I’ve been Worship Arts Pastor at Vertical Church for 7 months now. That’s CRAZY! In 2011, I’ve held 3 full-time jobs, whereas in the past 4 years, I had only one full-time job. I think it would be good to go back and recap how this all came to be, complete with a timeline, if only for me to be able to recount God’s blessings on my life. So, in a series of posts, I’m going to go back to when this whole Vertical Church thing started for me and take you along on what has been nothing less than a supernatural move of God.

It started, actually, in early 2010. I was still working for my previous church as Director of Youth Ministries and Assistant Music Director. In fact, I was in the middle of one of the most fruitful ministry years I’d ever had. But I was starting to feel something very odd – something that didn’t really make much sense. I felt that God was calling me to be involved, in some capacity, with the church on a different level. That was about all I knew. I didn’t sense a call to something “greater,” just something “different,” while still within the context of the local church.

I first met Mike P many years back when I was around 13, but hadn’t really had much conversation with him. In fact, I’d guess that there were roughly 15 years or so that we’d not even spoken. However, I had heard that he was involved in ministry and I knew that, like me, he was a musician. So, that being said, I decided it might be cool to invite him to lunch. So we met for lunch at Two Guys Grille. We exchanged pleasantries and began talking about ministry. I learned at that time that God had placed a unique desire on his heart, which we both had in common. I learned that Mike was feeling a call to church planting, and instantly I felt God’s desire for me, but in the interest of convenience, I tabled it for a while.

We left our meeting and I told Mike I’d hit him up again sometime for lunch. Maybe we’d do Chinese next time.

Stay tuned for Part Two.