Pastor Cliff comes to the River with years of experience serving the local Church, first working with Youth and then as Senior Pastor. The following is a brief account of his journey to the River.

I was not given the privilege of being born into a Christian home, even though some who were, have squandered and taken it for granted, it truly is a privilege none the less. My young childhood home was very disciplined, with expectations for very high achievement on a human level. My dad grew up in a large family that was very poor. In addition to the poverty and a mean and disconnected dad who drank away his paycheck, my dad contracted polio that robbed him of the use of his legs for the rest of his earthly life. Yet, through sheer determination he battled back, catching up in school, putting himself through college and Law School. He became a successful attorney and Justice of the Peace, but all the while God was at work bringing him to the realization that there is much more to life. When he met God personally through faith in Jesus Christ everything changed. The virtually unattainable expectations were replaced with a loving gracious standard and God used my mom and dad to bring my brothers and me under the sound of the Gospel.

I personally trusted Christ at the age of fourteen and got very involved in the youth ministries of a Bible teaching church. Like many young Christians, with the youth activities, events and trips, the Lord was a growing “part” of my life. What I didn’t know was that there is more, so much more! One morning as we gathered at the Church for a youth trip, a very special Christian girl whom I had gone with for more than a year was instantly taken to heaven in a horrible accident/incident. In the hours that followed, God changed the course of my life forever! A young naïve Christian boy learned that life here on earth is not an end in itself, but a means to an end (that we might know and love the Lord our God intimately). God taught me that in addition to possessing Christ, He had to possess me, and that He didn’t merely want to be a “part” of my life, He wanted to “be” my life.

Within two months and responding to God’s prompting into Gospel Ministry, I enrolled at Briercrest Bible College in Saskachewan, Canada for study and training. It was there I met JoAnn, the most beautiful girl in the world. So, after graduating in 1976 with a Bachelor of Religious Education Degree, and becoming the Youth Pastor at First Baptist Church of Lake Orion, we got married. Over the next two years I studied Greek at Detroit Bible College and in 1978 accepted a call to be Assistant Pastor at Union Lake Baptist Church. In 1983, we moved to West Michigan to Pastor the Rothbury Community Church where God blessed with growth four times larger, I earned a Master of Ministry Degree at Moody Bible Seminary, and we were blessed to begin raising our three kids, Chad, Justin and Tiffany.

In 1992 Bloomfield Hills Baptist, the Church God used to introduce me to Christ, called me to be their Pastor. We saw God touch many lives and bless in many ways over fourteen years. But in the end, meeting with an unwillingness to leave the old ways in order to reach the next generation, God was preparing me for the next exciting step in ministry. Pastor Jim Combs called with an invitation to join the team of a new kind of Church, one that was replacing man made traditions and religion with the simplicity of a relationship with Christ alone. So in 2006, we began an adventure when I became the Campus Pastor at The River, a new church plant of Faith Baptist Church.

Now we praise God for the privilege of continuing to serve Him, for two grown sons who serve the Lord, a new precious daughter Cathi married to Justin, the hope of new life for Tiffany and anticipated son, her fiancé Andrew and the exiting journey ahead.