Check Out Chris Cox’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Chris Cox

Hi Chris, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I am a military brat/pastor’s kid, born in Texas, raised in Maryland and Alabama, and attended college in Georgia after high school. I am the middle child of four siblings, and I grew up with a love for church and everything related to it. As a kid, I would take my bike to find tent revivals and church services, just sitting and enjoying the sounds of church and the way the preacher delivered the messages. I would then go back home and mimic what I saw in church. Oftentimes, I’d get my cousins to participate as I pretended to be a preacher, playing the sounds I heard on my keyboard. I was the definition of a church kid, and most people around me knew it.

Life got a little challenging for me when my family transitioned from the military and we settled back in my parents’ hometown in Bay Minette, Alabama. The culture there was much different from what I was used to in military life, and it took some adjusting. To add to that, I was also hyperactive in school, often finding myself as the class clown. My behavior was reflected in my grades. I remember getting my 5th-grade report card, which had two F’s and the rest D’s. I overheard conversations about whether I would be held back or moved on to 6th grade. Looking back now, I realize that 5 is the number of Grace, and even when I fail, God’s Grace never fails. They allowed me to move on, and as I continued to grow, I also started to mature. I began to realize who I was and what I was really capable of. I developed my skill inplaying the keyboard and was eventually asked to lead a choir of my peers for the annual black history program at my school. This performance led to me starting a community choir with my peers, marking my first experience in leadership. During this time, God not only gave me the ability to teach singing parts to songs but also the wisdom to help my friends resolve conflicts and find answers to personal problems they brought to me. It was pretty cool to be respected by people close to my age.

From there, I graduated high school and entered college in Atlanta. I remember thinking to myself, “FINALLY, I’ll be out of the shadow of my parents’ faith and won’t have to wear the label of the Pastor’s Kid or Church Boy anymore.” Honestly, there wasn’t too much out of the norm that I wanted to do; I was just excited to have a little freedom to explore. Well, that was short-lived. Only a couple of days after moving to Atlanta, I met a guy who became one of my best friends while we were playing gospel songs in a local music store. He told me his dad pastored a church nearby, and on my first Sunday in Atlanta, I was back in church, serving God with my gifts.

Towards the end of my time in college, I felt a burden again for leadership. This time it was different. God was calling me out of my comfort zone (music) and into speaking ministry. There was this urge to use my voice to help navigate people through the challenges of life that I just couldn’t shake. So on September 16, 2007, I preached what was called my trial sermon at a small storefront COGIC church in Marietta, GA. This marked the beginning of the journey I am still on to this day, having preached the Gospel to hundreds of thousands of people, young and old, all over the nation and even in a couple of countries. I’ve been on full-time staff as a youth pastor for over 10 years, and I’m currently serving as the Youth Pastor at Change Church in Duluth, GA, under the leadership of Dr. Dharius Daniels.

We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
One of my toughest moments in ministry happened around 2015. I had transitioned from my corporate job as a data analyst at AT&T, and the transition caused some financial challenges for me. I was pursuing my purpose to glorify God with my life. In that, I was traveling, speaking at many local churches, and discipling students in the church where I served at the time, but I was barely able to pay my bills. I had to downsize my entire lifestyle. I moved in with a couple from my church for a while, and I even lost the first car I’d purchased in the process. But I remember having a conversation with God during this time, and He spoke to me from His word, saying, “Chris, if you suffer with me, you will reign with me.” I saw every sacrifice from that moment as worth it! Towards the end of 2016, I had another conversation with God where I felt released from my current season, and I just knew I needed to free myself to have a new beginning.

I was a little afraid of what the next season would look like, but I was eager to trust God in a new way. I had a conversation with one of my mentors, Pastor Mike Owens, whom I met while he was the youth pastor at one of the largest youth ministries in the city. Around the time I met him, he too was called by God to make some of the same faith moves I was making. I remember him telling me that God loves me too much to let me fail. He and his family agreed to give me their guest room for however long I needed it until God showed me what was next. It was during that time that I had an opportunity to seek God, not just for what I would be preaching to others but for what I needed for myself. Shortly after moving in and taking time to rest and hear from God, He spoke to me once again from the scriptures. There’s a moment where Moses is standing at the Red Sea, and it seems like there’s no way they would survive because the Egyptians were pursuing them. God tells Moses to “Use what you have in your hands.” That command stuck out to me so clearly. I had my phone in my hand…

I took that phone and designed my first t-shirt. I took my passion for discipleship and put it on a t-shirt. I also used that same phone to design my e-commerce website. I officially launched the ministry God had been developing inside of me and created a business called Chris Cox Speakz LLC. This would house my speaking engagements and my clothing line. I would take challenging moments from that season, learn a lesson from them, and then put them on a t-shirt. My fellow youth pastor friends in the city, who knew what I was going through, would invite me to be the only vendor at their conferences and youth events. God really used that season of darkness to shine a light on some of the untapped creativity I had inside.

Eventually, I had a casual conversation with two friends of mine, Lesley and Caleb McClendon, while they were in town for a ministry conference. They say that midway through the conversation, it became an interview because they were looking for a youth pastor for their church to replace them since they were transitioning to senior leadership. They called me back a couple of weeks later and offered me the opportunity to move to Hampton, Virginia, to be the youth pastor at C3 Hampton. I gladly accepted the offer and moved to Virginia.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Shortly after moving to Virginia, I had this idea to host a roundtable for youth workers so that we could have a space to share our challenges and help each other find solutions. At the time, I didn’t have any resources to host the event, and my church gladly took it on as one of their initiatives. This was the start of The Collective Youth Workers Group. After a couple of years of hosting roundtables and combined youth events with ministries in the area, I went on to form The Collective as a 501(c)(3) non-profit. My heart and passion for The Collective comes from the experiences I had early on in ministry. I never want youth pastors to feel like they are alone or that no one understands the challenges we face. Our job isn’t always as glamorous as the senior pastor’s, and I know they have challenges too. However, the work we do is very significant, and we are ensuring that the next generation has a fighting chance at getting to know who God is and how deep His love is for them. I absolutely love what I get to do. If I could sum up all of the ministry efforts I’m involved in with one mission statement, it would be this: “To prevent a generation from becoming what happened to them by exposing them to what happened for them.” That is my life mission. To fulfill that mission, I serve as a full-time Next Gen Pastor at my church, I am a published author of “5 Minute Gratitude Teen Boys Devotional,” I am a youth ministry consultant, helping churches develop context-based discipleship strategies for student ministry, and I travel the nation speaking to both students and student ministry leaders.

Youth Pastor
Change Church Atlanta

Published Author
Speaker and content contributor for national student ministry organizations

Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
A surprising thing that people may not know about me is that I play the piano and can sing a little.

 

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.chriscoxspeakz.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriscoxspeakz/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chriscoxspeakz