For most people, the idea that one could be a pioneering tech entrepreneur, a rock musician, and later a devout church leader sounds almost inconceivable. Yet Phil Fischer’s life embodies all three. He was once one of those non-believers in the tech world; an industry where nearly half of workers identify as atheist or agnostic (compared to just 5% of the general U.S. population). An encounter with what Fischer calls the Movement of the Holy Spirit ultimately sent his life in a completely new direction.
Today, Fischer is the founder and leader of Jesus Lives, an Issaquah, Washington-based non-profit ministry built around a central mission: spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ to new believers. Each week, he speaks with people about what he sees as the current “theological turbulence” in the world and its implications for humanity. Fischer is especially passionate about a prophecy called the Beginning of Sorrows, a cryptic message from Mathew 24:8 where Jesus prophesied a time of wars, earthquakes, and hard times that would precede the Great Tribulation.
Jesus Lives holds worship services every Thursday evening and over time it has built up a steady congregation of local Christians seeking hope and comfort during today’s trying times. Fischer has structured these gatherings to revolve solely around love and authenticity. Notably, no one on the ministry’s board of Directors, including Fischer himself, takes any money for their service, a policy he believes keeps everyone’s motives positive and genuine.
Early Ambition and Success
In the late 1980s, Phil Fischer was far from the world of church life. Living in Seattle, he was making his mark in technology and music. By 1989, he had emerged as a rising voice in the local tech scene, launching the 204th website on the entire internet; one of the first to offer professional web design services. Fischer was also an early advocate for what would become Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, though today he argues the law needs reform. Beyond tech, Fischer carved out a creative niche as a ghostwriter for several Seattle and Los Angeles record labels, earning a reputation in LA studios as someone who could “pop out the hits” in just minutes. Fischer found a taste of success on his own when “The XBox Boys”, a rock band Fischer founded that included Vendetta Red drummer Joseph Childress climbed to number one on MySpace’s music charts and became the most downloaded band on both MySpace and Limewire.
The band was offered one of the largest signing bonuses ever offered at the time but disillusioned and unhappy, Fischer declined. According to Julian Valentine, a longtime friend and Deacon of Jesus Lives, “Phil even considered taking the last $200,000 he had left in savings and moving to Canada’s remote Yukon territory to raise cattle. He was ready to leave his tech and music ambitions behind because it just was not giving him what he wanted. But that all changed when he met Jamael.”
Fischer had a chance encounter with a young 20-something sharing the word of God in a Kirkland, Washington bar that altered the course of his life.
One evening around that time, Fischer met a young woman named Jamael who invited him to come to her church. Fischer was skeptical of religion but decided to accept her invitation. As he spent time with Jamael and her devout Christian family, the walls of doubt he’d built up began to slowly crumble.
The Power of Revival
Before long, Fischer found himself regularly attending services at New Hope International Church in Bellevue with Jamael, who later became his wife. Then came an early morning knock on his door that would prove pivotal. At 6:00 a.m., Jamael’s step father showed up, urging Fischer to join him on a trip to a revival meeting at The Potter’s House church in Dallas, Texas, a gathering intended to motivate believers to convert others to Christianity. Fischer was badly hungover from a night of drinking and far from eager to go anywhere, let alone a church event, but after some persuasion, he reluctantly agreed to accompany him.
Attending that revival would change Fischer’s life forever and during the service in Dallas, a woman approached Fischer, placed her hands on him, and offered a prayer. In that instant, Fischer felt something happen inside him for the very first time, an overwhelming presence he would later identify as the Holy Spirit. “My pounding headache disappeared,” Fischer recalled of that moment. “My dry mouth stopped. I turned completely sober. Before, I assumed that churches and Christianity were all nonsense. But once I started going and experienced the revival, everything changed and I knew this was better than music, it was better than finances, it was real and it was free and it’s life changing.”
Fischer emerged from that revival a changed man. He reflects that, before finding faith, he had been consumed by “sinful” pursuits, an obsession with money, drugs, and other tangible pleasures that he now believes were causing him great harm and were a scheme to steal years of his God ordained Destiny. Once he surrendered those temptations and began anew as a Christian, Fischer saw a new future for himself. He realized he was no longer content to sit in the pews; instead, he felt called to lead a congregation of his own.
New Beginnings
Answering that call wasn’t easy. In 2017, Fischer inquired about starting a small Bible study group at New Hope International. For the first six months, not a single person showed up to his meetings. That didn’t deter him; every week he would still prepare sermons and preach in an empty room, telling anyone who passed by that he was simply “practicing” for the day people would come.
All that practice and patience paid off. Later in 2017, Fischer officially founded his own ministry, naming it Jesus Lives after a domain name “Jesuslives.com” that he was given by someone that Fischer led to Christ that was once owned by Anna Nicole Smith. One of the church’s earliest attendees was Julian Valentine, who at the time was working as a bartender and living a lifestyle that left little room for faith. Valentine kept attending the fledgling gatherings and soon underwent a transformation of his own. “I wanted to believe in God, but at the time, I didn’t,” Valentine admitted. “I kept on coming to Jesus Lives and I began to see a new mission for myself.”
Despite these beginnings, Jesus Lives did not experience the rapid growth Fischer had hoped for at first. To help the church expand, Fischer’s mother-in-law recommended that he attend a major revival event called Azusa Now in Los Angeles for advice and inspiration. Fischer took her advice. He and Valentine even fasted on fruits and vegetables for 40 days before their journey to spiritually prepare themselves.
During the Azusa revival, a pastor from Bethel Church in Redding, California, spoke a prophetic message to Fischer in front of a crowd of 85,000 people. The pastor assured him that he would be a “father to the fatherless” and that his ministry would usher in a revival in the Pacific Northwest. Sure enough, after this experience, Jesus Lives began to thrive. Individuals from across the community started coming to worship and share the word of God. Julian Valentine now serves on the church’s leadership team along with Fischer and his wife Jamael, guiding new members in their faith.
Revival in the Northwest
Today, Pastor Phil Fischer is indeed leading a burgeoning revival movement in the Pacific Northwest, just as the Azusa prophecy foretold. He acknowledges that the Seattle region can be a difficult mission field; in his words, the Pacific Northwest is “the territory of the enemy”, a place where secularism, liberalism, and skepticism run strong. “Seattle is the front line of the spiritual battle and is riddled with evil,” Fischer explained, describing his sense of urgency. “The enemy now controls media, tech, music, and even education where the poor souls infected with the evil one spread his agency of destroying God’s perfect creation; The Human Race. Even the church here is under the spell of the dark one. Quit trying to win the facebook and instagram wars, it’s impossible for us as mere humans to change those that are infected. The only person that can do that is Jesus Christ. So what do we do? We lead them to Christ, and then they will be able to see like we see.” In other words, rather than battling culture on its own terms, Fischer urges believers to bring people directly to Christ as the true solution.
Fischer also observes that many Christians feel stagnant or unfulfilled in their spiritual lives. Too often, he says, people remain in churches that stifle their calling, afraid to break the mold or pursue bigger missions. “So many Christians have a calling to do more than their churches will allow them to,” Fischer said. “That was the case for me. I spent two decades in a church that had a temple mentality and would not let anyone follow a spiritual destiny. Beware of a church that has the same worship team for 30 years”.
The Struggle is Real
Despite the challenges he has faced, Fischer remains steadfast and joyful in his work. He often draws inspiration from his favorite Bible passage, James 1:2-8, which reminds believers to “count it all joy when you fall into various trials”. For years, Fischer doubted that he, with his checkered past of “sinful” behavior, could ever be worthy of leading a church. Now, he sees that God had a purpose for his unique background all along. “I used to be a sinful person, so I was unsure if I was leading a church,” Fischer said. “I never thought that God would want to use me, of all people. But I see now that God uses whatever He has to bring people to Him.” In Fischer’s view, no one is beyond the reach of God’s grace.
