Kong and Cape Town as part of the Doctor of Leadership in Global Perspectives program.

“For somebody who grew up where I was from, going to Hong Kong and Cape Town was something that other people got to do,” Hood says. “Being able to not only go to school, but to be the first person in my family to get their undergraduate degree, master’s degree and doctorate – and travel the world while doing it – has just been life-changing.”

Hood’s educational experience has translated into his ministry at Church on the Living Edge, where he’s served as co-lead pastor since 2024. And now he’s giving back as a project faculty member at Portland Seminary.

“The care, the love, the support that my professors gave me – not only as a student, but as a person – is what continues in me,” Hood says. “I love being a project faculty member because I get to do that for other people now. I love watching people go through that same transformation.”