It has been a while since I gave you a real update here, so let me do that now. Not a highlight reel. An honest picture of where I am serving, why I am serving there, and what the Bible has to say about the kind of step it took to get here.
The Story Behind the Update
In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus sends His disciples out on the water while He goes up a mountain to pray. Hours later, in the fourth watch of the night, He comes to them walking on the sea. Peter, always the one who cannot help himself, calls out.
“Lord, if it’s you, tell me to come to you on the water.” “Come,” he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. (Matthew 14:28-29)
Earlier this year I preached a message called “Step Out of the Boat” to thousands of students and leaders at the Revolution on Campus conference in Anaheim. I built it around Peter’s whole life, not just the moment he walked on water, but the moment he sank, the moment he denied Jesus at a charcoal fire, and the moment Jesus restored him on a beach and sent him back out to shepherd sheep. The passage resonates with me so much because it is my life. It is the story of how I ended up serving where I serve now.
Where I Serve Now
I am a pastor and evangelist with The Restored Church Worldwide. RCW exists because a group of us, after years inside the International Christian Churches, became convinced that Scripture, not tradition, not culture, not the preferences of any single church movement, has to be the final authority for what we believe and how we live. It was what the ICC was originally founded on, but the central leadership had lost its way. Our tagline says it plainly: the Bible must be our standard. That conviction is not a slogan for us. It is the reason RCW exists at all.
Right now I lead a congregation in the San Francisco Bay Area. Before this, I served in ministry in Los Angeles and in Boston prior to the formation of RCW, and those years shaped nearly everything I do now, from how I preach to how I disciple. What matters most to me is not credentials but the years spent in actual rooms with actual people, walking with them through sin, doubt, marriage, singleness, grief, and the slow work of becoming like Jesus.
My wife and I are also leading one of the largest mission teams in discipling history to plant Restored Church New England in Boston in the summer of 2027. Boston was where some of my most formative ministry happened, and going back to plant a church there, alongside my own wife and a team we love and trust, feels like one more step out of a boat we could have stayed comfortably in: the current church we lead, which we had the opportunity to see grow from 465 to 600. We are not stopping in Boston either. From there, we are already preparing to plant a church in New York City in 2029, because the same conviction that took us to the Bay Area will not let us settle once we arrive somewhere new.
Alongside the local church work, I teach through a Ministry Training Academy, preach regularly on our church’s YouTube channel, and write. I have written six books, including Taking OCD Captive, Intruders, Project Tyrannus, So You Want to Study the Bible?, 7 Keys to Finding the Right One, and my newest project, Let’s Go There!, which wrestles with what it looks like to let Scripture, not our tribe or our feelings, settle how we think about race, sexuality, and politics. All of it is now published under Restored Publishing. None of it exists to build a platform for its own sake. It exists because I believe the church needs evangelists and pastors willing to teach hard texts plainly and lovingly, and because I would rather spend my life doing that than doing something safer.
Why This Is a Bible Article and Not Just an Update
I could have written all of that as a simple ministry update. But Peter’s story will not let me leave it there, because I think it explains what actually happened to get me here, and it may explain something in your own life too.
Step into God’s vision. Before Peter could walk on water, he had to leave the boat, which meant leaving the only place that felt safe in the middle of a storm. Every meaningful step I have taken in ministry, leaving a familiar movement to help start RCW, leaving Los Angeles for Boston, leaving Boston for the Bay Area, and now preparing to help plant a church back in Boston, has required letting go of something stable for the sake of something Jesus was calling me toward. You cannot walk toward Christ while keeping one hand on the side of the boat.
Step into the impossible. Peter did not ask for an explanation of the physics of walking on water. He asked for a command, and then he obeyed it before he understood it. Planting a church, writing a book about the most divisive topics in American culture, taking one of the largest mission teams in discipling history into Boston and then aiming a second plant at New York City two years later, none of that makes sense by the world’s math. It only makes sense if Jesus really is who He says He is, and if His word really is trustworthy enough to build a life on (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
Step into your calling, even after you sink. Peter sank. Peter denied Jesus three times at a charcoal fire, in the very moment loyalty mattered most. And yet the same Jesus who let him sink is the one who met him again at another charcoal fire in John 21, asked him three times if he loved Him, and told him to feed His sheep (John 21:15-17). If your ministry, your faith, or your life has a charcoal fire in its past, a failure you assumed disqualified you, hear this clearly. Grace has no limit. Jesus does not just forgive failure. He commissions people out of it.
Where That Leaves You
I am not telling you all of this so you will be impressed with a resume of churches and books. I am telling you because I think most of us are standing in the boat right now, gripping the side, waiting for the storm to calm down before we will move. Scripture does not promise the storm will calm first. It promises that Jesus is already walking toward you in the middle of it, and that His word is enough to stand on even when the water underneath you makes no sense.
So here is the update, plainly. I serve as a pastor and evangelist with The Restored Church Worldwide, leading a church in the Bay Area, and my wife and I are now leading one of the largest mission teams in discipling history to plant a church in Boston in 2027, with New York City to follow in 2029. Alongside that, I am training the next generation of preachers, writing books that try to take Scripture seriously on hard subjects, and preaching every chance I get that the Bible must be our standard. I invite anyone who may feel called to evangelize the Northeast to step out of the boat and reach out to me. I got here by stepping out of a few boats I could have stayed in.
If you want to walk with us, come visit Restored Church SF on a Sunday, watch the sermons on our YouTube channel, or follow along on my social media. But more than any of that, I would simply ask you to consider where Jesus might be saying “Come” in your own life, and whether you are willing to get out of the boat.
Lord, if it is You, command me to come.
Mike Patterson Ministries 