About Zeal and the People
Zeal exists to serve God and God's people. As believers, we are sure there is more to life than what is right in front of us. We also believe that there is much more to God's creation than just the world we can see. Each "Zealot" has had an unique journey, often with many twists and turns to bring us to the place we are now. We feel God will use us and we just try to stay willing to be led by Him.
Below are our individual testimonies and/or our statements of faith and purpose. Thanks for visiting our website.
Pat:
Sex, Drugs, and Rock n Roll. Grabbing the gusto, looking out for no.1, if it feels good do it.
I have been a professional musician since the age of 12, and my whole life has been about me. Being on stage was who I was, music was no.1. The Beatles were a big influence in the beginning. I started playing Junior high and High school dances, then into the bar scene followed by concerts with big name acts such as Bob Seger, Styx, Steppenwolf, Survivor, The Kings.
My bands were: Black Water Gold in the 70s, Shire and Capt.Calhoun in the 80s, then The Wave in the 90s. As I grew older I was looking for more money so weddings were the way to go (not to mention the free drinks). I have always wanted to write a hit song so I continued to write and record through these different phases. I play a variety of instruments but have always been a lead vocalist.
Now for the important stuff... How I found Jesus, or should I say Jesus found me.
I was agnostic, not sure if there even was a God. I did not see one, I wasn't really looking for one. My wife of 18 years, Ronda Sue, however was a believer and started her journey back to church with one of our foster sons, Andrew. She found a church close to home in the McHenry, Crystal Lake area called the Crossing. She mentioned that the Pastor (Jim Botts) was a good drummer, and that I should check it out. So to make a long story a little shorter... He was good, I pictured myself on stage really getting these Jesus freaks going. So I slowly connected with the worship team - the band - and started attending rehearsals. It was weird, people holding hands praying, it kind of freaked me out, especially holding another man's hand...
Well, I started changing (no, not because of the man hands) I started feeling the Holy Spirit slowly soften my heart. These people I didn't know from Adam (ha ha) were all praying for me to see the light.
Patrick Carl Calhoun: Born 4-11-1953 Born again 1-2-2003
A special thanks to the following people for praying for me before I ever even attended a single service: My wife Ronda who along with her small group of finish line friends from the Crossing, The Behrens, the Olson, Nowell, Brown and Terry families, to mention a few. God knows who you all are.
Ronda and I currently attend Fellowship of Faith in McHenry were I am playing drums on the worship team. We are not only developing a closer relationship with God, but with other believers we attend church with as well.
The members of Zeal are all originally from The Crossing Community Church. We believe God has kept us together for a reason.
Note: If you don't know where you are going when you die, give Jesus a try... If you don't like Him the devil will always take you back.
Ellen:
Here I am. I am me, broken, loved by God, I will never understand why, but loved by God and His only son Jesus Christ. He is an all forgiving God, and WoW, how I am Soooo grateful of that.
I could talk about all the places that I have been, and all the things that I have done, but why! I am who God has made me. I can only walk the path that He has put in front of me and do the best that I can to help you, with what I have gone through in my life and what has and has not worked for me. With that, I also need your help, with what you have gone through in your life and what has and has not worked for you. We are all here on this earth, for no more than a, "Blink Of An Eye" why do we sometimes, waste it all, on such negative energy? Why don't we try to make each and every moment count?
Zeal Worship Team is about, working it, life, together, you can help us with getting the message out there. God is Awesome, He fills the hole in our hearts that nothing else can fill. We can help each other by working it, life, together.
Christ Is Risen !!!!
He is Risen Indeed!!!
God, Please be with us all as we work this life together.
Thank you soo much for visiting Zealworshipteam.org
Bill:
It is all about me… Or is it? Set the way-back machine for 20 years ago.
I had it all good job, enough money, new cars, motorcycle, boat, close friends, a wife and two wonderful children. All which allowed me to pursue whatever I wanted. The key word there is "I." Life soon became boring and routine. I chose to smoke pot and do cocaine, but only on weekends, to add excitement to my life after all everyone was doing it. Soon it began to take over all the priorities in my life. I found I could work while "stoned" so doing drugs became a daily event. I had convinced myself that I was really living now. I chose to take a job that took me away from home for weeks at a time. I chose to let my eyes feast upon the beauty of other women. I chose to mismanage the financial resources of our household until I had brought irreconcilable debt upon my marriage.
Overspending, drugs and high style living had taken its toll. I had become unreliable to my family and myself. I chose to think that I could handle this by myself and get us out of the trench that I had put us in. I was weeks away from losing our home and all the toys that I had accumulated. It wasn't pretty. I was not a pleasant person to be around during that time. In hindsight I'm sure that God was having a good laugh at my attempts to fix everything.
Then a close friend of my wife came by to visit. She was one of those "Christians" you know those people. The absolute furthest thing from what I thought I needed. During her visit she invited us to "her church" for a Sunday service. My wife accepted but I wasn't thrilled about the whole idea and the grey matter churned to find a way to gracefully bow out and just let the wife go by herself. Well God had other plans and the two heel marks from the parking lot through the front doors of that church belonged to me from being dragged into the building. I sat reluctantly listening to a sermon on marriage and finances that was part of a series.
Funny thing happened: I wasn't being bashed over the head with fire and brimstone as I thought happened in church. Instead logic, common sense and biblical support were demonstrated. I found myself listening intently. After the service people I didn't know came to us and introduced themselves and talked about normal everyday things. Go figure Christians were giving a heathen like me a fair shake. We left that day feeling a bit uneasy but interested. We were visited midweek by someone from the church who brought cookies to us and asked how we liked the service.
We were invited back for the next week as well. We did return the next Sunday and once again were impressed with the sermon and the people. The following week we were visited by the Minister who sat for a long time discussing our lives, backgrounds and how the church might be involved in our lives. I joked about how a person of my background could ever be accepted into a church. He said these words which I will never forget, "God will meet you wherever you are." It was then that I realized that there was hope for me. Skip ahead several weeks, sermons, and visits to a time that I broke down and admitted to the Minister that we were about to lose our home through foreclosure due to my mismanagement as well as few other issues. I trusted God&s representative with these secrets I held so privately. He offered to pray for a solution. Prayer? Ask God to help us? Still pretty apprehensive I didn't think this would do any good. After all why would He do anything for me?
During the next week's service, after the normal offering the Minister called for a special offering without disclosing anything about what it was for. As usual I withheld donating because I needed my money to survive. A few days later a contingency of church people showed up at our home. They informed us that the special offering on Sunday was to help us save our home from foreclosure and there was no paying it back. I was totally blown away. These "church" folks from a very small congregation, who didn't know who they were helping, gave so freely without regard for their own needs they just understood that someone had a need. The offering was several thousand dollars which was about 60.00 over what was needed to save the house. How did they know? Conclusion was that the prayer from the week before was answered. There were too many unknowns to be anything but. Turns out these people who came over represented some of financial backbone of the congregation. They committed to taking the funds to the mortgage company and straightening out the foreclosure, training us in budgeting and Christian financial concepts and overseeing our progress for however long it took to get us back on our feet. It was that day that would come to mind once I learned Matt 25:40.
Truly humbled by this experience I began to think that I wanted to belong to something bigger than I ever could be. We took classes, learned about Jesus' sacrifice for our sins, joined a bible study group and finally were baptized into the faith.
This might be considered a relatively calm conversion but not to me. We gave up a downhill lifestyle to be apart of something so awesome that there are no words to explain it. It didn't lessen life's twists and turns but gave me someone who will always be there no matter what. Trusting in God has never produced one regret. Looking back over the last 20 years there have been so many positives from that one decision the biggest is that it's never about just ME anymore.
Scott:
I came back to God after a a few decades of going "prodigal." I attended church in my youth, and I was baptized when I was ten. My dad got cancer when I was twelve and died when I was fourteen. I felt like God didn't care about me, so I decided to do it my way.
Things went well for a while, but soon unhealthy living took over my life. I learned how to manage pretty well, but later in life, it caught up with me and I became lonely and broken.
God welcomed me back through my love of music. Through a strange set of circumstances, I heard modern worship music for the first time. I had been a professional musician playing bars and weddings. Looking back, I don't believe it was coincidence that this was how God revealed himself to me. He replaced all the false comforts with real hope and love.
I came to know my brothers and sister now referred to as Zeal in a worship team. They have become great friends, prayer warriors and a nice refuge from the world every week. This is truly another family that provides real support and friendship.
I am really blessed today. I have my loving wife and family, I have my church family at New Life Community Church in Jefferson Park and my Zeal fam. Lots of support as I hit life's bumps.
Christians are just like everyone else. We fall short of God's desire for us every day. But we are forgiven and have people around us to help us continually improve - as long as we remain teachable. Life can be difficult, but if we arm ourselves with a relationship with God, Godly friends and a church that feels like family, we are equipped to weather any storm.
Chris:
When it was suggested that we write our individual stories, the word that immediately came to mind was BORING! I haven't traveled the road of drugs, failed marriage, financial ruin (although I came close on that one) or all the other spectacular splatters that so many people have had. What could my story possibly do for anyone else?
But as I find myself on a night I can't sleep, I realize that believing my story is boring sells God short. God has blessed me in so many ways I don't know where to begin.
My journey to Him was a slow one. I was raised in a home where I learned that Jesus was the Messiah, but that was it. I didn't know what it meant from there. Mostly I believed that since times had changed so much since biblical times that all those old rules could not possible apply, especially with the changing morals today. Take sex as example. I mean, who could possibly be expected to save themselves for marriage? Come on! That's irrelevant today. It's not like I broke the major commandments. What I needed was for God to break me, but He did it in a long, slow process.
One of the things God has blessed me with is above-average intelligence and a love of learning, so after college, I became a school teacher. The pay wasn't great, but oh the prestige!
However, I fell into the trap conceiving my sense of self through my career. God had a simple solution: I was laid off! Gone was the prestige and my own sense of worth, especially after I began working in a grinding room of a spring manufacturing plant. Now I needed a new identity. This time I decided to achieve value through my hobbies.
Achieving value through my hobbies worked pretty well. I was successful, elected to positions of authority and was respected. Then someone would ask me what I did for a living and the feelings of failure would come right back. It was at this point that God brought someone special into my life: my future wife.
When I started dating my wife, she took me to her church. My wife is a wonderful, Godly woman who understands what it means to have a personal relationship with Jesus. It was through her, and the pastor at her church I learned that God has a purpose for me, and that Jesus loves me so much, that he literally died on a cross for me! Imagine that! Someone taking the bullet for me so that I could get off scot-free. That's when I realized that I desired to know this person who did this for me. More than that, I need Him.
It has been an amazing journey so far. God has revealed talents in me that I could never have gotten on my own. He has blessed me with finish line friends like these knuckleheads of Zeal, and I have the joy of making music for Him. I don't know what the rest of the journey will be like, and He knows all too well where I continue to fall and how often. But no matter what I do, or how often I fail, He will never stop loving me. It's ironic. I used to believe that "Born-again Christians" were weird freaks. Now I proudly say that I am one of those freaks, a JESUS FREAK!