Michael Huff and his fiance Tonya, as he prepares for baptism.
Debbie Michel
August 14, 2025Michael Huff came for more than the sermon.
He had just moved to the Fort Wayne, Indiana fresh from a work-release program. Friends told him about a back-to-school giveaway at a red brick church in a hardscrabble neighborhood. There was one condition. To get the supplies, you had to sit through the hour-long service.
Michael was fine with that. His girlfriend, Tonya, was not so sure. She had been to churches before, the kind where the preacher’s voice boomed and women were told to obey their husbands, and she had left feeling demeaned.
Inside the brimming sanctuary on a sweltering late July evening, things changed. The pastor, Lake Region Conference evangelist Cody Miller, did not dress or speak like he was trying to impress. Clad in jeans and sneakers, he told stories about real people and real struggles. He read Bible verses straight from the text, pointing each one out so listeners could check for themselves. There was no talking down to him. There was no pretending to be perfect.
“I could relate to that,” Michael said.
For years, he had not imagined himself in a church at all. His childhood was a blur of 26 schools, nights in homeless shelters, a father who ran from the law, and a mother who could not keep a home. By his teens, he was stealing and selling guns. At 18, he was arrested on burglary and firearm charges. The possible sentence was 150 years.
In jail, he wandered into a service led by a former criminal with a hook for a hand. This pastor knew the life. He had lived it. “I went back to my cell crying and praying,” Michael recalled of that unforgettable day in Sept. 2015. “That was the day I decided to follow God.”
After nearly a decade behind bars, he met Tonya. She was fighting her own way out of addiction and a custody battle for her two daughters.
When they showed up at the Body of Christ Church along with 200 other visitors for the back-to-school giveaways they didn’t expect the outpouring of love. Members gladly welcomed them both, remembering the girls’ names and sending texts in the days following to see how they were doing.
Then came the sermon that changed everything. Pastor Cody began with a warning. “What I am about to say might offend you,” he told the congregation, as Michael hung on the preacher’s every word. “Do not be mad at me. You will see it in the Word yourself.”
The topic was death. Most churches, Pastor Cody told them, tell grieving families their loved ones are already in heaven. But, he continued: “I'm sorry if you think that, you know, Big Mama is up in heaven right now looking down on you but that's not the case…”
The Bible, the evangelist explained, describes death as a sleep. The dead wait for Christ’s return. He moved from verse to verse in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, showing the promise of resurrection. Cody walked them through verses showing that when you die, you’re waiting until Jesus comes back.
For Michael, the message rang true. “That has always bothered me,” he said. “I have read it myself. When you die, you wait. I'm like, ‘They can't be up in heaven already cause Jesus hasn't finished. He says, ‘I'll build a place for you and then I will come back for you.’ You know, nobody knows the day.’ Hearing him go through it, showing every verse, it was like, ‘Yeah, that is the truth.’”
On Friday, Aug. 8, 2025, he stepped into the baptismal waters, grateful for the Bible knowledge and friendships gained. “It is not about being perfect,” he said. “It is about being real, and God can work with that.”
Debbie Michel is editor of the Lake Union Herald.
