Seeing the miracle working power of God in operation at an early age caused Pastor Troy to desire more than just "Casual Christianity" and from a very young age his desire for the presence of God and his thrist for the Word of God far surpassed his years.
The move from California also expedited Pastor Troy initial experience with the Holy Spirit as well. Attending Old Time tent meetings and revival services with his grandfather, he was captivated by
the power and anointing that accompanied the preaching of the Word of God. It was during his early teens that he knew without a doubt that he would one day take this
Gospel unto all the world.
In 1986, Pastor Troy married his high school sweetheart,
Melanie, when they were just nineteen years old. A year later they moved to Baton Rouge, LA where he attended Bible College before finding out that Melanie was expecting their first child.
Within just a few short months Melanie's health deteriorated and her weight dropped to an alarming level and it was decided that she would return to Texas to seek medical help while staying with her parents.
Upon examination doctors informed her that she was near liver failure and was also very close to miscarrying the unborn child and
could have actually died herself! We immediately begin to
cry out to God for her healing and for the safety and protection of the baby struggling to survive within her womb.
Once more they saw the mighty hand of God move in the miraculous and in April of 1988, a healthy Melanie gave birth to a baby boy weighing a whopping 9 lbs 11 oz named, Jered! Today he is a 6'4" young man living back in Texas.
Following their return to Texas, Pastor Troy worked in the field of finance and served in various capacities in his local church including that of praise & worship leader. He would also serve in the capacity of cell minister while a part of the 7,000 member Trinity Fellowship Church in Amarillo, Texas and a mentor to other young men called to preach the Gospel.
During this time Melanie gave birth to their second child, Kayla, and Pastor Troy continued to serve the local church, grow in his call to the ministry and prosper in the finance industry as well. For all intents and purposes, they represented the ideal
Christian Couple, but they both knew that God had
so much more in store for them.
One Wednesday evening Melanie suggested that they "break from routine" and visit a small church located just a block from the cities "Red Light" district. Pastor Troy agreed and they loaded up the children and commenced to make their way to Gospel Light Fellowship. They joined the dozen or so people that night for service and upon Pastor Troy going to retrieve the baby from the nursery he was approached by the pastor (whom he had never met or had a conversation with).
The pastor shared with him that he would be out of town the following week and wondered if he would be willing to preach for him in his absence. Somewhat stunned and not realizing completely what was being asked he immediately said, "Yes."
He preached that service and afterwards he was approached by a member of the board of elders who advised him that the pastor would still be out on Sunday and wondered if he would be available to fill in again then. Once more, he agreed. This scenario repeated itself for
the next six weeks before the pastor returned to resign because of health issues.
Over the next nine months Pastor Troy continued to serve the small church as their interim pastor while continuing to work full time and advance in the finance indsutry. In August of 1991 he was called into the branch managers office and told of a coming promotion that would require relocating to the Dallas Metroplex.
While serving as a "pastor" was not what he had initially felt called to do, he had certainly developed a great love for the people in the community and had greatly enjoyed the opportunity to serve and
preach the Word of God three times weekly in his interim capacity.
Pastor Troy scheduled a meeting with the Board of Elders to discuss his pending departure and to provide them with ample time to find his replacement following his stint as their interim pastor.
Upon hearing the news of his move the eldership unanimously agreed that they would like him to stay on as the permanent senior pastor of this church. They had all seen that this was a young man of vision, dedication to the Lord Jesus Christ and that
he possessed an anointing and fire to make a real difference in this at-risk community.
He and Melanie sought the Lord concerning the offer and soon knew that this was the direction that God had called them to go. He resigned from the finance company and left behind the salary, stock options, health insurance and profit sharing for what would become a tremendous journey of faith, provision, and growing in Christ.
Gospel Light Fellowship had at one time been a very virbrant church in the city. It had been planted by a very dynamic pastor and had grown steadily in numbers and in impact in the area. The church at the time Pastor Troy was brought in was not only in decline, but it had hit
rock bottom.
The church was located in an area of the city that had suffered rapid economic and social decline. Many of the twenty or so who attended regularly were up in age and the others had suffered through a number of church splits and dissapointments. While desiring to see the church resume its place of ministry in the community, most of the members no longer felt the urgency nor had the determination to press through one more time.
Within two months of assuming the position of full-time senior pastor of the church the eldership of Gospel Light met with Pastor Troy and shared their intentions of resigning from the church and leaving. Most of the congregation members were either their family members or closely involved with them.
Instead of closing the church and selling the property, they recognized the
passion and zeal that this young minister had for the Lord and for the work of the ministry and turned the entire church and mininstry over to him to establish the type of church that God had placed upon his heart-complete with a paid for building and the financial resources to maintain the work for the next six months!
Rather than feeling abandoned, Pastor Troy and Melanie felt as thought
the opportunity of a lifetime had just been presented to them. While outwardly they were handed a sixty year old drafty facility surrounded by poverty, drugs, prostitution and violence"”inwardly they were handed
a stepping stone to desitiny!
Together with the dozen members that remained they began to pray and seek the face of God concerning the vision that He would impart for this Body of Believers. "A mutli-cultural, outreach minded, Spirit-filled Church" would be raised up from the ashes of what had previously been on this soil.
During the next twelve years this vision would become
The Dayspring Dream Center whose statement of purpose was taken directly from the scripture in which the name was derived:
Luke 1:79 "To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace."Dayspring would truly become an
enigma of sorts to the local church community. Located in what could have possibly been the most crime riddled area of the city, it became a completely racially integrated congregation with a multi-cultural pastoral team without the struggle of trying to make it come together.
Building upon the principles of the first century church:
evangelism and discipleship, the church would soon go and do things for the
Kingdom that far surpassed their own size or financial abilities.
The Adopt-A-Block mininsty would serve forty-eight adjacent blocks surrounding the church each Saturday morning through servant evangelism and door-to-door prayer and ministry. The
Jesus Café served a hot lunch to an average of 250 homeless, needy, and single moms with a afternoon service that attracted as many as 200 at times.
The Raven's Nest men's one year live-in discipleship program and the women's
Vineyard program would see dozens of men and women set free from drugs, alcohol, abuse and crime and discipled to "go into all the world and preach" themselves.
The Daypring School of Mininstry and Biblical Studies, a two year college-level training program was established to train leaders and the
Raven School of Evangelism was birthed to
raise up a new generation of anointed soul-winners.
Raven Mininstries, the outreach and evangelism arm of the church, was birthed out of the determination to
Restore
A Vision &
Evangelize
Nations. They began by taking nine people to a
Mardi Gras Outreach in New Orleans and would soon be taking teams numbering close to 100 in size!
The teams would soon be traveling to areas such as
Los Angeles' "Skid Row" and Hollywood Blvd and into
New York City. Chapters were being started on the West Coast and in the Southwest United States.
In the Spring of 2003 and at the "height" of the mininsty, the Holy Spirit began to speak simultaneously to Pastor Troy and Melanie concering an impending change that was coming. Having spent their twenties and early thirties ministering, loving, and equipping the Body of Christ at Dayspring, they were torn by what they felt God was speaking to them.
In the Summer of 2003 they had clear direction from the Holy Spirit that they were to resign their position at Dayspring and
move to New Orleans. They were given just two clear directives:
"Go and begin to NETWORK together with the Body of Christ there, and that He was sending a great time of REVIVAL upon the Gulf Coast."
Having been given
their marching orders and being instructed specifically as to when they would depart (November 17, 2003) and with exactly how much money they were to take with them ($3,000) they loaded up their belongings, Jered (15 at the time), Kayla (12 at the time) and made their way to New Orleans with nowhere to live and no means of financial support"”but they had the most important thing:
A Word From The Lord!God would soon lead them to a place to live and settle in as they prepared to dive into one of the Nation's most notorious cities. With eleven major housing projects, the highest murder rate in the Nation and a magnet for sin and debauchery:
Bourbon Street, there was never a lack of mininstry opportunities.
Taking the fight to the devil, they began hitting the streets of the
French Quarter and conducting outreaches in places such as the notorious Iberville Housing Projects"”with amazing results!
People were repenting and coming to Christ in the hundreds!
Pastor Troy also began to go into local churches and sharing the vision to reach the lost with pastors and congregations.
He developed strong relational ties across racial, cultural and denominational lines based upon the one common thread of bringing people to JESUS.Their Raven
SOUL PATROL teams hit Bourbon Street with a vengeance and saw
God's manifest miracles and abounding grace poured out as thousands would literally
bow their knee and receive Jesus as Lord and Savior right on the filthy, beer drenched streets of the Big Easy.
Local churches started to
"Catch the Vision" and would join the team for community outreaches and
"Midnight Madness" services in Jackson Square where we would set up and feed the hundreds of homeless, the palm and tarot card readers, and then have open-air praise and worship, testimonies, preaching and one on one witnessing.
Pastor Troy also continued to travel and preach the Word of God in churches across the nation and began to see the fires of revival sparked in lives and vision birthed in pastors and people alike to be world shakers and history makers for the Kingdom of God!
Then on August 27, 2005 the team, now consisting of Pastor Alex & Holly Hill, Todd & Christy Bohn, Thomas & Doree Derrick, Pastor Graham & Sue Scott and all the kids, made the decision to move just out of harms way of
Hurricane Katrina that was bearing down on the Gulf Coast at near category four strength.
Crammed into the last three remaining hotel rooms in Vidalia, Louisiana (just northwest of New Orleans) they watched as New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagain breathed a sigh of relief that the storm had passed and they we had
"dodged a bullet" only to return to the television hours later to report that levees were failing throughout the city and that
New Orleans was being covered by a deluge.
Seeing from news reports that their homes were also in the flood plane, the team stood upon the Word of God:
2 Corinthians 4:8-9 "We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed."They immediately "went mobile" with the work of the ministry taking food to
the thousands of refugees who fled the city with nowhere to go and little or no finances to sustain them. They prayed for people in parking lots, on roadsides, in disaster relief shelters and amongst the rubble of battered and destroyed properties.
Soon the team would find themselves traversing some of
the hardest hit areas such as Gulf Port, Miss., Bogalusa and Slidel, La., They were joined by a network of friends from California, Texas, Kentucky, and many other places with semi-loads of food, water, clothing and especially the hope that exists only in
Jesus!
Often working from 6:00 AM to after midnight each day delivering supplies, clearing trees with chainsaws, and sharing Christ with the lost and hurting"”
they saw the spiritual manifestation of the Revival that God had promised. Never did they imagine that an event such as Katirna would serve as the
catalyst for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
When relief teams were being allowed back into the City, Pastor Troy and the team caravaned across the patched-together Causeway spanning Lake Pontchatrain and found a city resembling the scene of an
apocalyptic science fiction film.
Upon reentering the city, Pastor Troy and Pastor Hill found that their homes had also been victimized by the after effects of Hurricane Katrina. Still undetered,
they set out to beat the devil to the punch and establish
Jesus' Kingdom through relief, restoration and revival!
In the months following Hurricane Katrina
our teams witnessed to thousands of people. Some of the people were workers who had come to the city to help rebuild, some were military and ploice personel assigned to the task of protecting people during the rebuilding process, some were returning refugees coming back in an attempt to salvage what they could from battered homes and lives.
The amazing testimony of it all is that we have truly seen
REVIVAL break lose. The revival did not come in
typical fashion or in the
typical place"”but out in the trenches of this world"”
where lost and hurting people are!
In just the four months following Hurricane Katrina,
we saw over 800 come to know Jesus"”just on Bourbon Street alone! THAT is "revival" no matter how one looks at it! Praise the Lord.
In the three years of ministry in New Orleans we also planted and pioneered the
New Orleans International Church. This work continues there in the city under a tent at a local outreach center under the direction of Raven Ministries' evangelist, Todd Bohn. Prior to Hurricane Katrina is was developing to be an outreach motivated church targeting the housing projects and French Quarter.
With the closure of the housing projects and the departure of their residents, NOIC is serving as a place of worship for the many transcient workers and displaced people coming through the area.
In Novemeber of 2005, the Holy Spirit began to once again speak to Melanie and I simultaneously while on a trip to Florida to pick up my son's car. We had driven towards the
Daytona Beach area and
immediately knew that this was our next stop on the way towards the destiny that God had for us.
Not unlike New Orleans,
Daytona is a hot bed of activity year-round. With annual NASCAR events drawing crowds in excess of 200,000 per race and the Speed Weeks, Bike Week (with tens of thousands of bikers), Spring Break, Black College Reunion, and Biketoberfest there is a
steady stream of tourists and
international travelers coming right to the doorstep of this city.
Placing it on the backburner of prayer we continued to inquire of the Lord as to the details surrounding this move. It was then that He revealed to us that this would be a base for expanding the ministries impact along the East Coast and
into other nations of the world as well!
On a trip in late Spring of 2006, Pastor Troy and Melanie visited Daytona Beach to look for a house to rent once they moved there. It was on this trip that they visited a local church and
Pastor Troy was invited to join a team traveling to minister in Amsterdam in August 2006. He immediately knew that this was the direction that God was setting before him so he agreed to join the team.
Since relocating to Daytona Beach in June 2006, Pastor Troy has stayed busy traveling the country, ministering in churches, leading outreach teams, mentoring leaders, and equipping the saints for the work of the ministry.
UPDATE: In 2006 Pastor Troy and Melanie returned to New Orleans! The Daytona work is being overseen by Pastor Alex and Holly Hill.
Presently he oversees RAVEN teams in New Orleans, Austin, Amarillo, Albuquerque, and regional teams covering Northern Indiana, Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Eastern Pennsvania, and Baltimore:with a vision to raise up RAVEN's in every major U.S. city in the next ten years as well as invading Europe, Africa and Asia with a strategic plan for grassroots evangelism and revival!
PERSONAL:
Pastor Troy has been married to Melanie since 1986 and they have three children; Jered is now 24 and married to Anne. They live in the New Orleans area. Kayla, is 21 and actively involved with Raven Ministries along with her husband, Joshua Rowden. Kelsey (our 21 year old adopted daughter!) also lives in New Orleans and works with the ministry.
Pastor Troy attended Amarillo College for two years, studied at World Evangelism Bible College and International Theological Seminary. He continues to be an ardent student of the Word of God, a competent apologist, and received an Honorary Doctorate in 1997 based upon his contributions to the work of the Gospel ministry. He is ordained with the Church of God (Cleveland).
The Raven School of Evangelism continues to serve as a power resource to churches and indiviudals desiring to be equipped and released into full time evangelistic ministry and he also coordinates and leads mission teams into some of the most desperate (for Jesus) areas of this county with astounding results.
Also known as a gifted writer and former publisher of the Footsoldier Christian Newspaper, Pastor Troy hopes to have several book projects completed - just as soon as he gets a moments break! He is available to speak and minister at your local church or city wide gathering as scheduling permits.
