Pastor Jim Staley has been married to Cheryl Staley since 1996 and is the proud father of six daughters and three grandchildren. He began his journey in the 1990s as an evangelical Christian in the St. Louis area, helping to establish Bible clubs in local high schools and teaching local believers apologetics to defend their faith.

In 2002, Jim underwent an extraordinary supernatural experience that would challenge virtually everything he believed. This experience led him to a deep understanding of first-century Jewish culture and the true biblical calendar. He found these to be the key to truly understanding prophecy, the real power of the New Covenant, and its true meaning for today. From his modest beginnings in 2007 in his basement, today, he has become one of the world’s leading academic authorities on interpreting and understanding the scriptures from the original Hebraic mindset from which they were written. His knowledge of the seven prophetic feast days of the Lord, the early Christian Shabbat, and the life-transforming power they possess for believers today is unparalleled. His work boldly challenges traditional denominational boundaries, uncovering key biblical doctrines that were changed by the early Roman Church’s 4th-century decrees. His understanding of how and why these changes were made has allowed him the unique ability to piece back together what the original apostolic church actually looked like in both belief and practice. The end result of this discovery has been a true understanding of what the New Covenant was actually intended to look like in the life of a believer today. Since the founding of Passion for Truth Ministries in 2008, he has devoted himself to sharing these life-changing, biblical insights with others through his weekly broadcast on YouTube as well as his live Passover and Tabernacles events each year.

The Longer and Definitely More Interesting Version:

Although Pastor Jim’s journey started from modest beginnings in his basement in 2007 and eventually led to him being a leading academic proponent to return to the Christian roots of our faith, that road was not always paved with ease and comfort. As a matter of fact, it would prove to be filled with potholes, mountain-sized boulders, and would end in a very deep well. After being named one of the fastest-growing ministries in the United States in 2014, his trajectory took an unexpected turn when the federal government indicted him on the accusation of financial fraud from a company that he worked for years before he was in full-time ministry. After the largest stock market crash in history in 2008, many of Jim’s original financial clients lost the money they had invested in the product the company he worked for was offering. The state of Missouri cleared him of any criminal activity and only fined him for selling a security without a license, ruling against 34 other states that did not consider it a security.

Four years later, under the instruction of the anti-Israel Obama administration, the Feds chose to strangely trump the state of Missouri’s ruling and indict Pastor Jim, accusing him of intentionally setting out to defraud his clients. Although the insurance companies and owners admitted responsibility and liability, he was suspiciously the only one targeted in the entire company. Furthermore, every policy that was sold and every commission that was made by other salesmen nationwide (including the insurance companies) were forced into Jim’s case, making him the scapegoat for everything. Coincidentally, all of this happened just before the release of an international documentary featuring Pastor Jim, which would have unveiled the largest Israeli-Christian discovery in the history of Christianity. Due to the extreme power of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, this ordeal forced him into a five-year period of imprisonment starting in 2015. Although he and his family went through the most difficult time of their lives, God was faithful through it all, and the call on their lives would only prove to be amplified in the end.

The new “higher learning facility” (prison) would be just the place to remake, remold, and release a new, fresh wind in Jim that is very tangibly felt today. His original understanding of the truth of scripture has now been matched by the power of the Spirit, which could only have been formed from the bottom of a well and the depth of a prison. Remarkably, due to a shared faith, Jim and his former federal judge share a unique friendship post-prison and, from time to time, still go out to lunch to debrief on what God has been doing in Jim’s life and ministry.