John + Shae Antonucci
My first visit to Tampa was to the emergency room of Tampa General Hospital at 13 years old. I had received alarming results from a brain scan and was sent to the best hospital in Florida for my condition. I spent the next two months receiving treatment and watching the annual Gasparilla parade from my ICU room window! Thanks to some amazing nurses and doctors, and through the miracle of medicine, God healed me and I returned home, but Tampa had left an indelible mark on my life.
Just before that experience, Jesus had radically taken a hold of my life. Shortly after, I began to sense a strong call to pastoral ministry. I led my church’s student ministry after high school and decided I wanted to serve in vocational ministry for the rest of my life. I soon left Florida to prepare for ministry by attending college at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, OK and received a Master of Divinity from Southern Seminary in Louisville, KY.
Throughout my educational journey, I couldn’t shake a sense of calling back to Florida; specifically, to the city of Tampa. I actually had a map of Tampa on the wall of my seminary apartment and dreamt of one day planting a church in the center of the city. After school, I transferred my sales job back to Florida and began volunteering in student ministries at a church in Tampa.
I eventually took an internship at Calvary Church, and, in my first week there, I met an amazingly talented, strikingly beautiful, Jesus-loving girl named Shea and we’ve now been married for about 2 years. I went on to serve for several years as the College Pastor at Calvary and worked in the missions + church planting department. I am currently a Church Planting Resident at Calvary as I prepare to launch a new church in the heart of downtown – right across the water from my Tampa roots at Tampa General Hospital.
My ministry vision for the rest of my life is to join God’s redeeming mission by proclaiming His glorious gospel through planting and pastoring neighborhood churches that transform people and communities in Tampa Bay and throughout the world.