Meet Our Team

Rev. Chris Rapko serves as our Lead Pastor. He comes to us having served as an Interim Associate Pastor at Oak Grove UMC in Decatur, Interim Lead Pastor at Royston First UMC, Associate Pastor at Atlanta First UMC, Lead Pastor at Mt. Zion UMC (which is no longer a United Methodist local church) and Lead Pastor of Hapeville First UMC (now a campus of Tri-Cities UMC). He and his wife, Cassie, who is also a pastor at St. Paul UMC in Grant Park, got married in 2012 after they finished seminary. She’s pretty amazing and he is her biggest fan. They had a daughter in November of 2019 named Jordan Elizabeth. She’s probably the most photographed child ever. Her nickname is #MiniRap. Rev. Chris is originally from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and often jokingly refers to himself as “Florida Man.”

Rev. Chris attended seminary at Candler School of Theology at Emory University, which is where he met his wife, and it’s also when he started DJing. While he was still working toward completing seminary, he got a DJ residency in Buckhead at a hole-in-the-wall club. After that, he got the opportunity to DJ for Q100/Q99.7, a pop radio station in Atlanta. Up until 2020, he mixed music on the radio and in nightclubs every weekend for 10 years. He misses some aspects of the industry, but not very many. He loves making and listening to music, is a video game lover, is a technology wizard and nerd, knows entirely too much about popular culture, and loves Edy’s Strawberry Ice Cream maybe a little too much. He loves the church and has a passion for teaching, preaching, and making safe space for those who have a complicated history with the institutional church to explore faith again.