Editor’s Note: This article makes reference to suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, call or text 988 or go to 988Lifeline.org.
When his wife and co-pastor Tabatha Claytor was diagnosed with breast cancer, Pastor Ken Claytor of Alive Church in Gainesville, Florida, felt that he had two choices: get bitter or get better. I’m not going to get mad at God, he told himself. I’m going to get mad at Satan.
As Ken pondered how best to “hurt the devil,” he received a vision from the Lord to help lead 2 million people to Jesus over the next 20 years. Since then, “Our church has been on fire, because it’s just about winning souls, making disciples.”
In addition to its Gainesville site, Alive now has campuses in Orlando and Tampa. During Sunday worship services, the church makes a point to celebrate how many people have been led to Christ. The emphasis on “winning” souls, Ken believes, motivates the congregation to leave services with a clear mission.
“We’ve been focusing on the power of God,” he explains. “We just feel like this is a season where people need to be healed, people need to be delivered, people need to receive the Holy Spirit in its fullness.”
Those saved include a 13-year-old girl who had made a suicide pact with another youth. She attended an Alive service after a friend invited her.
“The presence of the Lord was so strong that the demon in her was crying out in service, ‘Leave me alone!’” Ken testifies. “Our prayer team got around her and basically just took her through some deliverance. She got saved that night, and she’s still living today.”
A sermon on the prodigal son led a woman who had not been to church in 20 years to answer the altar call and sign up for baptism. The diversity in the Alive congregation has also made an impact on visitors. Members are of all ages and from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds, many of whom are bilingual. So, Alive offers a Spanish-language service.
“We had a lady in our East Orlando campus who had been, for a long time, praying for a church like ours,” Ken shares. “She had tears in her eyes just to see a church that resembles heaven because of the diversity that we have in our church. Our church is not a white church, a Black church or a Latino church. People like that.”
The church has also seen congregants rebound from health problems including cancer and brittle bone disease. After undergoing radiation and a mastectomy, Tabatha Claytor is now cancer-free. In January 2023, the Claytors launched a marriage podcast called “Doing Life With Ken and Tabatha” that has netted more than 89,000 YouTube subscribers.
“We always knew that we had a lot more in us to give to people, other than what you can give people on a Sunday in 35 minutes,” says Ken. “We see a lot of people just struggle in a relationship, so we talk about intimacy, sex, division of labor, money, parenting, how to fight right, how to have family meetings and just everything that people wish they would have known when they got married.”
Focusing on the power of God has meant an openness to try new things, whether it’s a podcast or a move away from cookie-cutter worship services. Rather than focusing on making the service a set number of minutes, Ken has asked himself what his church can do to really inhabit God’s presence.
As a spiritual leader, he’s also learned that church growth takes time. “It’s not about going fast, but it’s about going far,” he says. “Sometimes, we want to reach the world overnight, and we want success to happen so quickly, but God is more interested in integrity, character and holiness.”
