Our History

In 1996 I was first invited to the City of New Orleans to minister on the streets during the annual Mardi Gras festival held each year. I was told that over a million people would be gathering with one thing in common: They needed Jesus!

That first year, Melanie and I and seven others, loaded up in a borrowed van and made the one thousand mile trek from Amarillo, Texas to New Orleans to spend the next five days sleeping a few hours on a gym floor and as many as twelve hours a day ministering to the multitudes who would literally flood the infamous French Quarter in a sea of humanity.

(This is our very first "Raven" team (L-R Back) Pastor Ken Fowler, Wanda Fowler, Cesar Sanchez, Niki Perez, Melanie Bohn, Pastor Troy Bohn, Stephanie Sanches (she was Stephanie Brooks then!), (L-R Front) Doree Derrick, Holly Hill (she was Holly Sanders then)

I have often said, "The day I crossed Decatur Street into Jackson Square was an epiphany for me." I had planted churches, served as a pastor, preached in many places, witnessed in my community- but that rainy Friday evening truly served to open my eyes and transformed my approach to the Gospel and in reality, my view of our responsibility to the Word of God.

"When you see it like He saw it, then you will do it like He did it" instantly became my motto and the basis by which I would establish any further ministry that I would do. It truly ceased to be okay with me for people to die and go to hell without having the opportunity to accept the life-changing message of the Lord Jesus Christ. I had long been a hearer of the word, but now it was time to be a doer of that word as well.

That first team of nine "urban missionaries" would soon grow to close to 100 sold-out saints of God who would catch the vision for souls and embrace their personal responsibility to the Great Commission. People from 18-70 years of age would make up the ranks of those loading into charter busses to make the eighteen hour bus ride into the hot bed of outreach evangelism.

Over the years we were able to share the message of the Cross of Calvary to tens of thousands who made this pilgrimage of perversion to the city called "The Big Easy." Of that number, we saw countless thousands yield to the convicting power of the Holy Spirit, repent and ask Christ to come into their lives as Lord and Savior!

With each passing year and with each successive trip to the City, Melanie and I found our hearts more and more drawn to this place at the mouth of the Mississippi until the Lord began to stir us in the spring of 2001.

At that time we knew for sure that God was preparing us for a move beyond the comfortable borders of the church that we had birthed and labored in for the past ten years, but the clear directive would not come for another two years.

In the summer of 2003 the sure word finally arrived. "I want you to go to the City of New Orleans. I want you to begin to network together with the Body of Christ there because I am sending revival to the Gulf Coast area" was the clear direction that we both received from the Lord Jesus.

He even spoke specifically to us as to when we should depart and even told us with how much money to leave the city with. Just as Abram was called out from Ur of the Chaldees to a land of his inheritance, we also felt commissioned to go and take the city for Christ!

Arriving in New Orleans in November of 2003, we have seen innumerable souls come into the Kingdom on the streets of this city. We have seen individuals and churches stirred for revival and shaken from their slumber. We have seen the hungry fed and the naked clothed. In short, we have seen God do exactly what He said that He would do.

In November 2004, Pastor Alex and Holly Hill, my longtime associate pastor in Texas, joined us in the Harvest Fields of New Orleans. Pastor Hill had been brought up, discipled and mentored under my ministry for many years and he and Holly had long been trusted confidants and valuable assets to the ministry.

Pastor Hill had felt a like calling to join us in New Orleans with an emphasis reaching those often considered the "bottom of the barrel." His heart for the homeless and the needy had been cultivated through his faithful ministry in our Jesus Cafe and subsequent Street Church services that attracted 250 and 150 respectively.

With the directive of networking before us, I sought out clarity and connections that would serve the purpose of the Kingdom of God and provide us with the relationships necessary to accomplish and succeed in such an enormous "God-sized" undertaking.

We quickly found that there were people of like passion and determination who desired to see this City won to Jesus and we endeavored to join in relationship with them in impacting New Orleans.

We believe that God is raising up a cross-cultural, Spirit-filled, non-compromising body of believers who, under the power and anointing of the Holy Ghost, will see revival burst upon the scene.

We are committed to seeking and responding to the voice of God, setting our "faces like flint" and "putting our hand to the plow" in order to invoke change upon this world for JESUS.

Since 2003 we have now expanded RAVEN througout the United States and Canada with work begun to reach into Europe and Asia. Now based out of Daytona Beach, Florida--Pastor Troy Bohn nows oversees this rapidly expanding Apostolic Network that is seeing souls saved, the hungry fed, and lives transformed simultaneously from coast to coast each week.

We are now reaching an international audience through our weekly LIVE webcast -RAVEN NATION and our online Raven Institute now has over 6,000 students! God is truly blessing and expanding the ministry in these last and exciting days!

Our vision is to see teams in all 50 states withing the next four years and to have Raven Training Centers established in 4 locations across the USA. Whatever it takes to reach the lost--that is our motto!