We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Hezekiah Trevino. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Hezekiah below.

Hi Hezekiah, thanks for joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I grew up playing music in the church so the musicians I was around really helped shape me as an artist.
I also come from a musical family which rubbed off on me from a young age.
I am Hispanic, and I grew up in a predominately hispanic church that my dad pastored. This provided me an opportunity to become familiar with latin styles of music. Then later on, when I was about 11, my dad joined.a predominately black church organization, so I became immersed in traditional black gospel music. I first started learning the guitar and singing when I was around 12 years old helping my dad out with worship music at the church, We kept some of the traditional latin styles of music in the rotation while also implementing traditional black gospel music. One of the biggest obstacles for me in learning music was my family never had enough money to pay for music lessons. So everything I had learned was from watching others play live or on youtube, listening to records and imitating other musicians, and just from the experience of playing new music every week at church. Originally I mostly played by ear, but as I matured as a musician I had discipline enough to learn some music theory enough to play with other musicians in different settings.
Over time I was able to grow in my musical ability to be able to get hired for gigs around different churches and also outside of church playing for bands and artists at different events and festivals. The skills I found to be most essential weren’t necessarily the skill of playing instruments, but the discipline to practice and rehearse songs before playing live. Also interpersonal skills were important, such as being respectful, on time, and professional.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I currently serve in a ministry role as the Venue Director of the REO Town Venue at Riverview Church, which is a non-denominational church in Lansing Michigan. Within this role I teach/preach, and lead others at this church venue. This was not always the plan, in fact, I never wanted to be a pastor, I always thought I would simply stay a musician in church settings but different opportunities opened up for me to where it was hard not to step into this role. I still am involved in music inside and outside of the church but I have a heart for the inner city, and have worked in various role over my lifetime, volunteering and leading different initiatives for the inner city. So my heart for people really drove me into this position at this church which is located in the inner city of Lansing. With Lansing being one of the most diverse cities in the state of Michigan and with my diverse background of being immersed in various cultures, I feel I have a pulse on how to engage with various cultures and lead in a way that is different than most people.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I grew up in the inner city of Lansing Michigan going to very diverse schools. Being in the city exposes you to different things some good and some bad. One of the bad experiences was the exposure to gun violence. Although I had tried to stay clear of gang activity and gun violence, it was present around me and my circle of friends. Although there had been a few peers around me who had lost their lives to gun violence, it didn’t really hit home for me until one of my best friends since 6th grade was shot and killed when I was a freshman in highschool. He had started to stray away from school and getting involved with gang activity, and one night he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and lost his life. This moment really shaped the way I interacted with my peers and my friends. It grew my passion for reaching those around me to pursue a new path, a path away from gang activity and violence. Since then, there have actually been a few of my friends who were heavily gang affilitated, who have now completely turned their lives around after inviting them to church. Some now even mentor students in schools and have successful careers, having an influence on the future generation in different ways.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

One lesson that I had to unlearn was the statement that “People don’t change”. This was something i truly believed for a long time, until I started working closely with people in tough situations, mentoring high schoolers in the inner city, and being involved in ministry. When you are working close to people one on one, it is evident that people can change. Many people grow in traumatic situations that cause them to make certain decisions, but in the end, I believe al people just want to feel safe, secure, and loved. And when they receive those things, it can start to break the cycles of trauma in there lives, and thats when true change happens.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @heztrevino
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hezekiah.trevino
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hezekiah-trevino-