Rev Ari Prado, 1978-2023

Husband, Father, Pastor, Mentor, Friend

On October 29th, 2023, at 10:07PM, the light went out of our world as God called Reverend Ari Prado home to receive his reward. As I sit here to recount and write about some of my experiences with Bro. Prado, I am still in a state of disbelief.

For many, he was a rock, he was True North. After his untimely passing, I realize he was a comet. A comet that burned hot, bright and blazed a trail. Then, he was gone. Only now, in hindsight, are we beginning to understand what we were blessed with.

He leaves behind a beautiful wife, Sis. Jaimee Prado. Thank you Sis. Prado for sharing him with the world. You held the heart of the greatest man of this generation. We are deeply sorry for your loss.

Together they raised two precious daughters in the fear and admonition of the Lord. Ayla inherited her fathers raw intellect and keen artistic eye. Nora is the perfect reflection of his warmth and emotional intelligence. They will grow up without him now. This breaks my heart.

Bro. Prado loved his family like no one I’ve ever known in my life. It was a passionate, fierce and intentional love.

He led his church with gentle but strong hands. He did not control or manipulate people. He rendered them competent. He gave people the confidence and the tools to live for God on their own when no one was looking.

As an evangelist, he prayed countless people through to the Gift of the Holyghost. Including members of my own family.

As a mentor, he discerned hidden potential in young preachers and then helped them to realize that potential.

We all knew the same man. He was a man of integrity and incredible consistency. He was also a very complex and layered individual. So while we knew the same man, he was able to be to us, what we needed as individuals. He was all things to all men.

In recounting some of my experiences with him, I hope you can add it your knowledge of him. And vice versa. Perhaps then we can have an even better understanding of who he was. A mosaic of memories, portraying just how truly extraordinary this man was. How special he was.

I had the privilege of knowing Bro. Prado from the time I was five years old. We were born in the same hospital, 15 years apart.

My earliest memories were of him preaching local conferences and camps. One of the first sermons I remember him preaching was “The Fine Art of Saying Thank You.” Even as a young boy, I knew there was something very different about his preaching. It was clear, relatable and actionable. He was a hometown hero. A local legend.

Then, he disappeared from off the radar into obscurity. He preached in little known places for many years before he preached large conferences.

Then next time I heard an Ari Prado sermon, it was from the behind the pulpit of the Mabee center in Tulsa, OK, as he exhorted us to “Defy the Decadence”. One of the greatest sermons of all time.

This was not the Ari Prado I remember preaching at junior camp. He was diffrent. He was on another level. He had seen things in the spirit. He had dug deep in the Word. He had been through trials. He had unlocked a dimension of ministry and anointing that very few have or ever will.

One day completely out of the blue, he called me. He was a fixture in my childhood but up until that point we’d yet to truly interact in a deep in personal way.

I was somewhat starstruck. I was further bewildered when he asked me if I could come help him move a mattress. As casual and informal as the setting was, this inaugural reconvening would mark the beginning of the most formative years of my life.

For the next 8 years we talked or met weekly, if not daily. We spent countless hours in prayer and study. We laughed, we cried and we drank lots of coffee. Like, a lot. If we had a bad cup at Peet’s, we would go to Blue Bottle. If Blue Bottle didn’t get it right, we went to Philz. At the time it might’ve seemed excessive. In hindsight, it wasn’t enough.

I would do anything for one more cup of coffee with him.

I was a very young fledgling minister. He was a seasoned minister. He and sister Prado had just planted EBBF.  We labored in our respective fields alongside each other. However, he never despised my youth or my calling.

He helped me to navigate the loneliness and difficulty of ministry. He showed me how to pray. He taught me how to respect the call of God on my life. He taught me how to put a sermon together. He showed me how to love God’s people.

One day while we were praying, I began to sing. He immediately stopped praying and said, “Tselot, Its prayer time, why are you trying to be Fred Hammond?” He challenged me to be articulate and specific in my prayer time.

Bro. Prado was the first person to insist on calling me by my real name. I thought I was being relatable by introducing myself to others as Coco - my childhood nickname. He saw it as something that needed to be shed in order for me to have a shot at reaching my potential. He even sat Ayla and Nora down to explain to them that they were to refer to me by my real name.

One day someone made the grave mistake of using my nickname. They were swiftly corrected by none other than Nora, who informed them that Coco was my “little name”. And my “big name” name was now Tselot. I don’t think she was a day over 3 years old.

Bro. Prado had a way of dignifying every young minister he came into contact with. He told me that though I was young, but the pulpit was ancient. He saw where we opposed ourselves or sold ourselves short and instructed us with meekness and patience.

One day Bro. Prado asked me if I could cut his hair. I have no idea why. I am not a barber. I proceeded to give him what I presume to be the worst haircut of his entire adult life. As he sat there, unmoved he mentioned the name of a young lady - Audrey Williams-Barrows. “You should meet her,” he said. “She dresses nice and prays a lot.” Then he moved on. I played it cool like I didn’t hear what he said. One year later, I was married to Audrey.

Over the next year, several of the young minsters he was mentoring would go on to get married. He was in no small part responsible for this. He believed in family and ministry and he encouraged us to get married and start families.

When it came to preaching Bro. Prado had a unique way of mentoring us. He would ask, “what are you preaching?” When we fumbled or rambled he would ask again. “So, what are you preaching?” He pressed us until we could condense our entire sermon into one, crystal clear sentence.

He pushed us until our heads literally hurt. But when we saw what God could do when we stretched ourselves, we couldn’t thank him enough.

He didn’t have a strict method per se, but he was one of the most effective mentors of our time. You could learn more from him over one cup coffee than an entire semester in seminary.

He simply challenged us to think deeply about scripture, then express it concisely and passionately. It’s the way he preached. You would often hear this phrase in all of his sermons:

“I want to preach to you about….”

You never left wondering what he preached. It was laser precise.

He was a master story teller. However, he emphasized to us that stories in sermons are like windows. They are not to be seen, but seen through. He lamented that too many people exegete stories and use the text as illustration.

But the thing about his preaching that really grips you was his relatability. He had an encyclopedic recall of his life and testimony.

However it was expressed through the agony of prayer and the lens of scripture. And with incredibly sharp wit!

I can remember him saying once “When I first got saved, I was homeless. I used to sleep in the back of the church where they kept the old speakers.

That’s why today, I am a speaker!”

He encouraged us to own our testimony, know it inside out and backwards, and prayerfully fuse it into our sermons.

So while we he gave us all the same recipe, none of us made the same sauce.

He would listen to our sermons. He could tell when we weren’t preaching from the mastery of either our subject or of ourselves. Or both. He expected us to do our best. He encouraged us to know scripture, to know our testimonies. He knew this would produce preaching that was doctrinally sound but also unique and distinct.

He never said much about delivery, cadence, rhythm or having a “preacher voice.” He believed that your “preaching voice” was found in your prayer voice.

If we articulated ourselves fervently and precisely in prayer, that was our natural preaching voice. Anything other than that was inauthentic.

He had a way of expressing complex ideas in simple terms. This was perhaps one of his greatest gifts. His brevity and profundity were unparalleled. He was a literary genius.

His preaching just resonated with you.

He taught us that we could develop this through teaching Bible studies. Yes. Teaching 1-on-1 Bible studies. To sinners, saints and everyone in between. He even taught small children!

He warned us that the recipe for frustration is to attempt to preach to crowds before learning to resonate with individuals.

He wanted to ensure that we did not commit the cardinal sin of preaching - preaching to impress preachers, instead of preaching to people.

He always preached to people. To our humanity. Not to the masks we wear.

And ironically, the preachers were impressed, but everyone was touched.

He helped me in my interpersonal life in ways that I don’t have the time or ability articulate. He walked with me through the darkest of times and the deepest of disappointments. He was just a phone call away. But not just for me. For hundreds of people. I don’t know how he did it.

What’s more is he never hid the difficulty of these burdens from us. He allowed himself to be vulnerable with us. An open book. Some nights he would call and ask for prayer on the phone. This didn’t make me think less of him, but more. In a day and age where too many are suffering in silence, he showed me how to reach out, and that nobody was above asking for prayer. A man of true humility.

This has been my feeble attempt at conveying the caliber of man he was. In truth, I’ll likely spend the rest of my life trying to do so. I’ve barely scratched the surface.

Bro. Prado showed me Jesus in the realest, rawest, most genuine way. He lived like Jesus, he gave like Jesus, he loved like Jesus. He left us. But he left something for us. He left his doctrine, his manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, charity and patience. He left an example for us to follow. He left a mantle for us to pickup.

God help us honor this legacy and his memory by following in his footsteps.

Brother Prado, I love you. I miss you. My life will never be the same without you. Thank you for believing in me. Thank you for everything.

Rest easy, Man of God.