Our Personal Journey...

Like every church-planter before us, God has brought us through a sovereign journey in preparing us for this mission. We were both won to Christ as seniors in college, myself (Bret) in 1989, from a nominal Christian background, and Jorie in 1990, from a Jewish family. I was born and raised in Reno, NV while Jorie was born in Illinois and raised in Southern California.

We met through the same church and campus outreach that introduced us to Christ, and got married in June of 1992. Together we served in on-campus ministry for five years at the University of Southern California, and had our first daughter in June of 1994. For the next twelve years we helped develop an international, church-based campus ministry known as Every Nation Campus Ministries, ultimately serving as the International Directors and helping the ministry to grow to over 300 church-based campus outreaches around the world. We also started and managed the staff development program for the parent ministry, Every Nation Ministries, which trained hundreds of campus and church-planting missionaries to develop their teams of ministry supporters. It was an exciting but hectic time of seeing God's kingdom expand around the world, and of seeing an army of missionaries deployed to start churches and campus outreaches.

On a personal note, we had three more children by 2001, two more girls and then a boy, and settled into the southern area of Los Angeles as a family. Jorie home schooled the children and remained active in the ministry. By 2005, we began sensing that God was calling me to phase out of my administrative duties with the rapidly growing ministry and for both of us to focus more on ministering directly to people through evangelism and discipleship. These were the areas of passion for us, and the type of work we were most gifted to do. At this same time, a guest speaker at our church prophesied over us that God was preparing us to plant and lead a church that would reach and minister to the multitudes. This was followed by three more prophecies over the next six months, each from a different individual, saying the same thing. This excited our hearts and bore witness with our spirits.

I was pursuing a Masters of Arts in Global Leadership from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA, while both of us were finishing a two-year lay Bible school known as Every Nation Leadership Institute. We felt called to finish these commitments, as well as faithfully and successfully transfer our existing ministry commitments, before moving on to plant a church. This process was accelerated in the fall of 2005 when a complete restructuring of Every Nation Ministries began taking place.

We both felt that the necessary changes taking place in the ministry, both locally and extra-locally, presented the best opportunity for us to pass our ministry responsibilities on to a new generation of leaders and to pursue our ultimate calling as church planters. We moved to Orlando, FL for a year to help with a church plant there first. While in Orlando we focused primarily on "planting a church in our home" by spending extra time investing in our children and our marriage after twelve hectic years of ministry. I also worked diligently to finish my final year at Fuller Seminary, through their online program, as we prayerfully prepared for a brand new church plant in the Las Vegas area.

In the Summer of 2007 we finally moved to the Southern Highlands community of Las Vegas, settled our children into a new school and a new life in Las Vegas, and began the exciting mission of planting All People Christian Church, a missional church "OF All People, THROUGH All People, TO All People!"