Stories of Proximity- TULSA, OK

Brad was a man with a checkered past, as he came in contact with Influencers and this thing called, The Journey.  No wonder he was a little skeptical at first.  He had grown up as a kid in Virginia and became an angry teenager involved in gang activity.  Brad is a big man and took on the role of "Debt Collector".  When he was only 15, one of his friends was shot and killed, and he discovered that the bullet was intended for him.  God guided him to a youth group and to a family where he first witnessed the concept of grace.  He found himself in the midst of happy, fun-loving, pure teenagers and a pastor and his family who showed him love without any agenda.  It was like he was in a foreign land.

He wrestled with God for quite awhile and fought off Depression and Self-Hate.  He couldn't handle the weight of God's grace for him.  He nearly committed suicide at one point, but God spared him.  He began pouring himself into church and later, helped to plant a church.  However, he had a conflict with his co-founder, and he became disillusioned with The Church.  This sent him into a downward spiral, back into anger and into an addiction to Pornography.

He ended up in Tulsa, where his wife's cousin and her husband lived.  The cousin's husband happened to be Frank Khalil, our Tulsa Regional Director.  Frank had been reaching out to Brad asking him to consider The Journey.  Being gun-shy to church activity, he was resistant, but something about what he saw in Frank intrigued him.  When Frank would not relent, Brad agreed to go to the first two Introductory sessions.

Brad saw the room full of white-collar, "CEO-types" and he was sure he was in the wrong group.  Whereas he wanted to run the other way, he stuck it out and realized it was exactly what his heart was longing for.  He came to realize that no matter what these men looked like on the outside, they were all there for the same reason.  They all wanted to learn what it meant to live for Jesus.

This former gang member, who once was angry and wounded and felt he had to work to please God, felt God asking him to just walk beside Him.  And not only that, he found a group of men who also wanted to walk beside him.  In what would seem most unlikely in the world culture, these men from opposite sides of the tracks formed bonds of brotherhood that became a powerful force.  Brad didn't realize how isolated he had become.

Brad is now leading his second Journey Group, co-Guiding with some of the men from his original group.  He continues to be amazed at how "the culture" of Influencers creates an atmosphere for life transformation.  In Brad's estimation, it's not the curriculum of The Journey as much as the heart of the process and the importance of living in Christian community.