For this week's Substack detangling interview, I have with me, the one and the only Dwayne Roberts. Otherwise known as my father, he made the cut. You can listen to the interview or read the edited transcripts below.
Q: Can you share a little bit about yourself, where you grew up, and your background?
I was born in the year 1968 up in the Northlands, Canada. Born in Calgary, Canada, I was raised there and loved it. I was raised Pentecostal, kind of Assemblies of God, Canadian version.
Lived by the Rocky Mountains, and learned how to ski. I lived two years in Africa, from ages six to eight. I don't have a ton of memories, but I have some core memories, I would say. And I think the experience even began to shape a little bit of my worldview. It was just two years, but definitely had a fingerprint on me.
When I was 19 I left home and went to Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and basically did 10 years with Youth With A Mission (YWAM).
I knew Jennifer, who is my now my wife, already, but then we both independently chose to go to Amsterdam and then that's where we dated early on, and then got married at 22.
We spent six years in Amsterdam and four years in Budapest Hungary. We went to Budapest kind of post the fall of communism. Quite soon after the fall of communism, we moved there actually.
We Loved it. You know, you begin to see some trends in your life. And one of them, I think, would be pioneering, for both Jennifer and I.
You know by our late 20s, we were asking what have I done so far in life? Where am I going? There was a lot of that internal kind of dialog between the two of us and that’s when we decided to go to Kansas City. We just wanted to do something a little bit different.
We loved our experience with Youth With a Mission (YWAM) in the nations sharing the gospel. But then we saw some gaps, some areas of weakness, areas I wanted to focus on. So we went to Kansas City, and we were only going to be there in Kansas City for a year. And then it was in that year where the House of Prayer started.
So we got there in August of ’98 and then the prayer room started in May of ’99 and that’s when the IHOP years started.
Q: Is it true that you were in a rock band in Europe?
I would just add in there “famous rock band”, a famous rock band in Europe.
Yes, not famous, but rock band, yes. It was kind of in the Nirvana season, that grunge kind of feel. But there were two really phenomenal musicians. And I kind of said, “Look, man, you teach me to play the bass and I'll kind of organize us and get us going.”
Chloe: And it was a tool for evangelism, right?
