Welcome to the Heart of a Pastor! My name is Pastor Brian Wattenbarger and I am the lead pastor of both Camp Verde Christian Church and Body of Christ Church. I started this blog as a means of furthering the efforts that drove the creation of the similarly named Facebook page, a Pastor’s Heart. I wanted people to be able to have access to my thoughts and feelings on various subjects related to our faith, current events and the world in general today.

So often people see clergy as somewhat unapproachable or, at the least, a bit removed from normal everyday life. But nothing could be further from the truth. We are weak, fallible, and suffer all the same shortcomings (and in many cases more) than everyone else!

More about me:

I was born and raised in Missouri just north of Kansas City to two wonderful Christian parents. Growing up in a small town along the Missouri River, I spent my time outdoors, camping, hunting and fishing as well as playing sports. I was raised by my parents with Christian values but my church was my home and my environment. With a diverse experiential background, I began my career life as a carpenter while learning to be a firefighter and paramedic.

I quickly learned that I preferred emergency street medicine and went to work as a city paramedic in Kansas City, leaving the fire service to work in EMS full time. I moonlighted as an instructor in different aspects of fire training and EMT and Paramedic training. In 1998 I moved to Arizona where I continued to work as a paramedic and began taking shifts in the 911 communications center before moving into Communications full time. I was soon promoted to supervisor and director of training. In 2004 I began flying and was soon flight instructing. I became an airline pilot in 2007 and soon rose to the rank of Captain.

In 2017 I was blessed with the opportunity to teach 5th grade where I was greatly impacted by the children I worked with.

I met my wife Tami in 2001. Together we raised three boys, Blake, Brandon and Brett. We are the grandparents of seven grandchildren: MaKinley, Caylee, Aubree, MaKenna, Weston, Brooks, and the newest edition to the family: Preston!

I have spent my entire life reading the scriptures but feeling lost in the church. I searched many different variants of the Christian faith but the spirit seemed to drive me from each one, each and every time. I just couldn’t get past what I saw as the foretold apostasy rising up in the church. I was disheartened and frustrated. I felt as if Tami and I were going through the motions with church, not really committed, though we were committed to God and Christ.

It took being unable to fly anymore, and being fully immersed in the scripture, as well as a revelation from Tami, before I realized what God had been training me up to do. After looking back over all of my experiences and my frustrations, I realized the Spirit was leading me to start a ministry. I studied full time, being ordained as a pastor and continuing my studies with the Koinonia Institute and Christian Leaders Academy while beginning my ministry.

I try to combine a passion for teaching, a zeal for spiritual growth and learning, and a desire to bring people to Christ’s true teachings as given in the Great Commission. I started Body of Christ Church in Camp Verde, AZ in 2019. In 2022 I was asked to help another ministry, Camp Verde Christian Church, that had recently lost its pastor to retirement. I now pastor for CVCC full time and BOC has been converted to a community outreach and assistance church.

This blog site was created as a means of publicizing my thoughts and feelings on various matters as well as sharing my own personally written devotionals with the readers.