Pastors: The Remarkable Shepherds Behind Miles McPherson, Noel Jones, Samuel Rodriguez and Sarah Jakes Roberts

Nicole Crank

Lead Pastor, Faith Church — St. Louis, MO

Official links: Website · Facebook · Instagram · X

Nicole Crank tells her own story without flinching, and it starts hard. A father who left before she was born. Molestation as a child.

Rape at 13, which, in her words, solidified her inability to trust. By high school she had no best friend, only “friends.” She chose a spouse poorly and ended up with a man who developed addiction issues and became physically abusive.

Her trust was completely eroded, and it affected her relationship with God — why trust Him, when everybody else had let her down? As a single mom, lonely and guarded, she started going back to church with a woman who kept inviting her even though she wasn't interested.

Her life didn't change in a day, she says, but she felt her course change one degree. She went back the next week, and the next, started talking to God again, and slowly healed. Then she met David Crank.

She threw away his phone number — who could trust a man? — but kept bumping into him for months, until her trust in God had grown enough to call. Several months after their first dinner, they were married.

Today Nicole and David are lead pastors of Faith Church, with eight campuses across Missouri, Illinois and Florida and thousands more online. She is a USA Today bestselling author, the author of I Will Thrive, and host of The Nicole Crank Show, broadcast around the world.

"I understand what it feels like to hurt. I now also understand what it feels like to be healed."

Crank built her ministry on the difference between surviving and thriving.

Through her show, her books, her conference speaking and her coaching community, she teaches people to measure impact the way she does — not in dollars or headcounts, but in the addict who puts down the drugs, the suicidal person who decides life is worth living, the broken family made whole again.

Faith Church was named one of the fastest-growing churches in the United States by Outreach Magazine — growth driven, she insists, one healed person at a time.

NicoleCrank.com — “David Crank”
NicoleCrank.com — “Don’t Let The Numbers Throw You”
Wikipedia — “Faith Church”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Miles McPherson  ·  Noel Jones

Miles McPherson

Founder & Senior Pastor, Rock Church — San Diego, CA

Official links: Website · Facebook · Instagram · X

Miles McPherson was born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island, one of five kids of a nurse and a police officer. Football was his way up: a high-school star recruited to the University of New Haven in 1978, where his play earned him a spot on the All-American team.

Drafted by the Los Angeles Rams and later traded to the San Diego Chargers, he played four years in the NFL as a defensive back. It was the realization of his dream — and he began to jeopardize it with a crushing cocaine habit.

After bingeing for an entire weekend, he called out to God, was delivered from the addiction that day, and never used again. The Christian Post records his own date for it: on April 12, 1984, he stopped doing cocaine and smoking marijuana.

He became a youth pastor, earned a Master of Divinity from Azusa Pacific University in 1991, and started the Rock Church in San Diego in 2000. The Rock has grown to more than 18,000 weekly attenders across five campuses, with services reaching the world through radio, TV and online streaming.

He is the author of eight books, the latest of them The Third Option, on racial reconciliation.

"For every way someone can be lost, we want to provide a practical way for them to be found in the very place they have ended up."

The man who was once lost in a weekend binge now spends his platform on finding people.

His book The Third Option argues that every person should be seen the way God sees them — made in His image — and he urges churches to put the label “neighbor” back on everybody and go into people's houses to hear their stories.

The former defensive back who nearly threw away the NFL now leads one of San Diego's largest churches, preaching that nobody is too far gone to be found.

Rock Church — “Pastor Miles”
The Christian Post — “Miles McPherson: US churches finally addressing racism because Satan overplayed his hand”
Andscape — “From the NFL to the pulpit: Retired Charger Miles McPherson now runs a megachurch in San Diego”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Mike Signorelli  ·  Nicole Crank

Noel Jones

Senior Pastor, City of Refuge Church — Gardena, CA

Official links: Website · Facebook · Instagram · X

Bishop Noel Jones was born poor in Spanish Town, Jamaica, on January 31, 1950, one of seven children of Bishop Robert Jones — a politician and Apostolic clergyman — and Marjorie Jones. One of his siblings is Grace Jones, the famed singer and actress. By his official biography, Jones suffered abuse as a child.

In 1965 his parents moved him and two of his siblings, Chris and Grace, to Syracuse, New York. He received his call to ministry at 19, attended St. Jago High School, and earned a Bachelor of Science in Theology from Aenon Bible College, later receiving an honorary doctorate from the International Circle of Faith College.

At 26 he accepted his first pastorate, at Bethel Temple of Longview in Longview, Texas. In 1994 he took over the Greater Bethany Community Church in South Central Los Angeles, succeeding Bishop Robert W. McMurray as pastor to about 1,000 members.

He grew the church so much that a new facility was built in Gardena to hold the flock — the City of Refuge, with a membership of about 17,000.

Television carried him further still: Jones was one of six pastors featured on the reality series Preachers of L.A., preaching to a congregation that includes many celebrity worshipers as well as the street kids of South Central.

The City of Refuge is more than a sanctuary. Its Sanctuary Choir's debut album, Welcome to the City, charted on the Billboard 200 and reached number one on the Billboard Top Gospel Albums chart. Jones's Greater Bethany years were captured in Sophie Fiennes's 2002 documentary Hoover Street Revival.

The boy from Spanish Town who was called at nineteen built a Los Angeles church whose pews, as Praise Cleveland noted, include many celebrity worshipers — in a congregation gathered from the streets of South Central, with a Gardena address.

Praise Cleveland — “Who Are The ‘Preachers Of L.A.’?: Bishop Noel Jones”
Wikipedia — “Noel Jones (Pentecostal bishop)”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Nicole Crank  ·  Philip Anthony Mitchell

Philip Anthony Mitchell

Lead Pastor, 2819 Church — Atlanta, GA

Official links: Website · Instagram · X

Philip Anthony Mitchell was born in Queens, New York, the son of immigrants from Trinidad who were believers — and, as he tells it, he did not believe what they believed. The Bible his parents read made no sense to him. At 12, he was selling crack.

By 17, he was robbing people at gunpoint, and he spent his 18th birthday on Rikers Island. Legal trouble pushed him out of New York, and he spent roughly another ten years running the streets in North Carolina.

By 24 he had a luxury car, a girlfriend and money in the bank — and no peace, no joy, and an emptiness he describes plainly: he was suicidal, and he survived an attempt.

Then his girlfriend walked away from a car crash and put on gospel music, the first he had ever heard, pacing their apartment with a hand raised, thanking God. He saw joy. He saw peace.

He crawled into the bathroom and started yelling at a God he didn't believe in — and says God revealed Himself to him in that bathroom. He never wanted to be a pastor. Reading Proverbs 3:5-6 on April 14, 2004, he felt called, ran from it for four years, and finally surrendered.

The church he leads in Atlanta took the name 2819 Church in January 2023, for Matthew 28:19, and has grown from fewer than 200 people to more than 6,000 a week.

"I enjoyed my sin. I enjoyed the life I was living."

Mitchell's following now fills stadiums. His church's ACCESS gathering — “That Powerful Hour of Prayer” — drew 80,000 free tickets, all claimed, at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, about thirteen times his weekly Sunday crowd, with tens of thousands more watching his services online each week. People line up as early as 5:30 a.m. for a seat at 2819.

His book Contend carries the same unflinching message he preached on The Breakfast Club: a surrendered life can be rewritten, no matter where it started.

RELEVANT — “‘I Enjoyed My Sin’: Pastor Philip Anthony Mitchell Tells ‘The Breakfast Club’ Why He Left the Streets for God Anyway”
RELEVANT — “80,000 Free Tickets Have Been Claimed for 2819 Church's Prayer Night at AT&T Stadium This Saturday”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Noel Jones  ·  R.A. Vernon

R.A. Vernon

Founder & Senior Pastor, The Word Church — Cleveland, OH

Official links: Website · Instagram · X

R.A. Vernon grew up in the former Longwood Estates public housing complex in Cleveland, and he says he committed the same minor crimes many city youths do. He was turned to Christianity at 15, when his uncle dragged him to church the morning after he was arrested for shoplifting.

After graduating from Cleveland State University and Moody Bible Institute, he became pastor of Second Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church in Cleveland, where his energy hooked older members and attracted new ones.

His energetic approach bothered the church's traditional leaders, and the falling-out turned bitter in September 2000: Vernon tried to fire the trustees, and the trustees locked him and his followers out of the church. He walked away with a few hundred followers and started over, holding services in the basement of Bedford Heights City Hall.

Then came the rebuild: a $500,000 transformation of an old movie theater in Maple Heights into The Word Church, and neighboring storefronts converted into a Word bookstore, childcare center, barber and beauty salon, and steak and seafood takeout — steps toward his vision of “Word City,” a church surrounded by the businesses and services its neighborhood needs.

Cleveland Scene later counted about 7,000 people regularly attending, sermons broadcast on BET and local television, and a nearly nine-acre compound in Warrensville Heights with a fitness center, restaurant, bookstore and childcare center — while Vernon himself owned his own construction, music and book companies.

"Pastors are beginning to meet all the needs of the community, more than just the spiritual needs. All you need can be in one place."

Vernon still leads The Word Church from Warrensville Heights, and he multiplies his reach through other pastors.

He co-founded the Vernon Family Foundation and R.A. Vernon Ministries, which aim to empower people through education, outreach and personal development, and he founded The Shepherds Connection, a group of some 200 senior pastors and their spouses whom he mentors in leadership and ministry development.

He holds a diploma, a master's and a Doctor of Ministry from Ashland Theological Seminary, and he is the author of several books — the pastor who was locked out now teaches hundreds of other pastors how to build.

Religion News Service — “NEWS FEATURE: Megachurch Wants to ‘Grow’ a City”
Cleveland Scene — “God's Disneyland”
The Word Church — “I'm New”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Philip Anthony Mitchell  ·  Ralph Douglas West

Ralph Douglas West

Founder & Senior Pastor, The Church Without Walls (Brookhollow Baptist Church) — Houston, TX

Official links: Website · X

Ralph Douglas West first preached at 16 in his native Houston. He sensed the call as a teenager — suddenly, as he tells it: he looked up in church and said, “I think the Lord is calling me to preach.” His pastor announced it the next Sunday, and the Sunday after that the boy preached his first sermon.

He went on to earn degrees at Bishop College, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Beeson Divinity School, where he received his Doctor of Ministry. In 1987 he became inspired by a message from God: go plant a church. So he did.

The Church Without Walls — formally Brookhollow Baptist Church — was launched from a meeting at his house in November 1987, beginning with approximately 32 people and worshipping first at the Brookhollow Marriott Hotel. The first property the young church bought was the old Houston Business Journal building, which they retrofitted into a church.

The name came out of a sermon series from the book of Acts: everything Jesus did of significance, West preached, was done outside — born outside, taught outside, fed the masses outside, died outside — so the walls could never contain the ministry.

The congregation that started with 32 people has grown into three church campuses with more than 20,000 members attending in person and online.

"I am honored and humbled by my appointment to serve as the inaugural ambassador for preaching and multiplying congregations for the Baptist World Alliance,"

West's pulpit now reaches far beyond Houston. The Baptist World Alliance appointed him its ambassador for preaching and multiplying congregations, a volunteer role advancing the global witness of the Baptist family — work he brings more than 50 years of preaching and 40 years of pastoral ministry to.

He also serves as an adjunct professor of preaching at Baylor University's Truett Theological Seminary and speaks at universities and seminaries across the United States and at Oxford. The teenager who had not one word to preach now teaches preachers on two continents.

Baptist Standard — “West appointed to ambassador role in BWA”
Faith and Leadership — “Ralph West: You can disagree and still come together”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  R.A. Vernon  ·  Raul Ries

Raul Ries

Senior Pastor, Calvary Chapel Golden Springs; President, Somebody Loves You Ministries — Diamond Bar, CA

Official links: Website

Raul Ries was born in Mexico City and came to the United States at ten with his mother, brother and sister, leaving behind an abusive, alcoholic father. Just out of high school, a fight put a choice in front of him: prison or the military.

At nineteen he entered the Marines and shipped off to Vietnam, where two years of combat and two near-death experiences only deepened the anger he carried. He came home and married Sharon, the girl he had fallen in love with through letters, but his abusiveness pushed the marriage to the edge of separation.

On Easter 1972, convinced Sharon would leave him, Raul waited for her and the children to come home from church so he could kill them. Instead, he struck the television with his rifle, it flickered on to Pastor Chuck Smith preaching, and the words cut through him.

Raul put the rifle down, got on his knees and surrendered his life to Jesus. Chuck Smith welcomed him in, and Raul was ordained as a pastor in November 1975.

The home Bible study that followed outgrew his house, then his kung fu studio, then a theater and a converted grocery store — until the church moved to Diamond Bar in 1993 and became Calvary Chapel Golden Springs, on 25 acres with a congregation his church puts at over 12,000.

"Pastor Chuck gave me an opportunity. I never had opportunities; I was always on my own. … He taught me how to love because all of my life, I hated people."

Raul tells the whole story in Fury to Freedom, his autobiographical book — later made into a film — and he has never stopped telling it. Through Somebody Loves You Ministries, his teaching airs on the radio nationwide on over 350 stations and in New Zealand, and he travels with the Somebody Loves You Crusades.

Through his missions ministry he journeys to South America, Europe, India, Japan and beyond to teach at pastors' conferences. The man who once waited with a rifle now spends his life making sure other angry, hurting people hear the same words that stopped him: somebody loves you.

Calvary Chapel Magazine — “A Generation Led to Jesus: Remembering Pastor Chuck, Part 6”
Calvary Chapel Golden Springs — “Biography”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Ralph Douglas West  ·  Rev. Dr. Gina M. Stewart

Rev. Dr. Gina M. Stewart

Senior Pastor, Christ Missionary Baptist Church — Memphis, TN

Official links: Website · X

In 1995, Gina Stewart became the first African American woman elected pastor of an established Black Baptist congregation in Memphis and Shelby County history, taking the pulpit at Christ Missionary Baptist Church — in a world where, as The Christian Century puts it, resistance to women in Black Baptist pulpits has never fully gone away.

She stayed, she preached, and she kept making history. In 2021 she was elected president of the Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission Society, the first woman ever to hold the highest post of a Black Baptist organization, and that same year she received the President's Volunteer Service Award from President Joseph R. Biden.

Then, in January 2024, she became the first woman ever to preach at the National Baptist Joint Board Session, the joint meeting of the four major Black Baptist denominations.

Her sermon, “What Will You Do With Jesus of Nazareth?”, drew on Claudia, the woman who spoke up for Jesus when it was unpopular — and some in the room chose not to attend, while many others stood and cheered. Clips of the sermon were viewed more than 270,000 times on her church's Facebook page.

Stewart has spent three decades proving that a called woman does not need permission to answer the call.

"Jesus had a whole theological conversation with a woman at a well who was coming to look for water"

Stewart still serves the Memphis congregation she has led since 1995. As Lott Carey president she significantly increased the organization's financial footprint and expanded its global mission partnerships, and she founded Greater Works, Inc., a nonprofit devoted to philanthropy and ministry development.

She serves on the national board of the NAACP — chairing its Religious Affairs Committee — and co-convenes the Women in Ministry Conference. Colleagues say she often puts it simply: she may be the first, but she does not want to be the last. Her whole career is an open door held wide for the women coming behind her.

Christian Theological Seminary — “PhD Student Gina Stewart Makes Preaching History”
Spelman College — “Baccalaureate Speaker”
The Christian Century — “Historic sermon by Gina Stewart at joint Black Baptist meeting draws cheers, controversy”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Raul Ries  ·  Ruddy Gracia

Ruddy Gracia

Founder & Senior Pastor, Segadores de Vida — Southwest Ranches, FL

Official links: Website · X

Ruddy Gracia tells a story that starts before he was even born. In his preaching, he describes how his mother — in a difficult economic situation, with a husband who drank heavily — was advised by witch doctors and given a dangerous medication to end her pregnancy. She took it, and he was born anyway.

Gracia grew up in that hard house and battled his own alcohol addiction before, as he tells it, Christ transformed his life. He and his wife Maria studied at Christ for the Nations Institute in Dallas, then planted a church aimed at South Florida's Hispanic community.

In April 1992, Segadores de Vida began in their apartment living room — a small group of people in a borrowed space. It did not stay small.

By 2007 the church had grown to almost 6,000 attendees, adding 2,800 people in a single year, and Outreach magazine named it the fastest-growing church in America on its Outreach 100 list, with 109 percent growth. Weekly attendance went on to average about 8,000, and in 2016 the church moved into a new building in Southwest Ranches.

The baby who was not supposed to be born built one of the largest Hispanic congregations in the country.

Gracia still leads Segadores de Vida with Maria, preaching in Spanish to a congregation that his church describes as one of the fastest-growing Hispanic churches in the United States, with international reach through evangelistic campaigns and media.

His sermons — like “Veneno,” the message in which he tells his own story of addiction and deliverance — return again and again to the same theme: no life is poisoned beyond God's power to restore it.

The church he started in a living room now anchors its community from its Southwest Ranches campus, still focused on the Hispanic families of South Florida it was planted to reach.

Outreach — “OUTREACH MAGAZINE UPDATES LIST OF TOP 100 LARGEST & FASTEST-GROWING U.S. CHURCHES”
Wikipedia — “Segadores de Vida”
Segadores de Vida — “Segadores de Vida | Iglesia Cristiana”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Rev. Dr. Gina M. Stewart  ·  Sam Chand

Sam Chand

Founder, Dream Releaser Enterprises; President Emeritus, Beulah Heights University — Stockbridge, GA

Official links: Website · X

Sam Chand was raised in a pastor's home in India, and his own story contains one of the great full-circle journeys in American Christian education.

In 1973, Chand was a student at Beulah Heights Bible College in Atlanta — and he was paying his way as the school's janitor, cook and dishwasher, scrubbing the floors and washing the dishes of the institution he attended. Sixteen years later, in 1989, he walked back through the same doors as the college's president.

Under his leadership, Beulah Heights became the country's largest predominantly African-American Christian college. Chand went on to serve as its chancellor and now holds the title President Emeritus, and he still sits on its board.

The arc of that story — from the mop bucket to the president's office of the very same school — is exactly the message he has spent his life teaching other leaders: where you start does not set the ceiling on where you finish.

Named to the top-30 global Leadership Gurus list, he consults with large churches and businesses on leadership and capacity, and leaders across the world build on the books and teaching that grew out of his unlikely climb.

Chand calls himself a Dream Releaser, and he built a whole enterprise around the name: Dream Releaser Coaching, Dream Releaser Enterprises and Dream Releaser Media & Publishing, alongside the Sam Chand Leadership Institute. As a leadership architect and change strategist he serves pastors, ministries, governmental and social organizations and businesses, and he speaks at leadership conferences around the world.

His singular vision for his life, in his own words, is helping others succeed — the janitor who became president, now spending his days opening doors for other people's dreams.

Sam Chand — “About Sam”
Dream Releaser — “DRC - Team”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Ruddy Gracia  ·  Samuel Rodriguez

Samuel Rodriguez

Lead Pastor, New Season Church; President, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference — Sacramento, CA

Official links: Website · Facebook · Instagram

Samuel Rodriguez is a first-generation American, the son of Puerto Rican parents who came to the United States for work. His father found the American dream at a Mack truck factory in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania — and then lost it. When Samuel was ten, his father lost his job, and the family lost its home.

What carried them back was the formula his parents drilled into their children: work hard, stay in school, stay in church. Samuel learned his first words of English in kindergarten, caught on fast, and did well enough to graduate from Kutztown University and earn a master's degree at Lehigh University. Ministry came even faster.

At fourteen, a visiting evangelist stopped mid-sermon, called him by name, and told him he would be a prominent leader of his people.

By sixteen he was preaching at youth rallies, spending every weekend speaking in churches before he turned seventeen, and at eighteen the Assemblies of God put him in charge of Hispanic youth ministry for a region of more than 300 churches.

In 2000 he founded the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference to give Hispanic evangelicals a national voice — the boy whose family lost everything becoming a spokesman for millions.

"We are committed to give more than we take."

Rodriguez leads New Season Church in Sacramento and serves as president of the NHCLC, described as the world's largest Hispanic Christian organization.

He has advised three U.S. presidents, his book Be Light reached number one on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list, and he has carried his faith-and-storytelling conviction into Hollywood as an executive producer of Breakthrough and Flamin' Hot — both films earning Academy Award nominations for Best Original Song.

The kid from Bethlehem who learned English in kindergarten now stands where faith, culture and public life meet, still insisting his community will give more than it takes.

Christianity Today — “The Call of Samuel”
Wikipedia — “Samuel Rodriguez”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Sam Chand  ·  Sarah Jakes Roberts

Sarah Jakes Roberts

Co-Pastor, The Potter's House; Founder, Woman Evolve — Dallas, TX

Official links: Website · Facebook · Instagram · X

Sarah Jakes Roberts grew up in Dallas in the brightest spotlight in American church life, as the daughter of Bishop T. D. Jakes — and then she became the family scandal. She became pregnant at thirteen, a public disgrace in a world of purity culture that left her, in her own words, hiding in shame, pain, depression and fear.

Her first marriage ended in divorce, and she rebuilt her life in public, blogging honestly about failure and faith from 2010 and turning the story into her first memoir, Lost and Found. In 2014 she married Touré Roberts, who invited her to preach at his church on Mother's Day — without realizing she had never preached a sermon before.

The voice that emerged would not stay quiet. She co-pastored Potter's House branches in Denver and Los Angeles with her husband, and in 2017 she founded Woman Evolve, a women's empowerment movement built on the idea that a past mistake is a beginning, not a verdict.

Her books Woman Evolve and Power Moves became New York Times bestsellers, her conferences draw tens of thousands of women, and she was named to the TIME100 Next list, with Tyler Perry writing her tribute.

"I wanted to hide. So, I did. I hid in shame, pain, depression, and fear."

The redemption story came full circle at The Potter's House in Dallas: her father announced that Sarah and Touré would step in as co-pastors to succeed him at the church he founded, and she now co-pastors the Dallas congregation.

Woman Evolve keeps growing with her — books, a podcast and an annual conference — all of it aimed at women who believe their worst chapter disqualified them. She and her husband have said that serving the poor and the marginalized is a fundamental part of what it means to be Christian.

The teenager who wanted to hide now stands in front of tens of thousands, telling them their story is not over.

Pastors Biography — “Sarah Jakes Roberts Biography 2026: Net Worth, Family, and Woman Evolve”
Wikipedia — “Sarah Jakes Roberts”
Religion News Service — “Sarah Jakes Roberts, pastor and T.D. Jakes' daughter, now Time100 Next honoree”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Samuel Rodriguez  ·  Sergio De La Mora