Lots of people have asked for Gina to be interviewed so we listened! In this episode, Niki Rice interviews Gina about how she came to faith in Jesus, her journey as a woman in ministry and so much more!
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An Interview with Gina Stockton
Niki:
Well, today we wanted to switch things up and yeah, it’s my honor to interview you, Gina.
Gina:
Thanks Niki. It’s an honor to be interviewed.
Niki:
So Gina, you have been in ministry for how long?
Gina:
That’s a good question! For a very long time. I would say I have been serving in ministry for over 30 years.
Niki:
Wow, that’s amazing! So 30 years, how many different churches and organizations have you been a part of in that time?
Gina:
I will start even before that, when I was young, about 15 years old. I was in a tiny church in Coronado in San Diego, and the very first time I ever led worship anywhere, was in that church. They had one worship leader volunteer, and he got married and took one Sunday off, and they were desperate and needed someone.
I went to a performing arts school and sort of played piano. So I ended up leading, and it was so bad. It was terrible, but it was awesome. It was a powerful lesson because these precious people were a tiny church of about 30 people, and they just wanted to worship.
They were so grateful to have anybody. I could have been up there with a tin can and a spoon singing, and they would’ve been happy. So it was my first lesson from the Lord, that, “It’s not about you. Be obedient to me, and let me do the rest.”
Then I kind of grew up as a Christian as a teenager and in my twenties, and it was years of really learning about ministry and serving at Horizon Christian Fellowship in San Diego. I was at a Calvary Chapel when I met my husband Norm. I met him on the worship team. I was the chick singer, and he was the bass player.
Niki:
That is Awesome!
Gina:
The rest is history. I led worship and served at women’s ministry and kind of forged my understanding of serving and ministry and everything in that place. Then we moved up to Orange County, and served at a couple of different churches there. I ended up on staff at a church for nine years, and then have done a lot of ministry here and there.
A journey with Jesus kind of takes you in all sorts of random directions. So I had no intention to be in ministry full time, nor did I think I was going to be on staff anywhere. I grew up in a denomination, that as a woman, that wasn’t necessarily something that I knew was even possible.
So I wanted to be in the church. When I came to Jesus, I walked into a church and was like, “These are my people. This is my family. I’m in. Can I hang out here?” So I was there regardless of a ministry position. I certainly had no idea that I would be on staff at a church ever.
I never thought that I would have a ministry of my own. That wasn’t something that I aspired to do. I never thought, “Yeah, I’m gonna do that someday.” Yeah, not at all.
Finding Life in the Church
Niki:
Wow! I really would love to hear the story of how you came to church for the first time. What was the moment that you were like, “Oh, this is real, and I want to be a part of it.”?
Gina:
I have a funny story. So my dad was a lounge singer and my mom was a cocktail waitress and they were both alcoholics. They were not married. I grew up in bars throwing back Shirley Temples, like watching my dad sing. My parents were dating on again and off again. My mom was living at home with my grandparents when I was born.
So I was raised really by my grandparents and my mom. My mom was an alcoholic and was almost a role reversal, especially as I was older. So we were more like siblings in a lot of ways than we were mother and daughter.
So it was just an interesting environment. My grandparents went to a Lutheran church and I would go occasionally with them, but it was very dead, very cold. My grandparents had a very cold relationship. So they would drive the five blocks to church in silence and get there 20 minutes before it started because my grandpa always had to park in this certain spot off to the right in the front.
And we’d sit in the car in silence, and then we’d go in and sit third pew from the front to the left hand side. In a Lutheran church, usually you have a cross in the center, and there’s a lecture or where they preach out of. I never understood anything. It was boring. It was dead to me.
So that was my entire understanding of church. When I was 12 years old, my mom’s best friend, who was also a cocktail waitress, became a Christian. She quit her job as a cocktail waitress and invited my mom to church, and my mom said no.
In fact, she kind of said “You could stick your bible wherever.” And for whatever reason, her friend then asked permission to invite me to church. And I don’t know to this day why, but my mom said “yes”. So she asked me if I wanted to go to church with her, and I said, “sure.”
So at 12 years old, she picked me up and we drove to church. This was probably 1980. So I was 12 years old. It was the tail end of the Jesus movement. Calvary Chapels were birthed out of the Jesus movement, as was Vineyard. So Calvary Chapel San Diego at the time, eventually became Horizon church.
So my only experience with church was this liturgical Lutheran church with this stained glass and a lot of formality. So I walk in, and first of all, people are wearing shorts, and they’re wearing jeans! I was just like, “What is happening?”
And we walked in late during worship. Fun fact, Lisa and John Wickham, Evan and Phil Wickham’s parents were leading worship. So John Wickham was playing guitar, Lisa was singing, and they were both singing and worship was happening. At 12 years old, I walked in and I was overcome.
I was just like, what is happening in this place? I’m not sure why, I just knew that it wasn’t just people singing. This was wholly different. I knew it was relational. I knew something was happening. I just knew it and I wanted in. I didn’t know what “in” meant , I just was like, “I want to be here.”
So after that, she just brought me every time she came to church. So she brought me on Sundays and then she started a home fellowship with her friends that she brought me to as well. Anytime she went to church, I was like, “I want to be with you.” And bless her heart, this woman in her thirties or whatever, and her friends, would come and cart this 12 year old with them everywhere.
Her name was Rhonda, I don’t know her last name. I don’t have any idea where she is, but it was the most amazing thing that she would take the time, and that she would go out of her way and do that.
Encountering Jesus The Savior
Gina:
I remember the one night that they brought me home, and I remember the nervous energy when we pulled up in front of my house and I was sitting in the backseat and somebody was sitting next to me, and there were two people in the front and they turn off to the car and you could tell they were super nervous.
And one of them is like, “Gina, would you like to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?” I could just tell they’re nervous and they wanted to lead me to Jesus. They feel like it’s time and I’m like, “Sure, okay, why not?” So I pray with zero emotion and zero understanding. My only concern was, “You’re picking me up Sunday right?”
I so believe that God just stamped me at that moment. I think for Him, He was like, “That’s good. That’s all I need.” Even though I wasn’t fully understanding, God understood. If that makes sense. It was sweet. So I don’t remember how long that season even lasted, but at some point she and her boyfriend got married.
They moved and they wanted to attend a church closer to their home. So she wasn’t able to come and take me to what I considered my church now. They did offer very kindly to come and get me and take me to their new church. But as a child I had this belief that there’s no other church in the world like this place. This is where God is, you know?
So I didn’t go to church again for a couple years. I’m 12 years old and I have no way to get anywhere. So that was it, until my uncle, who was like my brother, he was 15 when I was born living at home. He was kind of a partier and a ruckus crazy guy. He always had a new shtick, and a new something going on.
He came bounding in the house one night, and this was when I was maybe 14. And he’s talking about Jesus. And we all are like, “What are you on? What drugs are you taking? What are you selling?” Like, we didn’t believe him. This will give you a little understanding of where he was most of his life. But we literally didn’t understand him.
And for like an hour, he’s like, “No, no, I met Jesus, and I’m clean and I’m not going to drink.” Then he’s talking about this church Horizon. It wasn’t called Horizon when I went there, so we didn’t realize it was the same place until he started describing this theater in North Park and these people who sing and this guy in a Hawaiian shirt who teaches.
And I’m like, “Oh, it’s the same place!” So that’s when we started going together. My grandparents started to go. I was the first one to get saved in our family. Then slowly the Lord just kind of wooed us all. That was the beginning.
We went to Horizon for a while and eventually Rick found a small little church in Coronado and we started going there. That’s where I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. That’s when I had this personal radical encounter with Jesus. That point in my life, my trajectory just shifted.
Encountering the Holy Spirit
Niki:
Wow! Let’s stop there for a minute. Did you have a language for what was happening and what was that experience like for you?
Gina:
The church we were at was small, but it was somewhat charismatic. People weren’t getting prayed for and falling over. And it wasn’t like, if you don’t speak in tongues, you’re not saved or anything like that. But the gifts of the spirit were working. So it was a very casual Biblical normal kind of place.
So there was an expectation of God to move, but it wasn’t this hyped up thing. It was again a tiny church. Everybody knew everybody. That Sunday, I was sitting in the front row with my aunt and my uncle and the other people there. Pastor Bill was teaching on the gifts of the Spirit, and on the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
I think he was probably teaching on first Corinthians 12, and he was going to do a two parter. So at the end of the message, he started saying, “Next week we’re going to finish up, and then if anybody wants next week to pray, we’ll pray for you to receive gifts to the Holy Spirit.”
While he’s saying that in the front row, I just start to cry. It’s not like sweet movie tears streaming down my cheek. I’m sobbing. You know, when you try to hold it back and that makes it worse? I’m literally 15, so I’m mortified. I’m standing in the front row and I’m sobbing these guttural sobs.
My uncle’s just looking at me like, “What’s wrong with you?” You know, he’s looking at me like, “What are you doing?” And again, it’s a small church. So Pastor Bill just looks at me and he’s like, “Gina, are you okay?” And literally, this is what I said. I’m like, “Do, do, do I have to wait?!”
So it was something in me, my spirit at that moment was just like, “I don’t want to wait another moment. I want everything Jesus has for me.” And he’s like, “No, you don’t have to wait! come here.” I just went up and he laid hands on me, and probably the whole church came around me and laid hands and prayed for me.
You may have heard people say this before in testimonies, but it felt like liquid love. It just felt like God was filling me from the tip of my head to the bottom of my feet. I did receive the gift of tongues at that point. It wasn’t something I asked for, it wasn’t something I was necessarily wanting. It was like my spirit responding to this overwhelming encounter.
You’re in this almost euphoric, emotional, happy, overwhelmed state. It was just beautiful. It was just powerful. So that was when I was 15, it marked me. I feel like when I quote un-quote said “the prayer”, I feel like there was something where the Lord said, “You’re mine.” But it wasn’t until I was 15 that I had that encounter where I said, “You’re mine” to Him. You know what I mean? I’m like, “Oh my gosh, you are, you’re mine.”
The Pursuit of God The Father
Niki:
Trying to find words to describe an emotional thing and a spiritual thing can be really hard. You know, the Bible talks about if the fruit is good, then the tree is good. So I guess my question is – from that moment, what was the fruit of that encounter, and how did you see a difference in your life?
Gina:
I think it just increased my hunger for the Word. I had a hunger for God’s presence that started my honeymoon season with Jesus. We live in a day and age with podcasts and social media and YouTube and the internet. Everything is reduced to bite size things, and things that are meant to be personal are broadcast everywhere.
This was at a time where this was a little place. This church met in a room at the Hotel Del Coronado. Then we would have prayer meetings in Pastor Bill’s basement, or we’d just get together and we’d worship and pray, and it would be about a dozen to 20 people.
There was no fanfare, no PowerPoint screen with words. There was nothing complicated about it. It was just people in communion with God. I’m so grateful that that’s where my faith was formed. When I started going to church when I was 12, there was no cool kids program.
I went on, like we all jammed into the same room. Everybody got there early, so you could even get a seat and you couldn’t wait to hear God’s word and you had a Bible. If you didn’t know where Hebrews was, the person next to you said, “Oh, it’s over here.”
It fostered this hunger and this pursuit of me towards the Lord and vice versa. So I had this really sweet time for a couple years and I really needed it. It was a time in my life that was very hard at home. My dad was always in my life, but not really an active father. My mom’s alcoholism was hard. She was an alcoholic, she was bulimic, she was depressed.
We didn’t have the words for all those things. Mental health wasn’t a prevalent topic. She would disappear for days on end. She would go partying in Mexico with her friends. She would show up and her car would be totaled. It was just a very hard thing.
I was more of the parent than I was the child. So to be in that place where I knew Jesus and I knew He had me, and He was covering me, and He was holding me, and He was parenting me in a lot of ways. So I think that the timing of it was this sweet provision from the Lord. For me in a season that was really hard, by my senior year in high school, I was so busy.
I was working two jobs. I was going to a performing arts school in high school. So eventually I slowly stopped going to church as often. It was down in Coronado, it was super far. I didn’t walk away from the Lord. I just got too busy to be actively present with Him. So by the time I graduated high school, I wasn’t going to church.
I wasn’t like, “I don’t like Jesus” or anything like that. I considered myself a Christian, but it wasn’t important. He wasn’t my first priority anymore. Other things had become more important.
Niki:
What was the returning point for you?
Gina:
Yeah, this is a funny story. I was working two jobs. I was working at the Claremont Twin Theater in San Diego, which was the cheap, nasty, $2 for a double feature movie theater. I was wearing the polyester orange and brown uniform making literally like $4 an hour. That was one of my two jobs.
This really shows how shallow I was. So every Friday night I worked the box office during the summer after I graduated. Every Friday night, these two guys would come in together and watch movies. They were kind of cute and they were super nice and they were a little bit flirty. I never knew their names, but they always were super sweet.
I remember while I was there kind of wondering, “I wonder if they’re Christians,” you know, like a silly thought. I don’t even know why that thought crossed my mind, but that was all summer long. Then in the fall my uncle invited me to a concert at Horizon. Horizon had moved a mile from my house. And my uncle was like, “Hey, there’s a concert. Let’s go Friday night.”
So I went with him and I remember actually in the middle of the concert getting up to the bathroom, and I got up and I walked up the aisle of the auditorium. I remember in my head thinking, I wonder if those guys are here. Then I remember telling myself, “Gina, that’s really stupid. Why would they be here?”
As I’m having this argument with myself in my head, I physically bump into somebody and I look up and it’s one of them. His name was Scott, I found out at that moment. We were both like, “What?!”
And then the two of them were there, Brett was the other guy. And they’re like, “Do you go here?” I’m like, “No.” And they said, “You should come on Sunday.” So that’s how Jesus got me coming back to church, by two cute guys.
Niki:
That is so funny! I’d never heard that story before.
Gina:
There was a trip to Scotland. I won’t go into all the details, but felt like I was supposed to go on a mission trip. It was super out of character for me. I’m not a risk taker.I don’t like doing stuff with people who I don’t know. I got super nervous, but I went to the meeting because I felt like I was supposed to go. God provided the money.
It was on that trip that I met the worship pastor and a worship artist named Terry Clark, who’s this super anointed leader. He was kind of a big deal at my church. This was a huge church at the time, of maybe 10,000 people. So you never saw the people on stage ever.
I got on the plane at 18 years old to go on this mission trip, and I was sitting next to this guy, but he ended up being super sweet. I guess I looked a lot like his daughter. So he kind of became a Papa for me on that trip.
Then I met the worship pastor who invited me to join the worship team on that trip. That was the first time. So that’s how I got started in ministry. When we got back from that trip, I started serving on the worship team.
Check out the rest of this conversation: Mothering the Messy Church & Purified and Unified
Check out the Dwell Meditations
