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Ricky Gantz
Founder of G220 Ministries & G220 Radio. Married to Elesa and father to seven children, Ricky enjoys spending quality family time, taking his children to amusement parks, and thrifting with his lovely wife.
From the age of five, give or take a year, I can remember my mother taking me to Fellowship Baptist church, and we continued to go to this church regularly until my late teens when I began working. So, I grew up in church, I grew up learning scriptures and being taught about the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, I learned about Daniel in the lions den, David and Goliath, Noah and the great flood, Peter walking on water, Zacchaeus in a sycamore tree. I went to Vacation Bible School, Awana, and youth group as I got older, if someone would have asked me if I was a Christian, I would have said yes.
After I started working and stopped going to church regularly, at some point I quit going altogether. Things were happening in life, and I found myself joining the Army at the age of 20, when filling out my paperwork for the Army, one of the questions was about my religion, I wrote Christian on the paper and it asked me what denomination, and even though I grew up going to a Baptist church for fifteen years or so, I had no idea what a denomination was, so I marked the non-denominational box. And so, on my dog-tags for the entire nine years of active military service to the United States Army they were engraved with Christian Non-denominational. If anyone would have asked me if I believed in Jesus, I would have said yes.
The reality though was that I really wasn’t a Christian, sure in my head I would acknowledge that I was, I mean I had repeated a prayer once or twice after raising my hand as a child to become a Christian and even bowed my head and raised my hand the time I went to Skyview for camp one summer. I was also even “baptized” as a young teen.
But I had never come to genuine repentance and faith in Christ, again I would have said I did, I would have called myself a Christian, but there was never any change in my desires for the things of God. I never had a hunger for God’s word, or to gather in fellowship with the people of God. I considered myself a morally good person, I excelled in the Army because I listened to my leaders and had the integrity to do the right things even when the leaders weren’t around, this helped me in getting promoted and being left in charge at times when the leaders had to be absent for briefing meetings or other reasons, but these things didn’t make me right with God.
If I would have died in any of my deployments over seas in combat zones or in training exercises, or in just the things of everyday life, I would have gone to hell. Because I never had a relationship with Jesus, I knew about Him but I never really knew Him, and more importantly, He didn’t know me, not in the sense of knowledge, because God knows everything, but in a Matthew 7 sense, you know when He tells those who acknowledge they did things in His name but He says depart from me, I never knew you. That’s what I mean by the fact that He didn’t know me. I wasn’t a Christian, not in any true and genuine way.
I was a false convert!
When I got out of the Army in 2007 after coming home from being deployed to Iraq, things were going good in life, I had a good job, I bought my first home, things were good, I wasn’t at a breaking point and I never had a hit rock bottom experience, things were going great.
But one night in either late 2007 or in January 2008, I don’t honestly remember the date, I do know I was thirty-two years old though. I remember that I was unable to sleep, I had no rest and all I kept thinking about was how I was a sinner, I had sinned against a Holy God and I was lost, there was no reason to feel this way, like I said things in life were great. But God wasn’t letting me find any peace in it. And I found myself on my bedroom floor at three in the morning crying, in tears confessing my sin before a Holy God and asking God for forgiveness.
Everything in my life changed after that, I got up the next day with a desire for God, I determined that I was going to church on Sunday and I did, I went back to the church I grew up in Fellowship Baptist church, and so many of the faces of the godly people were there, ones who poured their lives into me teaching me about the word of God and sharing the gospel with me as I grew up there. Even though I wasn’t saved as a child there I look back on it and I am thankful for the seeds that were planted by the saints there, along with my Grandma who was the only other genuine Christian in my life who prayed for me all the time, God used these people as a means to have the knowledge of the gospel and at the appointed time God brought the increase.
From that point I had a hunger and thirst for the Word of God, as a mail carrier I spend about six hours a day out on the streets and I would listen for six hours to sermons, to the audio bible, and even I would listen to free seminary courses. Later, when I got my first iPod and now with my smart phone, I learned you can speed things up to double speed and I have never looked back, I consume even more in a day. Along with my desire to learn more about God and His word, came a desire to share the gospel with others. I was a false convert, and I knew I couldn’t be the only one and I also knew that there were many people out there that didn’t know anything about the gospel of Jesus Christ. So, I began sharing the gospel with everyone, family, friends, co-workers, strangers whoever I could talk to I was telling them the gospel and what the word of God says.
Some of my family member including my mother who took me to church for all those years thought I was crazy because all I ever wanted to talk about was God’s word, one family member said I should be put in a mental hospital because I go on the streets and evangelize, there words were, “who does that, give little Jesus cards to people, that’s crazy”.
My mother also told me that she thought this was just a phase and eventually it would wear off. My response to her was I sure hope, and I said you remember the song this little light of mine, well, I am going to let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.
The bible says, in Romans 1:16 "For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek".
John 3:16-18 says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
So how can I not share the hope that I have in Christ with those who do not know Him, how can they experience the peace of God if they have never heard.
In 2012 I founded G220 Ministries to organize evangelism outreaches and connect like-minded believers together for the purpose of encouraging other Christians to evangelize.
The difference between who I was and who I am since that day at thirty-two years old when I cried out to God to be merciful to me a sinner in need of a savior, is Christ! It is the love of Christ that compels me to share the gospel with others that I might see them reconciled to God by His grace through faith in Christ which comes by the hearing of the word of God.
When I founded G220 Ministries it was built on Galatians 2:20 which says, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
And so while this testimony mentions my past and who I was in comparison to who I am today, it really isn’t about me, it’s about Christ and the work He has done in me, to Him be the Glory forever and ever.
Mike Miller
G220 Radio Host
Mike Miller grew up in a liberal Presbyterian church in Nebraska. While he attended choir and youth group at the request of his dad, he did not desire such activities. When he left home to attend Iowa State University (ISU), he would forsake the church. Since he was an engineering student, science ruled his thought including a belief in evolution.
In the spring semester of his first and only year at ISU, God began to work in his life. Before heading to college, Mike realized he sinned, but all the church offered was do better. The prayer of confession seemed to indicate he could do better without God. God put Christians around him, including a friend of a high school friend that worked for Navigators. This spring semester, Mike would start a Bible Study with this new friend. The pivotal moment was when his friend told him the gospel at the end of the study and asked him to mark his location on the bridge evangelism method, he marked myself near the edge of the paper. That summer, Mike would wrestle with this until Air Force basic training.
It was the first Sunday in basic training, and God gripped Mike’s heart and broke him of his self-sufficiency. From this point on, Mike would believe in God as creator and redeemer, to use John Calvin’s language. God would provide other Christians while in the military. In Oklahoma, Mike learned the importance of Bible study. Later in England, with George, he learned to evangelize and developed an interest in apologetics. With advice from his Sunday School teacher, Mike left active duty Air Force for the Reserves and started school at Liberty University. He graduated from Liberty in May 2012. Desiring to teach theology, Mike and wife would move to Louisville, Ky so he could attend The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary for his Master of Divinity (M. Div.). In December 2018, he graduated from SBTS.
Mike is married to Kathren, a theology nerd in her own right. He is the father of Aletheia, Greek for truth, and Emmett, which is related to truth in Hebrew. An owner of a very friendly standard poodle named Rhya. What little free time he has, he enjoys disc golf and watching basketball plus other weird sports Americans tend not to watch. However, brewing and roasting coffee is the hobby of choice.
G220 Radio Host
Mike Miller grew up in a liberal Presbyterian church in Nebraska. While he attended choir and youth group at the request of his dad, he did not desire such activities. When he left home to attend Iowa State University (ISU), he would forsake the church. Since he was an engineering student, science ruled his thought including a belief in evolution.
In the spring semester of his first and only year at ISU, God began to work in his life. Before heading to college, Mike realized he sinned, but all the church offered was do better. The prayer of confession seemed to indicate he could do better without God. God put Christians around him, including a friend of a high school friend that worked for Navigators. This spring semester, Mike would start a Bible Study with this new friend. The pivotal moment was when his friend told him the gospel at the end of the study and asked him to mark his location on the bridge evangelism method, he marked myself near the edge of the paper. That summer, Mike would wrestle with this until Air Force basic training.
It was the first Sunday in basic training, and God gripped Mike’s heart and broke him of his self-sufficiency. From this point on, Mike would believe in God as creator and redeemer, to use John Calvin’s language. God would provide other Christians while in the military. In Oklahoma, Mike learned the importance of Bible study. Later in England, with George, he learned to evangelize and developed an interest in apologetics. With advice from his Sunday School teacher, Mike left active duty Air Force for the Reserves and started school at Liberty University. He graduated from Liberty in May 2012. Desiring to teach theology, Mike and wife would move to Louisville, Ky so he could attend The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary for his Master of Divinity (M. Div.). In December 2018, he graduated from SBTS.
Mike is married to Kathren, a theology nerd in her own right. He is the father of Aletheia, Greek for truth, and Emmett, which is related to truth in Hebrew. An owner of a very friendly standard poodle named Rhya. What little free time he has, he enjoys disc golf and watching basketball plus other weird sports Americans tend not to watch. However, brewing and roasting coffee is the hobby of choice.