“For those of you that think gospel music has gone too far, you think we got too radical with your message, well, I got news for you. You ain’t heard nothin’ yet.”

If those lyrics resonate with you in any way, it’s likely because you remember the 1997 gospel hit “Stomp” by Kirk Franklin that had the church rocking. While the song is based around lifting radical praises despite life’s circumstances, the opening line offers a bold and audacious declaration that the innovation and creativity of Christians cannot be boxed in. A textbook example of this radical innovation is Touré Roberts.

Roberts is the current pastor of ONE (Formerly One Church LA), serving over 7,500 local members and an online viewership of more than 700,000 subscribers. And while his faith and work in the church have catapulted him to success in the religious sector, Roberts had a lucrative career in the tech industry.

During an April 2022 conversation with Blavity, Inc. CEO Morgan DeBaun on her Work Smart podcast, Roberts detailed that his early twenties were spent building out data centers for large companies. Although his work for the corporate tech company he was employed for was successful, he saw an opportunity in the work he was doing to launch his own company.

He did just that. Touré Roberts noticed that the company he worked for supplied the product for data centers but outsourced the installation of those products. In 1998, he stepped into the gap and became that outsourcing party, building a lucrative tech company.

However, all of this shifted once Roberts turned 26-years-old, and had what he described as a radical spiritual encounter. Since then, he left Corporate America but didn’t abandon his business and tech roots.

Touré Roberts

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