Ché Ahn

Before he was Dr. Ché Ahn — senior leader of Harvest Rock Church, president of a ministry network in 73 nations — he was a 17-year-old high school dropout and drug dealer in Maryland, the son of a Korean Baptist minister, convinced he'd committed what he calls “the unpardonable sin for an Asian immigrant family.”

In this episode of Who Is Jesus To You?, Pastor Ché takes David Harris Jr. all the way back: the boy who stopped going to church at 12, was on heavy drugs by 15, and by 17 was dealing, dropped out, and hitchhiking the country — “maybe the first Korean hippie in North America,” he jokes. His search led him through Eastern religion and a year of chanting a mantra that gave him nothing.

Then came the prayer that changed everything. Alone in a room, in frustration, he cried out: “God, I don't even know if you exist — but if you do, show yourself to me.” The presence of God fell. Love and peace he'd never felt, not once, in a home marked by distance and a father he feared.

Weeks later, at a packed rock concert at the Baltimore Civic Center, he heard the Lord speak: throw away your drugs, leave this concert, and follow me. He fought his way through a sea of 15,000 people, and the moment he walked out the doors — May 25, 1973 — he was instantly delivered from drug addiction. He never touched drugs again.

That was the Jesus Movement. Fifty-three years later, the fruit speaks for itself: Harvest Rock Church, planted in Pasadena in 1994; Harvest International Ministry, now in 73 nations; co-founding TheCall with Lou Engle, which put half a million people on the National Mall in prayer.

But the most tender ground in this conversation isn't a stadium or a stage. It's a phone call. Pastor Ché opens up about the strict father he ran from as a teenager — and the day in 1996, after God confronted him with his own hidden bitterness, that he finally asked his dad's forgiveness. What happened five minutes after he got home, when the phone rang, is a moment you simply have to hear him tell. “I don't think any of it would have come to pass,” he says of everything since, “if I didn't go through that healing.”

David also asks the question many wanted asked: what happens when you're certain God told you to do something — like run for governor of California — and it doesn't end the way you expected? Pastor Ché's answer is a masterclass in obedience, and in how God uses the journey to reveal the actual assignment: in his case, mobilizing hundreds of churches in prayer and launching Gideon 300, a vision to plant 300 new churches across California.

Along the way: the story of the day depression broke off his life in a wave of holy laughter, what 2 to 5 hours a morning with God looks like at age 70, and a firsthand account of the most extraordinary miracle he's ever witnessed — the moment Bishop Carlos Mendez collapsed from a heart attack at a Los Angeles press conference, and came back after prayer with a testimony of his own to tell.

Fifty-three years after one honest prayer, ask him who Jesus is and the answer comes without hesitation: “He is Lord. And the most intelligent thing any of us can do is surrender one hundred percent.”

Watch the full conversation above. Find more from Pastor Ché at cheahn.org, including his autobiography Hope California.