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Joel Young - Lead Minister |
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 At first glance my life seems pretty cut and dry. I have been in church every Sunday since the day I was born, I accepted Christ and was baptized on my tenth birthday, and committed myself to full-time ministry at the age of seventeen; seems pretty effortless from the outside. Most people think that I have lived my entire life without a speck of doubt as to what I truly believed or what I would do with my life, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Growing up in church meant that I had to constantly deal with what I viewed as “my parent’s faith”. I hated being drug to every church service and being forced to be involved in stuff like the church choir and youth group when I really didn’t want to. These things made it hard for me to truly seek what God wanted for my life, but the more I committed myself to the task of reading and exploring the Bible and sincerely praying for what God wanted my life to be, the more He truly showed me.
Even from an early age I truly felt that my life had no direction, and was dangerously close to entering into the world of drug and alcohol abuse that most of my friends had fallen into. But through a lot of prayer and seeking, God gave me a purpose in sharing His message with others. God also allowed me to meet my wife Jenna very early in life. At the time I was fifteen and she was sixteen, but we both knew that our relationship was arranged by God for a great purpose. She was an answer to so many prayers and helped to keep me from many of the pitfalls that were lying in wait for me.
Ten years later, we have a son named Reed and have been married for over three years. Jenna has been my partner in life, ministry, and everything else and even though neither one of us is perfect we know that our relationship with God and with each other will always be there.
Now, my main focus in life is helping people relate to the message of Jesus Christ. I want nothing more than to show people how relevant and life-changing the grace and love of God can be.
That’s my story.
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