Craig Osborne

Crosspointe Life Church

• Contact: 8809 La Mesa Blvd, La Mesa 619.464.3077 www.crosspointelife.org
• Membership: 160
• Pastor: Craig Osborne (Co-pastor with wife, Renee Osborne)
• Age: 45
• Born: Alberta, Canada
• Formation: Northwest Bible College (now Vanguard College), Alberta
• Years Ordained: 11

San Diego Reader: Why did you become a minister?

Pastor Craig Osborne: I felt God call me to be a pastor. At the time, I was a fairly new Christian, about 21 years old, and I was operating heavy equipment as a logger. In the middle of the night, one winter, almost out of the blue, I felt God say he was calling me to be a pastor. There wasn’t much of a lead-up; I was enjoying what I was doing as a logger. The following fall, I moved away and went to college. My wife Renee and I met at college through a mutual friend, and she moved from Ottawa Province to attend college. She felt the calling separate from me and when we got married we began to pursue our call together. We’ve almost always done ministry together, whether in youth pastoring or lead pastoring, side by side. Renee preaches the word, she teaches and she leads people with ideas and vision, the same as I do.

SDR: Why Assemblies of God?

PO: In Canada, the church I attended after becoming a Christian is a sister organization of the Assemblies of God, the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada. The organizations are essentially the same, separated by a border. The Assemblies of God focus on the encounter and experience with God, what they would call the Pentecostal or Charismatic experience – the baptism in the Holy Spirit and moving within the Holy Spirit’s supernatural gifts. I experienced that early on as a Christian and it really resonated with me. Learning about the Holy Spirit and how he moves with his gifts of prophecy and healing, for example. It is also a great fellowship. Even though I am a pastor of a church, I don’t do ministry alone., There is great fellowship with the many other Assemblies of God churches in the area. We are connected; we meet regularly, encourage one another, and form great friendships.

SDR: What is the mission of your church?

PO: Our mission is empowering people, fulfilling destiny, and leaving a legacy. We want to empower people by training and raising up people to do the work of ministry. We also raise them up as leaders, whether in the church or the marketplace. We are also fulfilling destiny: we believe everyone has a God-given destiny, something everyone was created to do. We want to help them discover what that is and pursue it, which also ties back to helping people to be empowered. As for legacy, we all inherit a legacy. At our church, we inherited a building, ministry, and property. But we want to live not just for today but for generations we will never see. How will we give them a spiritual legacy?

SDR: Where do you go when you die?

PO: Heaven. Jesus said I am the way, the truth and the life and no one gets to the Father but by me. So, if you have that relationship with Jesus where you called on his name to forgive you of your sins, and you’ve lived your life following him, Paul says to be absent from the body is to be present to the Lord. If you don’t have a relationship with Jesus, you’ve rejected him, which means eternal separation from God, and that is hell.