A Changed Life: From Addict to Pastor

By Zach Strasters

My family lived in the blessings of Jesus for many generations before I came into the picture. My great-grandparents — who survived the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl (as farmers in Arkansas), and World War II — were my connection to Christ. In fact, I believe it was their faith, their prayers, and their godly influence (which planted the seed of Christ in my own heart through my mother) that saved my life in a Los Angeles drug and alcohol recovery home about a decade after their death.

I was born in Fayetteville, Arkansas, in 1987 to Steve and Tonya Strasters. When I was 4 years old, they divorced. As an only child, I found myself around adults all the time and, therefore, very lonely. I grew up with my mother while she fought to find her path as a young woman. She took me to church, but she also was fiercely independent as she battled to make a way in the world. She navigated being a mom with relationships, providing for herself, and seeking the same stability for which we are all looking.

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“My imagination was stirred for seeking joy and purpose in music and the broadness of the world as a means of escaping the loneliness I felt inside.”

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My father was my hero. He played baseball, so I became a somewhat successful baseball player as a kid. He was also a successful musician, so I began to attend shows from the womb on. Music was a big part of my life. His mother, my granny, was also a world traveler, and so I began to travel internationally as early as age 7. My imagination was stirred for seeking joy and purpose in music and the broadness of the world as a means of escaping the loneliness I felt inside.

Addictions and Academics

However, as a young boy, I was also exposed to pornography. I found a magazine one day while riding my bicycle. I also found pornography in the drawer of one of my parents’ co-workers at their office. Being an only child, I learned how to find it on the internet. Pornography became a reliable form of comfort to alleviate my loneliness and established a strong urge to be desired.

Since my father was also a musician, I began to play drums, bass and guitar as early as about 7 years old. By the time I was 14, I had formed by own band. Drugs are often common among musicians, and I soon tried meth for the first time. I was at one of my dad’s band’s practices, and he offered me a line just like he did the other guys. I took it (along with someone else’s), and from that moment on, I was hooked.

Despite my burgeoning addiction to drugs and my fixation on sexuality, I was an exceptional student. I had a brilliant mind for history and literature. I studied several languages in school, including Spanish, German, Italian and Swahili. I won several national awards for journalism in high school, wrote for the school paper, and had an avarice for all forms of literature: from the Russian tragedies of Fyodor Dostoyevsky to the Christian-Socialist literature of Pär Lagerkvist and the Black intelligentsia characteristic of W.E.B. Du Bois.

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“I also overdosed many times on cocaine, alcohol and pills, and learned to control it to achieve a powerful high that was the only thing that came close to satisfying a strong need for peace deep in my soul.”

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I also lived a dangerous double life. Although I was an accomplished student, I also sold drugs. I had strong connections in the ’hood, and with the money I made working from age 14 onward, I would buy pounds of marijuana and sell it to the kids who were attracted to my character and charisma.

During my teenage years, I also overdosed several times on drugs. On one particular occasion, around age 15, I took three times the human toxicity level of an over-the-counter cough suppressant that caused brain damage to my memory cells and affected my cognitive functions for years. I also overdosed many times on cocaine, alcohol and pills, and learned to control it to achieve a powerful high that was the only thing that came close to satisfying a strong need for peace deep in my soul.

When I turned 18, I decided to immigrate to the United Kingdom. However, I didn’t do things properly, and I got deported. I came back to the United States after my granny bailed me out and bought my ticket back. I buckled down afterward and started going back to school. I got a stable job, and eventually graduated with a degree in political science from the University of Arkansas.

However, during my senior year of college, right before graduation, my granny died. She was a major source of maturity and stability in my life, and her death had a profound effect on me. I left my girlfriend of four years and started a relationship with a young woman from the ’hood who came from a gang background. I started getting arrested consistently, losing jobs, and burning any bridges I had.

Progress and Setback

Eventually, I got fed up and moved back in with my mom. During that time, I met a young lady who was an Adventist. I started attending her church and getting discipled. I was now in the country, clean, working outdoors and at a local grill. For the first time since I was 14, I was sober. I stopped doing cocaine (which I had been using heavily in the previous season), stopped drinking, and stopped smoking weed. I even stopped smoking cigarettes! That lasted for about four months, with one wild slipup in the middle. Then, as he always does, Lucifer sent a bird to snatch up the seed.

Joe, my best friend from my rocker days, lived in Florida at the time. He was doing well for himself, and since my dream was always to be a successful musician, I went out with the hopes of rekindling my friendship as well as my dream of playing music. I drove to Florida and left everything behind. By the first evening I arrived, I smoked weed. I started drinking shortly afterwards as well. I got a few part-time jobs to start providing for myself, however within the first couple of weeks, I had my second DUI. Joe kicked me out afterward, and another dark season began.

I moved in with some young men who were rappers. We lived in an apartment complex near the shopping center where my jobs were. Since I had a DUI, I sold my car. I also found a dealer in the apartment complex and started using cocaine again. Only this time, unlike in Arkansas, the supply was plentiful. Now I was in for one of the most powerful waves of addiction thus far.

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“Over the course of the following year, I lost everything.”

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I worked three jobs to pay for rent, my cocaine habit, and my legal fees. I graduated from cocaine to molly. One day, I couldn’t find either of the two, and I smoked crack for the first time. After doing that once more, I called my mom and asked her to help me get back home.

Things started off well enough. I transferred one of my jobs back home, and the management team in Arkansas saw my potential. I started getting promoted at the store where I was working. I was on my way to taking an associate manager position at a $25 million retail store (big stuff for Arkansas at that time). I did well enough to try and subdue my addiction, but the lust and appetite for sin eventually caught up with me. One day, I went to the bar, got drunk, and was turned on to crystal meth. Over the course of the following year, I lost everything.

I ended up homeless in my truck and began a sad and dark journey that would take me to the state capital of Little Rock. While there, my truck broke down, I got robbed of my laptop and guitars, and I ended up living in a shed and then a homeless shelter a few weeks afterward. After a few months, I called my mom and got a bus ticket to Alabama, where she was living at the time. Once again, my mother rescued me.

After a couple of weeks back home, I talked her into buying me a bus ticket to California so I could again try to pursue a music career. I met up with a friend I had known years earlier when I arrived, and on my first day in California, I got high on meth again. I ended up falling into the streets of Hollywood, which are flooded with drugs.

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“… I went through the darkest and most demonic period of my entire life”

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Over the course of the next seven months, I went through the darkest and most demonic period of my entire life. I would stay high for weeks on end with no sleep and little food. At one point, I overdosed on meth so badly that my brain was shaking. The level of fear and panic I felt at the demonic faces and amount of drugs I felt flowing in my blood was indescribable. I was awake for several days, walking constantly without stopping or eating. When I came down, I lost all control of my bowels as well as the ability to speak. I slept for days in a gutter in some apartments in the Pico-Union area of downtown LA. I underwent brain damage from that overdose. After about a week of sleeping in the gutter of those apartments, I eventually recovered my ability to speak, but my physiological addiction was so strong that I had to have meth in order to stay awake and function. I was now a total slave to the drug.

I began to live in a state of total darkness in the streets. This led to a lot of violence and wicked activities. During this time, I got a few ribs broken and my head wounded for stealing from the wrong person. I slept in parks and on sidewalks when I had no drugs, and the Southern California sun caused me to have heat strokes due to the exposure. Also, as a result of dumpster diving to get food and a severely weakened immune system, an infection started eating away at my skin, and I began to lose part of my thumb.

Angel Encounter

On May 16, 2016, a former gang member named Angel was driving around and passing out flyers for a church who was having an upcoming event. Angel (a quite apropos name) saw me asleep on the ground in front of a 7-Eleven, chose to evangelize me, and became the vessel that the Lord used to save my life. I believe that his finding me was as a result of my mother’s constant prayers, knowing that I was on the verge of death.

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“His love and His voice speaking to me was the most powerful thing I had ever experienced — much stronger than meth and sex.”

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I came into the church’s recovery home, and I met Jesus. I slept straight through for the first three days, and during that time God began the process of healing my body, mind, soul and spirit. Eventually, I woke up and discovered a safe environment where I was loved, cared for, prayed for, and was taught how to pray myself, as well as to read His word. His love and His voice speaking to me was the most powerful thing I had ever experienced — much stronger than meth and sex. It was pure and real and He spoke to me directly and intimately. Through this, He healed my body of infection, healed my brain of the damage, healed my soul of the addiction, and awoke the spirit man inside of me.

Over the next 10 months, I started to activate and thrive. I began helping to run the recovery home I was in with daily assignments, leading chapel, job sites and getting us back and forth from church events. I also began to help lead the worship team at church, as well as the youth ministry and other various functions of weekly ministry. Over the course of the next two years, I would help to oversee the church campus, and I even became the director of the pastor’s nonprofit organization. I also helped to lead a fundraising project throughout key sites along the West Coast and in Las Vegas for an international motivational speaking seminar to provide income for the recovery home I had graduated from. I even got the privilege to sing in a choir at an international conference in front of about 27,000 other worshipers.

In the midst of the growth in traditional ministry, God gave me a promise based on Jeremiah 29:7 that would change the course of my life in Christ. He told me, “Seek the prosperity of the city into which I have sent you into exile [Los Angeles], and pray for it. For if it prospers [churches, recovery homes, jobs, etc.], you too will prosper.”

In 2018, God gave me a vision for a business that was originally intended to help the recovery home, and ended up making $2.5 million in payroll after two and a half years. We hired hundreds of people from the inner city, as well as many other recovery homes from all over Southern California and Las Vegas, cleaning stadiums after sporting events and concerts.

In 2019, I helped to play a leading role in a crusade in Amsterdam, which included passing out 250,000 flyers. I not only helped to lead strategically, but also helped to lead worship, as well as performing in evangelistic dramas.

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“I turned to the flesh to cope with the mental pressure of trying to keep things running while dealing with the unpredictability of my pastor’s growing addiction that he had me help him hide.”

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During this time I also began working in Los Angeles in city politics as well, advocating for careers for the formerly incarcerated, those coming out of recovery programs, those seeking to leave gang lifestyles, single mothers looking for careers with benefits, and anyone looking for a livable income to help them have a second chance in life. Over the course of about seven years, I advocated on hundreds of large-scale commercial development projects throughout Southern California that resulted in billions of dollars of revenue for various organizations, as well as put me in front of countless mayors and city councils to advocate for careers with medical and retirement for workers, low-income housing requirements on large-scale private commercial development, and millions of dollars of community benefits for industrial projects for the citizens of those cities.

However, around 2020, my pastor (who was my hero and my spiritual father, and who had been struggling with ongoing secret sin) backslid on meth. I also began compromising in my walk during this time as a result of having no accountability. I turned to the flesh to cope with the mental pressure of trying to keep things running while dealing with the unpredictability of my pastor’s growing addiction that he had me help him hide.

Then COVID came. The company shut down. The city shut down. The church shut down. And everything stopped.

Restored and Called

Eventually, the pastor left. And after the pandemic ended, the Lord allowed us to begin rebuilding. I began helping out with worship and other activities at the church again, and we slowly started to reemerge. With the help of a well-established pastor from another ministry, the pastors (who assumed control of the church after my spiritual father left) helped to regain normalcy for the men’s home and the church.

After about three years of serving, I transitioned over to the Dream Center in Los Angeles for several months, where I developed my own faith-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization called Heart of Jesus Ministries International, with the vision of helping drug addicts, gang members, people involved in prostitution and human trafficking, orphans, exiles, refugees, and the most lost and hurting people all over the world. From there, I began to develop relationships with many more ministries, including in Pakistan, Colombia and the Philippines.

I also rekindled a friendship with Pastor Daniel Ortega. He and I went to Pakistan for a crusade that changed my life — and my faith — forever. God used us to perform many miracles including restoring sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf, the healing of skin ailments, and social works such as purchasing slaves’ freedom and providing forms of income to them, as well as vulnerable Christian women. We also helped run seminars for youth leaders and pastors, and we began a ministry to drug addicts. Those works are still in place in that area of Pakistan today.

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“We went from one homeless addict to a point where we had more than 20 men in the home, praying and worshipping and chasing God with all of their hearts.”

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After the trip, I accepted an offer from Pastor Daniel to assist him in pioneering a men’s discipleship home for Pastor Brian Warth, founder and lead pastor of Chapel of Change — a Free Methodist congregation. After moving in and starting to bring men in off of the streets, as well as using the many relationships we had with various ministries, the home began to flourish. We went from one homeless addict (who was sleeping on the sidewalk in Santa Monica) to a point where we had more than 20 men in the home, praying and worshipping and chasing God with all of their hearts. The men started going on trips and impacting other states and other nations as well.

Soon afterward, various church leaders within Chapel of Change began to mention my name to help fill in the role of assisting in overseeing the Kingsmen men’s ministry, taking the place of Pastor Terry Beasley who had been promoted to overseeing Men’s Ministries International. During this time, I also went on several missions trips including to Colombia and Guatemala, began to build relationships with international leaders affiliated with the Free Methodist Church, and started to become loved and adopted by a denomination that had the same vision as myself — to love God and to love the most lost and hurting people all over the world. Pastor Brian and I also shared something else in common — a vision to launch 1,000 churches.

Today Pastor Brian and I are praying and believing the Lord for the launch of a Chapel of Change in downtown LA where the Lord has called me to open many churches and homes. I also believe the Lord for the establishment of a large-scale facility similar to the Dream Center to develop another work for the Lord to save thousands of addicts in the last days.

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