Born and raised in Atlanta, GA, Chris Westbrook grew up as the son of a Vineyard Pastor. Ministry for him meant music, both worship leading at his father’s Vineyard church and as Worship Pastor at an Anglican church until, at 33, his singing voice vanished without warning. “I went to ENTs (ear/nose/throat doctors), and all they could tell me was that my throat looked swollen and I should take a break.” Chris said he found himself as “a worship pastor who couldn’t sing.”
After spending about six months deciding whether to continue working at his church or to go help his dad’s church, which was struggling at the time, Chris and his wife, Allison, attended a retreat in Montana with some Anglicans and Presbyterians. They received prayer, and someone shared a picture of a big pair of scissors, with an accompanying sense that the Lord was about to cut something away in their life. Chris also received a word that he would soon be in an arena where he could begin to use some gifts he hadn’t been using.
Coming out of this retreat, Chris quit his job at the Anglican church and became a bivocational pastor for about seven years, using his photography skills to build a wedding photography business while helping to revitalize his dad’s church. In 2023, Chris closed his photography company and accepted a full-time position at the church, eventually allowing his dad to retire.
While the path to becoming a lead pastor felt like one the Lord was leading, Chris says that it’s not a natural fit for him. “I don’t like being in charge of things. I’m a people pleaser, and you can’t be one and lead well. I just couldn’t establish any amount of time where everyone was ok with me, and it was crushing me. This time last year, I really wanted to quit. I was tracking all of the wrong metrics, and I was hyper-focused on so many of the wrong things.”
Chris shared that a speaker at the 2025 National Conference brought all of this to a head when she shared a beautiful video of her child singing worship songs in the back seat of her car, and then said that five years before, when he was first born, she had so much postpartum depression that she was pacing her house, weeping, wishing he didn’t exist. In that moment, Chris identified heavily with that feeling. “I didn’t hear much of what she said after that, but I went down for prayer. All I knew was that the way she felt about her kid when he was born was the way I felt about my church. I wished it didn’t exist. I was investing and giving, and at their disposal 24/7, and I was just getting kicked in the mouth. That’s how I felt.”
In October 2025, Chris was given a month-long sabbatical, which is when things began to turn around. While on a solo camping trip, the Lord began to speak to Chris through the Scriptures, reframing how he looked at church and ministry. Chris also started seeing a coach through Vineyard USA, along with a counselor, which allowed him space to process his feelings. “I felt like I was in a labyrinth that was not of the Lord. I was playing someone else’s game, being hyper-critical of myself and my church, and this is not how God intends ministry to be done. One practice that has always been really medicinal for me is forcing myself to sit down with my guitar and worship Jesus. That has always been my meeting place with God, singing David Ruis and Andy Park songs. I know it’s so cliché, but I literally forgot that I was living before an audience of one. I don’t know how else to say it.” After investing time into voice lessons and speech therapy, Chris’ singing voice has returned about 30%, and he’s praying for 100% in the years to come.
At the tail end of his sabbatical, Chris was hanging out with his friend Josh Armstrong, who is a Missions Mobilizer for Vineyard USA, and as they were catching up on life, Chris felt led to join an upcoming mission trip to Guinea.
Chris joined people from a few Vineyards around the country, along with someone from Petros Network, and they traveled to Guinea to visit a Vineyard church pastored by a gifted, effective woman. They visited some unreached tribes in the southern part of Guinea, right next to Liberia, using the Discovery Bible study method to share Jesus, and they baptized eight people. They also attended a pastors’ conference hosted by another organization with the intention of encouraging Guinean pastors to share the gospel with the unreached people all around them.
Chris reflected that one of the most impactful parts of the trip for him was getting to share Vineyard values, like the Kingdom of God and the Five Step Prayer Model. “One of the refrains that kept coming back to us was, ‘We just love how simple it is. It’s so accessible.’ We would teach during the day and then say, ‘Now we’re going to do it.’ There was no hype; we just made time and space, and things were happening.”
During the team debriefs, Chris said he felt like puzzle pieces were clicking into place for him. “I grew up in the Vineyard. I’ve known Vineyard values for so long, but it was hitting me that the Vineyard is a pioneer movement, a renewal movement. It occurred to me that this stuff only works on the edges; it’s with unbelievers. Sunday morning church can become status quo; it can become about my spiritual experience. But the Vineyard was always so strongly evangelistic, so strongly missional. We can talk about ‘Doing the stuff’, but it only works if you’re actually willing to go do it.”
Chris began to realize that the previous year of his life had been a struggle with a version of church that was more about him than Jesus. “I just so desperately needed to relieve the pressure in my own soul of feeling like everything was riding on me and the words that I was going to say. The value of ‘everyone gets to play’… I think we might risk it catching some dust on the shelf. When I returned from my sabbatical, I knew that, number one, I needed to radically change. I knew my heart was not right, but I also knew that some structures needed to change.” Chris says that their church started making some adjustments, such as removing their stage and having all of their meetings in a circle, and reorienting around small missional communities. “I just needed something radically different than what is and can be a consumeristic paradigm, especially here in the South, where there are churches on every street corner, and people leave reviews for churches just like they do for Five Guys. Church has become commodified, and I just needed a hard shift from that.”
Chris is inspired by groups with a missional focus, one of which emphasizes that they are not looking for members, but missionaries. “I find it very compelling and also very empowering to all of the people in my church. I’m used to people coming up to me and saying, ‘What are you going to do about ________?’ Or, ‘The church ought to be doing this.'” Chris says his answer now is to turn that energy back to the person asking, empowering them to take ownership and gather others around the specific need they’re passionate about. “Our movement is not a facade of caring about the lost. It’s the heartbeat of it. And that’s the puzzle pieces I felt snapping together in Guinea.” While Chris hasn’t traveled abroad much during his life, he says that he’s now committed to Guinea, and he’s looking forward to seeing what shape that partnership takes over the next few years.
Chris says that he found a lot of encouragement from Eugene Peterson’s pastoral books during his sabbatical. “One of the things that he talks about is that our job as pastors is to help people be attentive to God. And I’ve really latched onto that because it relieves the undue pressure I’ve put on myself. De-emphasizing the person, the cult of personality. It doesn’t matter how small your church is…what does Jesus expect of us? To put him front and center of people’s devotion.”
Find out how you can experience God in missions by contacting your Regional Coordinator!