My Journey Pioneering 6:22 Ministries (2002-2009)
Youth worship nights, our first 24-hour event, worship albums, tours and festivals
In the coming weeks, I want to share some of my story and ministry journey. Why? To celebrate God’s faithfulness and to encourage those who may be called to pioneer places of God’s presence in their cities through worship and prayer.
In my David’s Tabernacle book, I wrote about 6:22 Ministries (now called Presence Pioneers), which we launched after I encountered God at a summer youth camp in 2002. That fall we started hosting Friday night youth worship nights in Greenville, NC. I was 18 years old. I put a band together, rallied our little youth group to be volunteers, printed some hot pink flyers, and invited everyone we knew.
For seven years, from 2002 to 2009, we gathered on Friday nights with anywhere from probably 40 to 100 people (if my memory is accurate), mostly students, showing up to worship for 2-3 hours.
The Friday nights were our basic rhythm of regular worship, but over the years we also expanded as a ministry. Here are some highlights.
6:22 co-hosted our first 24-hour worship event in May of 2003. For lack of better terms, we literally called it “24 Hour Worship.” We did these annually at first. In 2007, we did one every month.
Over the years, our 6:22 Band traveled around to lead worship at youth groups, concerts, and camps.
The 6:22 Band also recorded four albums of original worship music. A few of them were actually pretty good. You can take a listen if you’re curious.
We took our Friday nights on the road and did two ministry “tours” - one to youth groups around Greenville (The Rediscovery Tour in 2006) and one to churches around eastern North Carolina (The New Beginnings Tour in 2008).
Worshipfest was our annual worship festival/conference on our 6:22 anniversary every fall. Hundreds would gather for a few days of worship, teaching, workshops, and celebration. Jonathan & Melissa Helser, Enter the Worship Circle and others came in to lead worship.
Following the New Beginning Tour, the 2008 Worshipfest (on 08-08-08) was held at the Greenville Convention Center with over 1000 people in attendance. It was the largest event we ever hosted.
My wife Shepard was around during this season, and 6:22 was very formative for her and many other young people in eastern North Carolina. It was special.
As the leader of the ministry, it was a beautiful and messy season of learning to pioneer while in my late teens and early 20s. I made lots of mistakes, and I was very immature in many ways. I know people were hurt, neglected, and disillusioned at times. I wish I had led better, but I think I was generally trying my best.
In retrospect, despite my mistakes, there’s nothing I would have rather done in those years of my life. I always encourage teenagers and young adults to go hard after Jesus in their younger years. They won’t regret being extravagant in their worship, prayer, mission, and ministry. We went hard after God, and I don’t regret a thing.
The next chapter will be about our years leading the Boiler Room from 2009 to 2016.
P.S. For those who want to go down the 6:22 rabbit hole, we still have hundreds of photos up on our old 6:22 Ministries Flickr account and some old videos on a Youtube channel.
Wow, what an awesome journey! It's so cool to see how 6:22 grew and impacted so many people. Thanks for sharing the story—such an inspiration to go all in for God, no matter where you start!