Before I get started in what I have to say here, I should say that the paragraphs that follow are definitely not going to be a typical ministry bio. This goes into much more depth, but it is what I felt to do so that the reader can understand exactly what my assignment is, and what I understand to be my purpose in this ministry. If it is read with that understanding, then all that follows will make sense.

Sometimes, the Lord chooses to capture our hearts in the middle of our lives and take us on a journey we did not see coming, and had little understanding about prior to being encountered by the Living God. God obviously had His reasons for doing what He did, but we…, well…, we were simply overwhelmed and apprehended.  And once any of us discover what it is like to be apprehended by God, we also come to understand that there is no going back. God now has our hearts, and there is NO going back.

Wherever the pathway of God’s preparation takes us, we are basically along for the ride. It does help for us to pay attention and cooperate with the Lord, because we can cause delay, even serious delay, if we choose to not cooperate with the Lord. But the work is all His, and we have little to do with that part. We really wouldn't know how to do what only the Lord can do anyway, so it's definitely best left to Him. He knows us, He knows the appointed destination, and He knows how to get us there.

It can be challenging to try and understand why God chooses the foolish things of this world to confound the wise, but the Scriptures tell us that it is something that God does. By the way, those are not my words. They are His words through the Apostle Paul, and you can find them in 1 Cor 1:27. But It seems that the Lord must delight in choosing foolish humans for His purposes, because He has done it all throughout Biblical history.

But oh my…, how us humans have inadvertently messed with some of what God would have done! And I would have added my name to the list of “messer-uppers”, except for God!  For reasons that I find hard to explain, He kept me from myself.  The fire of His process made it seem at times that the journey was going to be an impossible one.  And looking back, it was an impossible journey.  But then…, God is the God of the impossible.  His purifying fire burned until it consumed what it would consume, and I have come to the point that I expect it to continue to burn until it has accomplished its purpose and, in the Lord’s timing, has its day of ending.

And so we come to this intersection of God, and Him apprehending another unsuspecting human being, putting that person through years of the fire of the process of God, and then bringing them out of the fire, a burnt stone for sure…, but miraculously, still alive and preserved for a God-purpose, rather than a human purpose.  Now comes the time of God’s functional assignment and the appointment of the Lord.

At this point, I guess it might help to speak a little more clearly about who I am so we can get to know one another.  I'm also going to get more to the point from here forward, because most of you did not come to this page expecting to read a short book.  I do plan to continue what I have begun here, and in some detail, but it will be an article containing my personal testimony. You will be able to find it in the Messages/Articles portion of this website once it is completed.

So now to the facts about me.

My name is Chris Poole, age 76, married to Marilyn, my only wife since December of 1978, father of five children who I love, and now a grandfather to a growing bunch of energetic and grinning grandkids.  Don’t get too close to me or I just might decide to tell you about my grandkids.  Might just include some pics, too!

I have been a believer in Jesus Christ since 1956 at age 7, but I regard my actual salvation experience as having taken place at age 27, in August of 1976. That was when I had my first deep encounter with the Lord, and that was when my real walk with the Lord began. I already knew about Jesus as “the Savior”, but that was when I began to know Him as my Savior, and began the journey of coming to also know Him as my Lord. It was then that I also had my first intense encounter with the Holy Spirit.

Shortly after that in December of 1976, the Lord relocated me from North Carolina to South Florida and the discipleship of the Lord began. I met and married Marilyn, my wife of 46 years, in December of 1978 and shortly after, we relocated to Mobile, Alabama in May of 1979, at the leading of the Lord. It was at that time that I began to get involved in ministry, although I did not know at that time that the Lord would later call me to full-time ministry.

Then came my first really intense, supernatural encounter with the Lord in the Fall of 1991 at age 42, and that impacted my life to the degree that I was changed into a different person at the heart level, and could no longer go back to my successful life in the corporate medical environment. It was also then that I became aware of the Lord calling me into an apostolic/prophetic biblical model of ministry, although there was still much for me to more fully understand at that point. That was followed by a 7 year season of ministry leadership in the mid-90’s where an intense move of God was experienced on the Alabama Gulf Coast, and our ministry ended up in the middle of that.

That season of what many would call “revival” was followed by the most intense and defining face to face encounter with the Lord from November 2001 through June 2002 that I have yet experienced. It was then that the Lord first allowed me to vividly see from His perspective, many things that were going on in the sphere of ministry and “revival”. That testimony can be found in much more detail in the Messages/Articles section of this site.

The last thing the Lord said to me in that encounter I described above was, “I am about to give My Body a new revelation of Me”. I knew at the time that the Lord had said something of massive importance, but at that time, I did not have a full comprehension of just how important it was. I do have a better understanding of it now, and it would be important to say that this entire ministry is essentially founded on that one statement by the Lord.

From 2002 until 2004 was a season of transition in which the Lord relocated our family of seven to Franklin, Tennessee in September of 2003. It was not an easy time and the fires of God’s process burned intensely. Then, by Spring of 2004, I found myself getting involved in ministry pursuits in the metro Nashville area.

There is much I could say about 2005 through 2014. I met many people that I love. Some I worked with at a deep level. But it was a season of more ministry experiences, mostly in prophetic ministry, and the opportunity to serve and observe many more streams of ministry, and take in all that was going on. I would later see that it was all part of a greater purpose.

Then in July of 2014, I had yet another profound encounter with the Lord where a strong rebuke came from the Lord about my involvement and direction in ministry, and He took me into an experience where I was shown the end-result of much of what was currently going on in the church and the levels of reward that would, or would not, come to believers when they stood before the Jesus Christ at His judgment seat. That was followed by the Lord being VERY specific about what I was to do following the encounter, which I have done.

During the season from November 2014 to now, the Lord has completely undone just about all of what I was taught and trained to do in ministry. In fact, He has completely redefined what I previously understood ministry to be. It felt like starting over again at age 65 in late 2014! But this I can say with absolute clarity…, I had been asking of the Lord through all those years, “Teach me Your ways and Your paths”, and I had especially asked of the Lord, “Help me to know and understand Your purpose”. It was during this current season that the Lord began to answer my prayers rather profoundly, and deeply clarify His purpose, His pathways, and His ways. It has brought me to a place of being more Christ-centered than at any time previously.

From 1976 until the Spring season of 2021, the Lord saw fit to have have me involved in four moves of God, with leadership involvement in three of the four, and with many various leaders in the overall Church. There were three ministry ordinations along the way, along with other recognitions and validations. But I am now clear that although men and women can conduct ordinations to recognize one another’s ministry calling, it is the Lord’s ordination that really counts. If the Lord has not called and ordained a leader into a functional assignment, then there is not much that men and women can do to replace what only the Lord can truly initiate. If men and women recognize whatever and whoever they recognize, and the Lord is not the initiator, then sooner or later, the foundation of what we do will be seen for what it is.

It is now clear that the exposure to all the different streams of ministry and leaders was to observe the many things in the many variations of the Church, so that the Lord could use the collection of it all to eventually clarify what He was really after in His Church, and in His people.

I now am very clear that a great intention of the Lord in this timeframe is to recover Jesus Christ back into His Church, and to recover the work of the Cross in the lives of His disciples. Additionally, the Lord wants to help those who have ears to hear to understand God’s great Eternal Plan and Purpose for every single believer.

It is such a defining revelation of God’s real purpose that it makes clear what is the real Gospel of Jesus Christ (…and I say that because there are many variations of “the gospel” being taught in churches today), and it also makes clear how the Lord intends to take those who will embrace His true purpose and get them to the endpoint of that purpose, which is to become the full representation of Jesus Christ. It also makes clear that the Cross of Jesus Christ is non-optional if we would become His representation. It also causes the entire Bible to read like a brand new book, more free of our misunderstandings than ever before, and we will begin to discover that the entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, has been pointing all along to one person, the person of Jesus Christ. There is a much more that could be said, but that is enough for now.

Again, I started out by saying that this does not look like the typical bio for a church leader. I could have been much more brief and to the point. But I felt to lay this information out in this fashion because it will help clarify the reader’s understanding of what we are looking to the Lord for in the midst of this work, and what the Lord's intentions would be in this work.

May the Lord help us to be a part of seeing Jesus Christ receive the full recompense for the price that He paid on our behalf. And may we lay hold of His eternal plan and purpose to the degree that He gets His way with, and in, as many of us as possible.

Blessings in Christ - Chris Poole - Edited December 2024