“Brother Vern” is the Senior Pastor. He grew up with an alcoholic father and had a sister die at the age of 39 due to alcohol and drugs. As a teenager hailing from the "Westside” of Tulsa, Vern was following suit. Vern was a high school dropout, in trouble with the authorities and living an immoral life. An African American preacher witnessed to the 18-year-old and invited him to church. In the summer of 1990 and in a little store front church in Tulsa, Vern, broken by the power of the gospel, gave his life to Jesus.

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God confirmed Vern’s call to preach at the age of 19, after a trip to Falls Creek. The same trip, in which, Vern also met his wife, Jennifer.  In 1997, the GED graduate entered Oklahoma Baptist University and started his formal educational journey. After graduating from OBU, Vern would go on and earn an M.Div. at Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary in Memphis, Tennessee and a Th.M. and Ph.D. from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. During these years of formal education, Vern continued his evangelistic ministry and has more than two decades of itinerate evangelism experience. Vern also has more than seven-years’ experience teaching “text-driven” preaching as a professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and has served in an adjunctive role with both Southwestern and the Haskins School for Oklahoma Baptists.

Vern and “Jen” celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary recently and have a son named “Christian,” after John Bunyan’s famous character in Pilgrims Progress.