The testimony of Paul Iannello Sr.

I was born and raised in Rochester, New York, in a home that looked a great deal like Leave it to Beaver. My mother was a homemaker raising her four children while my father provided. From my mother I learned to keep going when I wanted to quit; from my father I learned what it meant to give yourself to your family.

I was not saved as a boy. It was a young woman named Pamela — committed to Christ — who first witnessed to me. I resisted. But as I watched her learn to let go and let God, and saw the love of Christ change the way she lived, the Lord broke through. I was saved on February 12, 1984.

I spent a year at Temple Baptist Seminary in Chattanooga before questions about its direction sent me back to Nashville. Serving as a youth pastor, a mentor asked me a question I never forgot: "Who would you say has the most influence on these kids?" The answer was their families — and that question set the course of my whole ministry.

On January 31, 1996, the Lord let me found a church with the motto, "Rebuilding the heart of America one home at a time." Out of that conviction came Seven Steps to Joy, a series the Lord used to bring more than a thousand souls to Himself.

In 2008 my wife Pamela went home to be with the Lord after a battle with cancer. In His kindness the Lord later gave me Jennifer, my wife and partner in this ministry. After twenty-two years I handed the pastorate to my son, Luke, and the Lord confirmed His calling of me into evangelism.

So now we press on — carrying revival, marriage and teen seminars, and the All in the Family Conference to Bible-believing churches, encouraging pastors and people alike to keep pressing toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.