Introduction:
Denis Beausejour has been the Senior Pastor of Mariemont Community Church since November 2004. A native of Canada, Denis spent 22 years in marketing and executive positions with the Procter & Gamble Company in five countries prior to following a call into ministry in 2000. He has extensive leadership development, consulting and speaking experience nationally and internationally. He is a graduate of Trinity seminary and has served in various local church and national ministry leadership assignments, including three years leading the ministry of Dr. Henry Cloud with Campus Crusade for Christ International. Denis lives in Cincinnati with his wife of 23 years Marianne and his four children.

Read Denis' story in the pages that follow. 

In the mountains north of Hong Kong, Denis tasted eternal freedom for the first time.

DENIS BEAUSEJOUR - MY STORY
Listen to an abbreviated version from the Face to Face CD

My story with God really began at 5:46 a.m. on January 17, 1995, when the Great Hanshin earthquake destroyed Kobe Japan, killing thousands. My brush with death that day triggered a quest for the meaning of my life. If I could die in a meaningless "snap" then why am I here? As I searched for answers, I did what I did with any problem: I began a radical audit of my life.

I was an A student, athlete, and leader. I worked my way through school at McDonalds. I went to college at 17 and started at P&G in Canada at 21. By the time I was 29, I was leading our Food business. Through P&G I met my wonderful wife, Marianne. We have four great kids, and a beautiful home. We have more materially than I ever dreamed possible, but there was something missing in the rubble and aftermath of that earthquake.

 

 

By 1991, the business had grown by 400%, and I was elected as P&G's youngest-ever vice-president at 34. I traveled more and more across Asia. In most places, massage parlors were cheaper than an in-room movie here, and when massage parlors weren't enough, it was a short step to call on a prostitute.

"My lack of integrity ate me up. . . . I felt a growing emptiness inside."

We moved to Japan in 1992, and in three years, my business tripled from $200M to $600M and profits increased seven-fold. As my success multiplied, so did my self centeredness and pride. I also had a foul tongue that attacked others as needed. Worst of all, I became an absentee dad - like my dad - the one thing I said I would never be! My lack of integrity ate me up. I craved freedom.

As the audit continued, P&G moved us to China in 1995. We lived in Hong Kong, and I traveled into China every week, managing several joint ventures, with tremendous projects like the expansion of Tide and Crest into the world's largest market. Despite having a fabulous bunch of people and an exciting business, I felt a growing emptiness inside.

In March of 1996 I went to a retreat given in the mountains north of Hong Kong. I heard fifteen successful guys share authentically from their life stories- the failures as well as the triumphs. These guys were dealing with the same questions I had about life, purpose, destiny, and freedom. That weekend opened my mind and transformed my soul.

Every man who spoke had experienced an encounter with Jesus. I had been in church most of my life, but I never heard anyone talk about Jesus from personal experience like these guys. It was like the difference between talking to someone who knows Mel Gibson and someone who has only seen him in a movie. I found out that Jesus was more than a great teacher and example.

"...the penalty for my adultery, my selfishness, every mistake."

He was God in the flesh, and He made the incredible trip from heaven to be one of us, a creature here on the planet He created. I learned Jesus died in my place, to pay the penalty for my adultery, my selfishness, every mistake. I learned that Jesus does not want religiosity. He hates hypocrisy. He wants more than a weekly visit to church - He wants it all: our hearts, our trust, and our obedience. That was a whole new Jesus for me!

I learned that being a good person or doing good deeds was insufficient for God, because no man can earn his way into heaven. I was kind of glad for that because on the scoreboard of good deeds,

It's like me playing golf and being allowed to hand in Tiger Woods' card instead of mine!

I was pretty much euchred! Jesus said that the way to eternal life was to trust Him and receive Him as Lord.  One guy read a verse that blew me away (I found out later it was Romans 3:22): "We are made right in God's sight when we trust in Jesus Christ to take away our sins. And we can all be saved in this same way, no matter who we are or what we have done." That's grace. It's like me playing golf and being allowed to hand in Tiger Woods' card instead of mine!

WOW!!!! That's the God I knew I needed!  By Saturday night, I was on system overload. My concept of Jesus and God was turned upside down, and frankly, the whole thing just sounded too good to be true. 

 

So I went out on the mountain and I asked God to help me know if He was real. The wind in the bamboos stopped, the air got thick and without a vision or audible words, I sensed His presence fill in around me. I felt at home, accepted, free. I felt like a 60 pound rock was removed from my chest. I tasted eternal freedom for the first time.

His Word is alive and he began to speak to me in a fresh and personal way every day! For example, one verse helped me decode the emptiness in my soul. It says that God has put eternity in the hearts of men.

"We are wired to need God and the hole inside us cannot be filled with money, sex, wisdom, power, fame. . ."

We are wired to need God and the hole inside us cannot be filled with money, sex, wisdom, power, fame, or anything else! Once I had invited Jesus into my life, the hole in my soul got filled. I have not looked at pornography in 8 years. I have a new life with my kids. God cleaned up my language. Those are His miracles!

Jesus transformed my marriage too. One day I was reading about Adam and Eve and how they were naked in the garden and felt no shame. His Word spoke to me.

To be truly free in my marriage, I would need to confess to Marianne. I prayed about this, and got a lot of godly counsel. It was the hardest talk I ever had. I never want to hurt her like that again. But God broke through her tears and my fears. Marianne forgave me, primarily because Christ had first forgiven her. Her "But God broke through her tears and my fears." forgiveness was "living proof" to me that Jesus was real. Now Marianne and I help other couples live freedom in Christ.

God also dealt with my Lone Ranger syndrome. The retreat leaders made a big deal about men's groups, which I thought was weird. I would not be caught dead sharing a hurt or a weakness with anyone, especially other guys. However, I decided to try a group the next Saturday, because the guys seemed like the real deal. There were 8 guys, and we prayed, shared our stuff and encouraged each other. Things moved along OK until our third Saturday, when one of the guys came in totally devastated.

He confessed that after breaking up with his girlfriend the night before, he got mad at God. Feeling like he would never find a wife, he lost his virginity with a prostitute. We were shocked. He had trusted Christ since he was young! But what happened next was a miracle. Three guys, including me confessed sexual sin. Instead of repelling us from each other, it drew us closer in a way none of us had ever experienced. We got real and stayed real. We asked for God to forgive us, heal us, and stop our sin. He did!

A good friend in Hong Kong gave me a wonderful worship CD written as a partner to the Oswald Chambers book "My Utmost for His Highest". I got the book, and began an amazing journey with this radical lover of God. I learned that "vertical" worship music, with words that are spoken to God from the Bible, lifted my soul like nothing else. I learned practically that I was made to worship my Creator. I also learned that following God was not a sometimes thing, it was a 24/7 life abandoned to God. I wanted to follow God with everything I had, in every department of my life.

In 1996 I became the global VP of marketing and we moved to Cincinnati. After a prayerful and thorough search, we felt called to Hope church in Mason Ohio. Once we found a strong church, I found a men's group. These guys rubbed off on me and they challenged me.

"God changed me from a Scrooge into a generous giver."

They modeled how to take Jesus to work. With their example, God changed me from a Scrooge into a generous giver. I learned that every believer is called to serve Jesus, to be fishers of men. I shared my faith often at work, and in 1999 I began to teach and to speak as an evangelist. I developed a growing passion to speak and help others get God.

While I was still at P&G, I began to take seminary courses, and in the spring of 2000, one third of the way through my Master's, I felt God calling me to leave P&G. My call was unclear, but like Abraham, I felt the need to obey even though I did not know exactly where I was going. I would finish at Trinity and Marianne and I would do whatever ministry God would put in front of us. During this time, I preached, we did marriage retreats together, we prayed, we sought after God, and we began to streamline our lives for ministry. One day, we declared ourselves slaves of Christ and signed over our lives to Him.

"The Kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but power"

This is about the time when I discovered the ministry of the Holy Spirit. I knew that Jesus gives every believer His Spirit, which places God and His unlimited power inside us. I also had studied the lives of David and Solomon and I realized the single biggest difference between them was that only David had the power of the Holy Spirit. While on vacation in Australia during the Christmas of 2000, I read the entire New Testament with a focus on the Holy Spirit. I was stunned by one verse that said "The Kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but power" (1 Corinthians 4:20), and I felt like I had not trusted God for this kind of power before.

As I read Acts, I wondered about the things going on then, and still wondered if I had received the power that Jesus promised (Acts 1:8)and if I was filled with the Holy Spirit. I then realized that God commands us to be filled with the Holy Spirit - it is not optional! Then I heard Bill Bright teach on the Spirit-filled life and I knew that I had found the key to being a truly effective Christ-follower.

I looked for an analogy to better understand the Spirit-Filled life, and found the Alpha course description very helpful. It works like a water heater.  When we trust Jesus, the Holy Spirit comes in to light the pilot light, which never goes out. The pilot light of course does not produce much hot water! The gas flow "turns on the burners" producing lots of hot water, representing spiritual power in our lives. It is power to understand the Bible, to pray, to share our faith, to worship and to serve others. When we sin, the gas gets turned off. When we confess and ask for a fresh filling, the Holy Spirit turns the burners back on. Our job is to confess before the water gets cold!

The power of the Spirit turned my life into an amazing adventure! For example, just after the announcement that I was leaving P&G, our stock price dropped in half. (There was no direct connection between those events.) I was amazingly calm for a guy in seminary with four kids whose net worth had just been decimated. The Spirit also helped me lose the anger I often showed towards my kids.

"Marianne's second fight with breast cancer. . . "

He helped me become a better listener, especially with my wife. The Spirit helped me deal with life's bad news. Despite the crush of Marianne's second fight with breast cancer last year, we have felt less fear, more joy, and less worry.

In 2001, Marianne and I felt led to work with Dr. Henry Cloud. Marianne had been leading small groups for five years with Henry's materials on personal growth. We met through a friend, and learned more about his ministry with Campus Crusade. After a lot of prayer, a rigorous training experience and our first 40-day fast, we began with Campus Crusade as the directors of Henry's ministry called "Answers for Life" in late 2001. We built a staff of four couples and a few admin people, and have experienced tremendous growth in our own relationships as we applied the biblically-based materials. In this time, we really learned the power of community to transform (Ephesians 4:16).

This time also enabled us to learn how to help churches develop community-driven strategies that grow stronger Christ followers. We developed a depth curriculum with the Vineyard in Cincinnati, which has produced tremendous results and is now being expanded to other churches. At the same time, we realized that Henry's real call was to take his materials outside the church, and we needed a new structure to accomplish that. I also realized that my passion to teach God's Word had not gone away, but rather it had intensified.

Looking back since I gave my first message at Marianne's home church in February of 1999, I had spoken in churches, at outreach events, in schools or in conferences for leaders somewhere between 75-100 times. When I had not spoken about God for a while I would get restless. In this time, I was practicing my real passion as a "moonlighter", squeezing time after 50-60 hours at P&G or seminary, or running Answers for Life.

 

"which again reveals the miraculous power of our great God! "

I decided to step out and seek after my passion to bring God's  message to people on a regular basis in a call to pastoral ministry. Seven months later, I was called by the people of Mariemont Community Church to serve as their senior pastor, which again reveals the miraculous power of our great God!