Gitrell: 40 Years of Addiction, Now Free

From Ricky’s book, Miracle-at-Large, Ricky became an evangelist spreading the word of God through his testimony. He was a fire. He would go in, light it up and encourage people in the places he shared his testimony. When you’re an evangelist, you breeze in and breeze out, and you don’t have to worry about hurting anyone. But that was the start of the ministry. His evangelism was birthed from the book that came out, which gave him a platform. People started following us and we gave them resources and suggested churches to get plugged into. However, we developed a following of people that would not go anywhere else but honestly, it was not in our heart to start a physical church.

With us not wanting to turn people away, we started meeting together as a prayer group and started having a little teaching within the prayer group. But then, we were bursting out of our living room. Our house could squeeze 30 to 60 people in it butt here was not much you can do in it anymore with people wall-to-wall. We had John Mayers and his wife leading worship through singing and playing a guitar. We had all the elements for church, which led to people pressing us to start a church and they wouldn’t go anywhere else. With us growing but not ready for a church, we had to look into bigger spaces and started with one conference room in a hotel. However, we eventually consumed every conference room in the hotel as we continued to grow.

As we grew, we saw a lot of gifts and opportunities. As a result, we wanted to start a physical church where everybody was included and invited. Even if they seemed like they didn’t fit into a“traditional church”, they would be accepted at our church. I sought God and God spoke to my heart and said, “I want you to start a church and I’m going to send everybody that is like you to the church. You will have a church and they’ll be other churches, too. There will be people that I send to those churches, but you will become your own individual church with the people that I’m creating and building for your church.” That’s how we became our own identity and individual church with our own personality that God established because God put this in Ricky’s heart. Everyone from various backgrounds would be welcomed as family and they would have a place for them to go to church in a family… MiraclePlace Church.

Here we are still standing today with the same message from 2001: Everyone from various backgrounds are welcomed as family and this is a place for you to actually go to church in a family… Miracle Place Church in Baker, LA. Come as you are, You Belong Here!