Josh's Story

Humble as he is, Josh hates being called a prodigy. But in his early 20s, he planted a church that saw explosive growth, growing from just a handful of attenders to several hundred in just a few months. Once you've met Josh, the reason for the church growth seems obvious: he's a young, charismatic, and hip. Throw in that he loves Jesus and is unafraid to speak of the power of Jesus' name, and it's no wonder that people flocked to his church.
But on the inside, Josh was crumbling. In his teen years, he had been introduced to pornography– a habit that he had hoped to break by the time he entered the ministry. But like many pastors, Josh had unintentionally insulated himself from being able to be fully vulnerable with anyone, and he was unable to ask for the help he desperately needed. He feared that if he were truly honest about his faults, his successful and growing church would fall, leaving a scattered and discouraged flock to fend for themselves. His silence, he reckoned, was the cost to protect his congregation.
As he suffered through the shame spiral of secretly battling pornography, Josh’s addiction grew to meeting with women for sex. As the pressures of his successful ministry grew, so did Josh’s need to act out, only taking Josh deeper into his addiction. By this point, he was living what can only be described as a double life.
After a long day of ministry, Josh received a call that would change his life. One of the women with whom he’d an affair months ago was pregnant with his child. He was going to become a father.
Josh remembers how jarring the news was. Of course he was overjoyed to become a dad, but that joy was overshadowed by the fear that he would lose everything he held dear. 
“Who could I tell?” Josh remembers asking himself. As he sat quietly on his bed after the phone call, God broke through the silence.

“You can either have your ministry or your freedom.”

Josh was broken over the thought that he would lose his ministry and everything that he had worked to build, but the call to freedom, true freedom from the lies and secrecy that had plagued him for years, was too strong to deny. 
Josh called together the elders of his church that night and confessed his secret life to them. Almost immediately, Josh was removed from his role as pastor and relocated to live with family in Tulsa. 
As he started into Changing Lanes, Josh admits being thoroughly humbled by his circumstances. He had gone from pastoring a flourishing church, to working in a call center. He felt as though he had been completely sidelined by God.

And working through his addiction in Changing Lanes was no easier.

“This is either going to kill me, or it will heal me,” Josh recalls feeling in his first month in the ministry. 
But as Josh continued through the program, he began to understand that his ministry was beyond the title of "pastor' and rooted in a deeper place within him than his vocation. God was using him to reach the people around him in ways that were never possible when he was in full-time ministry. 
Having graduated from Changing Lanes, Josh now lives in freedom from his addiction and the lifestyle that accompanied it. No more lies. No more cycle of shame. But perhaps most important is that Josh can now be the father that he needs to be. If you ask Josh about what it's like to be a dad, he'll smile ear to ear and gush about how God has blessed him.
Josh's story is a reminder that God's call of obedience almost always requires us to let go of something we hold dear– even sometimes something good!– in order for him to place an even bigger blessings in our hands. For Josh, and so many in the Changing Lanes family, that blessing is a restoration to freedom, wholeness, and a new life.