About Me

Hi my name is Joshua Mervin and I'm a Creative Director that specializes in crafting experiences and marketing strategies specifically for unchurched and de-churched people. 

I currently live in Southern California with my beautiful wife Danielle who is an acting teacher and our amazing dog Juliet who you might notice is ridiculously photogenic and of course spoiled. 

I grew up in a Christian home. My grandfather was a Southern Baptist preacher, preaching fire and brimstone so you can understand why at an early age I remember writing off ministry as a career path for me.  When I became a young adult I moved to Los Angeles to pursue music, leading me to get my bachelors degree in Commercial Music at Musicians Institute in Hollywood.  

I gigged in Los Angeles and all over the world for over 10 years picking up lots of unique skills like marketing, audio engineering, video production, song writing, management and leadership and had some success chasing the Hollywood dream. 

But all along the way God was working on my heart to pursue something that had more purpose and meaning to it. I found myself resisting for years until finally one day I said "you know what? God, you want it? You got it, but I'm going to fight to do something really special and different in your church."  

A new calling and passion was released in me to create unique opportunities and experiences, specifically for the unchurched and the de-churched to be able to connect with God for the first time and hear the message of Jesus.  I want to create experiences and special events that meet an unchurched or de-churched person right where they're at, not where we Christians are at.  

By being intentional and strategic, running everything through the lens of how the church looks and feels to a non-believer is the core of my belief of how church should be done in this modern world.

The last three years I've worked at Eastside Christian Church under the leadership of Gene Appel and together with God's blessing worked to reach tens of thousands of non-believers annually growing the church in regular attendance from 5000 to over 8000 people, launched 2 new campuses, reversed a declining campus, and created our very first online campus.  

We were able to see a 38 percent increase in Christmas attendance to over 25,000 people and a total of over 3000 new decisions to follow Jesus for the first time during that period. 

At Eastside I served on the Executive Team where I supervised the Communications, Worship and Production departments over our 5 campuses with a staff of around 25 people and hundreds of volunteers.  I reorganized every department into a central team model for scalable growth and rapid campus expansion.

I also developed our first app and created comprehensive marketing plans using inbound and outbound marketing techniques by utilizing big data to leverage social media and digital marketing. 

This also includes email drip campaigns, viral marketing techniques and search engine optimization to exploit every opportunity to get the message of Jesus to a non-believer in a way they can truly connect with. 

I love planning and curating live experiences and video elements as my way to worship God and to use everything short of sin to reach someone far from God.  I have lots of outside the box creative ideas and it’s true on occasion one or two ideas turned out to not be that good but the secret to truly having creative success is in the development of staff and volunteers, allowing them to try new ideas and to take risks, to give them ownership of the vision we're working towards, as well as in depth coaching to raise up new leaders and support experienced leaders.  

I love seeing potential in others especially when they don't see it in themselves and giving them opportunities to grow and realize their full God given potential.  For me the greatest reward is not the high quality of the project or the event but the high quality of the team we are becoming along the way.  When we lead as a team there are no limits to what God can do.

I'm a big dreamer. I want to do big things and have big ideas.  I want to build something that is going to really impact those that are far from God.  I want to be a part of a church that's on the front lines of the mission to reclaim this world for Jesus and to make it a better place and if that's something you're passionate about too, then count me in. 

Well, that's just a little bit about me. I look forward to opportunities where you and I can partner together and start taking the vision that God has put into your heart and turn it into a reality.