name:
victor kreider
home:
camarillo, california
birthdate:
october 19th
siblings:
millions (God's family is huge)
pets:
king rupert died (our betta fish was 5)
pet peaves:
bad food, bad listening skills
well known for:
asking waiters questions about ingredients
current books:
release of the spirit (watchman nee)
current music:
new u2, norah
favorite bands:
u2, delirious, toad, something for nothing, shawn mullins
favorite singers:
bono, glen phillips, my wife, martina mcbride, rosanna fiorazo
favorite movies:
rocky, dead poets, good will hunting (inspirational), airheads
least favorite movie:
bedazzled (elizabeth hurley, brendon frazier) my scenes got cut
favorite quotes:
'the one who said it could not be done should get out of the way of the one doing it' - the roman rule
'no pain no gain' - not sure who said this but if we are to know Christ we must share in the sufferings of Christ
favorite lead worshipers:
stuart townend, redman, hughes, hall, tomlin
favorite pastors:
louie giglio, allistair begg
hobbies:
surf, bbq & steeler games
exercise:
stairmaster 3-4 times a week for 30 min & stretching exercises (I'm old)
eating:
i used to fast more but i experienced some side effects. now i eat at 8am, read the word, get my excercise on and go to work. lunch around 1pm and din din around 6pm. i find eating every 5 hours really helps my matabalism. now if i could just put down the heavenly hash at 10pm i'd get somewhere
fears:
i fear the Lord and not standing up to the challenge
perfect date with God:
going to the mall to read a book, consuming a blended mocha and a cheese bagel from coffee bean and tea leaf and seeing who God bumps me into.
God time:
well we are supposed to be in constant fellowship with Him and i try my best to remember that throughout the day. i usually read the bible a chapter at a time in the morning and then read a chapter of the book i'm engulfed in. at night tamira and i read my utmost for His highest together and talk about it. it's great to have the day to reflect and also to have God's word in your head as you sleep.
equipment:
elixir guitar strings
tom anderson acoustic
larivee acoustic
jim Ddunlop .60mm grey nylon pics
line 6 live effects (this is how i get acoustic and electric tones on the same guitar)
future sonics in ears
aviom distribution
jbl 15' G2 monitor
audix om5 mic
echo audio fire 8 && 12 recording i/o
hp pavilion zd8000 laptop for multimedia
Goals:
to catch God again and again!
testimony: shallow
From actively reaching for unbelievers to know Jesus Christ in an intimate relationship to encouraging believers to chase after God in such a way as they may catch Him, Victor is striving towards God's purpose for his life. Victor believes that music is just a tool to reach a lost, hurting, dead and lonely world. Worship is more than music and it is that love for God that motivates the founder of the bbs lounge and deeper life ministry. He doesn't care how someone comes to Christ or grows in Christ but that they do so in spirit and in truth.
Victor lives with his wife Tamira in Camarillo and is the teaching/worship pastor at deeper life where they both are involved in the growth of the church ministry.
testimony: deep
my real search for God began when my mom was busted for drugs and prostitution when i was 15 and she was 32. i new my earthly father but he was never around after i turned 8. my mom was hardly around and was married 3 times. i didn't have the most stable environment and was the youngest of the delinquents that used to skate all over everything in the neighborhood. my mom used to reward me with a joint for every "A" i got on my report card. i was stoned most of 5th and 6th grade because of peer pressure but by 8th grade had found a new group of friends who didn't do drugs. by the time i got to high school most of my stoner friends who were older were gone to juvenile hall and i started hanging around all the jocks who hadn't yet lived the wild life. my sophomore year of high school i started attending a presbyterian church after one of my teachers was killed in a car accident. a friend invited me to youth group. i didn't really like it the first time and didn't' go back until my mom got busted. the cops busted into our house and into my room at gunpoint. they cuffed me and told me they were going to put me in foster care. i told them i'd runaway and they agreed to let me live with friends till things got figured out. my mom skipped the country so she wouldn't have to go to jail and i lived with my grandmother for a while and then with friends. my grandmother ann, who is now kickin' it with the King, was the one who gave me my first bible and got me focused on God. she is a great cook as well! when my mom got busted i remembered that church youth group that my friend took me to and i decided to take a scary leap and go to the youth group by myself. the kids were not all that accepting and i didn't really connect with anyone except for the usual suspects like the youth pastor and his wife. i kept going and some how he talked me into going to summer camp with a bunch of kids i didn't really connect with. well that summer camp at forest home changed my life. i became a Christian that summer in 1987 and i connected with some great new friends who turned out to be pretty cool. i tried to live the perfect Christian life and wore myself out during high school. life is tough when you are in high school not to mention having family problems and basically living on your own. i really grew in faith and somehow made my way into a four-year university as a math major. i really struggled in my faith in college because Christians seemed so two faced. i judged God on what i knew of Christians and turned to the ways of the world. i started partying like i did when i was in junior high and then some. i basically didn't want to be part of a two faced faith and ran to everything that felt good. it was the grace of God that i even got through college with a math degree. i started to come back to the Lord when i graduated college but satan had such a strong hold on me it was tough. i experienced more hypocrisy while a teacher at a Christian school. it just ripped at me and i couldn't shake satan's hold on me. i ran from Christianity as far as i could. i had started to play music in college and had a band called nonfiction that was pretty good. we started living the rock star life more and more as our popularity grew. deeper in my heart i knew that i was still God's and that he wasn't happy with my current reckless rock persona. i did some of the worst and most destructive things in my life during that time. i spent over 4 years in nonfiction chasing money and security. i got worse and worse as a person and seriously thought that God was going to use me because at least i was not talking about bad stuff in my lyrics. i was talking about tough things that people go through and i thought well God could use that to heal people. the problem was that God might have healed others but i was the one that needed the healing and i was going further and further into hell.
we tried so hard to make it and we had some many almost famous moments that could have made us household names but they just seemed to always miss or fall short. i went to portland for new year's in 1998 and God used a cd by shawn mullins to help me get connected back to who was at the core of me. nonfiction was this big larger than life thing and i was currently writing acoustic songs that had meaning. the band was just a party and a feeling but it wasn't reality at all. the acoustic songs i was writing was reality. shawn's cd helped me to see that and i realized i needed to leave the band and start focusing on these intimate songs. this was God's way of providing me a bridge to bring me back in to him. i left the band and started doing some acoustic gigs and was getting even more interest now because the labels that were interested in nonfiction wanted the songs not necessarily the band. i decided to go back to a nondenominational church that i had been doing music for before i got into nonfiction. i had bailed out on doing worship years earlier because i knew i was not living the life a leader should live. the big picture was that God was slowly methodically reclaiming my attention. within 6 months of leaving my band i was totally focused on playing music for God and writing Jesus songs as i called them and still do. i let go of the dream of being in secular music and let God have my heart for good.
ministry was not easy for me because i basically thought all the music was lame and didn't really like singing Jesus songs. God softened my heart and i was soon leading worship for a gen x service that was the size of most churches in the u.s. why does God give the unequipped such great responsibility? so we will lean on Him! i leaned so much that i was ready to do music only for Him or not at all. God even took the desire to play music for Him out of my heart at one point after i left my leadership position with the gen x service. it was a pruning time. God moved me on to start my own ministry and i didn't even realize it. i went to our gen x church pastor and told him i was leaving and i didn't know why. he thought i got a better offer somewhere else and i just said i thought i was done with music for a while or forever. i didn't really know. three months later i was given some money to record an album. if you are following all this you are a champ and should be commended for your bravery! well i wrote all this because it's my testimony and God says we are to give a testimony of the good things He has done. i'm a good thing that He has done and you are a good thing that He has done. if God can use me and love me with all that you've read about me and haven't read then He can use you and love you as well. i hope that this reaches someone and helps them realize it's never too late to start loving God with 100% of your heart and that the narrow path is just a step away!

drenched by His overwhelming spirit and grace,
victor kreider