| Craig Groeschel | |
|---|---|
| Born | December 2, 1967 Houston, Texas |
| Occupation | Author Speaker Minister |
| Nationality | American |
| Subjects | Leadership Christian Growth |
Craig Groeschel (born December 2, 1967) is the founder and senior pastor of LifeChurch.tv, a church with fourteen locations in five states. He is married with six children and lives in Edmond, Oklahoma, a suburb of Oklahoma City, where LifeChurch.tv is based.[1]
Groeschel was born in Houston, Texas and grew up in southern Oklahoma, attending Ardmore High School. After high school, he attended Oklahoma City University, where he was a member of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity. Craig attended for four years on an athletic scholarship, and received a Bachelor's degree in Marketing. Shortly thereafter, he met his wife Amy, and the two married in 1991. That same year, Groeschel entered the ministry as an associate pastor in the United Methodist Church. He attended Phillips Theological Seminary, which is affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and secured a Master of Divinity degree. He was an associate pastor at First United Methodist Church in Oklahoma City when it was damaged in the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing.[2][3]
In 1996, Groeschel and a handful of people started Life Covenant Church in a two-car garage. Groeschel later told Business Week that he started by performing market research of non-churchgoers, and designed his church in response to what he learned.[4] Groeschel’s non-traditional style was successful and attendance of Life Covenant grew rapidly, eventually evolving to become (as of December 2009) the second largest church in the United States with thirteen LifeChurch.tv campuses[5] Groeschel began using video to deliver some of sermons when his fourth child was born in 2001 and he was unavailable for the Sunday service; he discovered that the videos were popular with his churchgoers, and his church has continued to use them.[6][7] In 2006 he set up a website called mysecret.tv as a place for people to confess anonymously on the Internet.[8][9] Groeschel also began delivering his services to the Second Life virtual world on Easter Sunday 2007.[10]
Groeschel was named the 5th most influential pastor in 2006 and LifeChurch.tv was named America’s Most Innovative Church by Outreach Magazine in 2007[11][12] and 2008.[13]