PENSACOLA, Fla. (WKRG) — Faith time is our weekly conversation on matters of faith and joining us. This morning is Pastor Antoine Brown with Activate Church in Pensacola. We wanted to talk about your journey. You have recently moved here from Michigan. Tell me about the journey of moving from way up north to way down South.

Pastor Brown: I’m from Flint, MI. My father is a pastor and I thought that my journey would lead me to towards succeeding him in the ministry, taking on the. On, but apparently God had something else in mind, so here I am in Pensacola, Florida.

Chad: Tell me about the calling that brought you here.

Pastor Brown: Well, it’s really interesting because I knew I was a pastor. Yeah, I knew that was what God wanted me to do, but I didn’t know how he wanted me to do it and I felt like I was in limbo. Waiting for my father to tell me when it was time for me to do what God told me to do. Yeah, but I decided to see God for myself and he spoke to me really in a vision. It was really weird. I never experienced anything like it and. Pensacola was the place.

Chad: What are the challenges of starting a new church in a new place?

Pastor Brown: Obscurity, obscurity for one. Nobody knows who you are. You don’t have a footprint in the community, so you really must start from zero. And the other thing is just the culture. There’s a different culture here that is different from where I come from, so having to adjust and adapt to the culture. That was a little difficult.

Chad: How do you open a new church? A new place? A new pastor to a new congregation?

Pastor Brown: I think the first thing that I learned was that you have to get involved in the community. You have to serve the people. Once you decide to serve the people that that’s when they’ll join with you and then then you can build the church. From there and then you got to establish relationships with the pastors and those leaders in that community.