Greetings Beloved! Happy Holy Week!
This week has always been very special to me, not only because of what Jesus did for us on the cross roughly 1992 years ago, but also because of how He reached me on Easter weekend 19 years ago. You may have heard me share this testimony, but on Easter Sunday 2006, I came to Holmes Beach looking for a woman to commit adultery with…and I found a group of Christians having a sunrise service instead.
I didn’t even know what Easter was back then, and I don’t recall anything that was actually said at the gathering, but I remember so clearly going from having ZERO feelings of remorse over what I was doing when I arrived…to having INTENSE godly sorrow within minutes. This one single moment was the turning point that ultimately led me to salvation 34 days later. It has also served as the clearest sign I’ve ever had that God wanted me to “take church outside” as a ministry call.
The story was published a few years ago in a local Christian newspaper. You can read it below:
Thank you Jesus!
And what an amazing week+ it has been leading up to these Holy-days.
On Palm Sunday, President Trump announced that there would be a grand celebration of Holy Week, with services happening from Wednesday-Sunday.
And then he posted this powerful message on social media:
The same day, The White House also put out a powerful proclamation of the gospel, which included a prayer “for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon our beloved nation”. You can read it here: Presidential Message on Holy Week, 2025 – The White House
Last night, during the White House worship service, President Trump even declared the gospel with his own mouth:
Fittingly, this week President Trump also had the National Champion Ohio State Buckeyes to the White House to celebrate their victory (which just happened to occur on Inauguration Day).
As you probably recall, Ohio State’s football team has been in revival all year and has even led large campus outreaches that brought many students to Christ. They also recently unveiled the design of their 2024 Championship rings, and wouldn’t you know it- there is a cross in the middle to represent how their faith was such a key factor in their teams’ success.
This week also, the college ministry Unite US, closed out it’s semester of revival meetings with another powerful one at Baylor. Get this- THOUSANDS of students at Baylor gathered for 72 HOURS and prayed for revival to touch the campus. In response, 5000 students gathered for worship and hundreds came to Christ.
Read more about that here- UniteUS Closes Out ‘Incredible’ Semester of Outreach With 5,000 Baylor Students Worshipping Jesus | CBN News
This one ministry alone has already been able to reach over 100,000 students just since September of 2023, when this nationwide college revival movement began to really explode.
On top of that, new reporting that just came out suggests that about 30,000,000 more people in America are following Jesus now than just 4 years ago. They’re saying that this is clearest sign they’ve seen in over 10 years that we are in a true spiritual renewal.
Read more about that here- Commitment to Jesus in the U.S. Hits a 10-Year High – RELEVANT
Also, recent reports show that Bible reading is exploding across America, especially among young men:
All this to say- God is clearly giving our great nation (at least) one more Great Awakening. Because of that, this is the time when we must stay focused on our forerunner mission to bring the power, presence and Word of God boldly into public places…so we can help Him bring in this mighty harvest!
On that note, here are a few neat moments from the last two weeks at Siesta. Brother Jack feeding living bread to about 20 hungry students:
And brother Gene doing the same for a group that is about the same size (some of the crowd not pictured). I was told this group of TEENS even cheered for him when he finished preaching!
This past weekend at Siesta was great all around too. TONS of people were there, MANY people stopped to listen and soak, and we got to give out a good amount of tracts and pray for a good amount of people. Super thankful that Rachael took some great pics too!
It was also really special to have two young men get baptized. SO crazy too that right after I got done sharing a message at the shore about how baptism is a funeral for your old man, and how going in the water represents his death…the speaker battery literally died right when he went into the water! Tell me God doesn’t know how to make a point!
Watch below.
Also very special was seeing our bro AJ preach for the first time. As you may recall, when we first met AJ, he was attempting to transition becoming a woman. Now he is following and serving God as the man he was created to be. So cool!
It was also great to minister that morning at Pastor Robin’s church- The House Chapel. I shared a message on the revival happening across America and the need for the people of God to each of us to do our part to win souls and take back territory. Here’s one video of the prayer at the altar.
On Saturday, we had a good crowd at Riverwalk, and we got to minister to a lot of people. We also saw a soccer team from Cincinatti that we had met last year at the park. Last year, one of the kids got physically healed in front of the entire team, and all of them ended up praying to receive Jesus. This is them last year:
It was amazing to hear them tell me on Saturday that what happened last year impacted them strongly. I ended up ministering to one of the payers for close to 30 minutes and he was super hungry to follow God more fully. I also found out that they are actually the youth team for the MLS team- FC Cincinnati. That means there’s a good chance that some of these kids could go pro in the days to come, which is SO cool!
On Friday there was a good crowd at the Riverwalk, and we were super blessed to have Rene and Maria back with us as well as our new brother Adam. Many were ministered to that night and several prayed to receive Jesus. Here’s one family getting ministered to at the end:
That night a couple on vacation from the Boston area came over and heard me preach for a while and spoke with us afterwards. They were believers and were seeking God on how they could become bolder and reach more people in their area. They said that they were SO inspired by what we were doing, that they wanted to start doing something similar. It also happened to be the man’s birthday which he took as a sign of a new beginning.
He ended up coming to Riverwalk on Saturday and talking to me for almost an hour about how he could do outreaches like ours in Boston. Super cool!
BIG thanks to Karson, Meredith, Rene, Maria, Adam, Thom, Dave, Gene, Paul, Mike F, Jayson, Amber, Mike M, Jack, Rachael, Tom, Julie, AJ, Jeremiah, Joe and Lexi for coming out to serve. Amazing job everyone!
Also, BIG props to brother Gene who hit the trifecta and came to all 3 outreaches!
This weekend will be amazing, as we will be entering the conversation in so many people’s minds because of Easter. Some have even estimated that over half of US Adults will attend Church this weekend. It is also going to be extra special because for the first time in 8 years the Eastern and Western Church will celebrate Easter on the same day, bringing even more unity in the spirit.
Hope you can make it out to the frontlines so we can celebrate Jesus’ death and Resurrection together!
Love and blessings!
Chris, Sofiya and Natalie
P.S.- I’ll be putting together a more detailed report on our trip to Miami for the MASSIVE pride event, but here is a short recap of what happened. It includes a CRAZY story of how we almost got shut down in the first 5 minutes by a gay code compliance officer…but God.