Do It Scared: How Pastor Gregory Balluzzo Built a Life on Radical Obedience

The voice was clear, but the logic was missing. Gregory Balluzzo had a secure career job with the city of Niagara Falls when God called him into ministry. No promise of a paycheck. No guarantee of provision. Just a simple assurance: "I might not pay you every two weeks like your salary job, but I'll pay you."

That moment of decision — to leave stability for obedience — became the defining pattern of Balluzzo's seventy-year journey of faith. It's a pattern he describes with disarming simplicity: "Do it scared."

The Foundation: When Wisdom Replaces Logic

For most business leaders, financial security isn't just practical — it's prudent. We build budgets, forecast revenue, and hedge our bets. We operate on logic because logic feels safe. But Balluzzo discovered something counter-intuitive: God's wisdom often bypasses human logic entirely.

"Our minds are so distinctly positioned on feelings and having things set in motion where you can feel like you're stable," Balluzzo explains. "But God said, my foundation is more sure than mankind."

This wasn't theoretical theology for Balluzzo. After leaving his government position to attend Bible school and prepare for ministry, he had to learn what it meant to trust divine provision in real time. The lesson became his operating system: lean not on your own understanding, even when — especially when — the bank account doesn't make sense.

"Proverbs talks about leaning not to your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him and he will direct your path. In our minds as humans, we want to understand. We want to see the bank account; we want to see his resources. But when you know that Jesus never lacked, and you know that he was a son, and if we're his children, he certainly will take care of you."

That conviction was tested repeatedly. And nowhere more dramatically than in a school hallway in Holland, Michigan.

Starting a Church in a Hallway

Fresh back from the mission field with no money and a clear directive from God to start a church, Balluzzo did what any sensible church planter would do: he looked for available space. School auditoriums seemed like the logical choice, but everyone he approached was already rented by other pioneering ministries.

Then came the prompting that made no sense: "Start it in the hallway of the school."

Balluzzo pushed back internally. "You can get like four chairs, two chairs on each side," he remembers thinking. But obedience doesn't require understanding — it requires action. So he approached a school superintendent and made an unusual request: Could he use the hallway?

"Sure," came the response.

That hallway became the birthplace of a church that would serve Holland, Michigan, for nine years. "Whoever would think of doing something like that?" Balluzzo reflects. The answer: someone who had learned to obey the illogical voice of God.

Faith in the Marketplace: Block Parties and Chief of Police

But Balluzzo's kingdom work never stayed confined to Sunday services or even school hallways. His heart pulled him consistently toward the marketplace, toward decision-makers, toward the places where church people rarely ventured.

In Holland, he asked the mayor and chief of police a pointed question: "Where's the most crime, the most questionable area?" Then he requested something audacious — permission to block off the street and throw a party.

What emerged was a model of collaborative kingdom work that transcended denominational lines. Balluzzo brought together the fire company, police department, food bank, city mission, and multiple churches with different gifts — drama teams, mime groups, worship bands. A farmer in his congregation provided a trailer platform. The PA system went up. And people who would never darken a church door pulled out lawn chairs and rocking chairs to join the celebration.

"I like to incorporate Christianity in terms of it influences every part of the city," Balluzzo explains. "My heart was to knock on doors that would allow me to come in and let Jesus be revealed in a practical way."

"It wasn't just saying, come to church on Sunday. It was more in the marketplace, where we could get people to sit outside and just enjoy some time together. And then we had several people accept Christ, and they would be able to choose what church they wanted to go to by the expressions that were at the event."

This wasn't competition — it was collaboration in service of the greater mission. Kingdom work, Balluzzo understood, isn't about building your own platform. It's about meeting people where they are and introducing them to Jesus in ways that actually connect.

From Scared Straight to Life Skills: Ministry Behind Bars

That same marketplace instinct led Balluzzo into one of the most unlikely ministry contexts imaginable: Arizona's prison system. With his Master’s degree in Behavioral Health Balluzzo was contracted to provide educational classes to state agencies contracted in the Arizona State Prison System and MCSO Jails.

The curriculum was very limited, so Balluzzo created a more extensive and comprehensive one called — Life Skills Institute, a program addressing the cognitive gaps that lead intelligent, successful people to make catastrophic choices. He remembers one student vividly: a salesman earning over a million dollars annually who started running drugs to cover his daughter's college expenses.

"Very intelligent man," Balluzzo recalls. "But he didn't have all the resources he needed for college. So, he ended up getting in an area that was against the law. Seven years incarcerated. Wife can't take care of the bills, loses the house. Daughter finishes college but with debt."

These weren't hardened criminals in Balluzzo's eyes — they were people with gaps in their development who made choices without thinking through consequences. Hedge fund managers. Lawyers. Doctors. Educators. People just like the rest of us, except for one choice that spiraled.

He taught them about denial — an acronym used offen: "Don't Even Know I Am Lying." Because the most dangerous lies are the ones we tell ourselves.

The Daily Discipline: Medicine for the Mind

How does someone maintain this kind of faith-driven boldness for seven decades? For Balluzzo, the answer is ruthlessly simple: daily immersion in Scripture and prayer.

"The Bible calls the Word of God medicine," he explains. "It's medicine to your flesh, it's medicine to your mind. It helps you get rid of the chatter that's out there in the world that is chaotic and it keeps me in rest and in peace."

But this isn't passive Bible reading — it's intentional preparation for action. "I want to be open to share my faith with others," Balluzzo says. "I don't want to be just a hearer and not a doer because I'm really concerned because of my faith of eternal security where people are."

That concern drives him to ask strangers simple, disarming questions: "What is your church background?" Or "Do you think there'll be ice cream in heaven?" Anything to create a doorway into deeper conversation.

But at 75, Balluzzo knows that time is short, and if people aren't interrupted, they stay stuck in the same patterns. Someone has to ask the uncomfortable questions.

Advice for Leaders: Do It Scared

When asked what he'd tell business leaders just beginning to integrate faith and work, Balluzzo doesn't offer a five-step plan. He offers something more honest and harder to implement.

"First of all, probably being a little more courteous to the community that you see," he begins. "Love is an adventure because he'll always take you to places that you're uncomfortable."

He remembers his first time in a prison through the Scared Straight program — terrified, uncertain, completely out of his element. "I've never been in a place like this before, and I never would have gone if I was not with the people that were responsible," he admits.

But discomfort became the doorway to decades of ministry.

"If you're not really prepared, then don't take the leap. Prepare yourself with, first of all, a prayer life. Reading the word — God will give you confidence. So let the landscape that you see every day change because of the work of the Word of God. And as the Word is working and the landscape is changing, it could be just, 'God bless you. Can I buy you lunch?' Just sitting there at a table and listening to other people that maybe you wouldn't have listened to otherwise."

It's risk-taking, Balluzzo acknowledges. We want to delegate spiritual conversations to pastors or wait for the perfect moment. But obedience starts small: "I'll pray for you." "Can you help me understand how you pray?" Simple questions that create space for God to work.

The Miracle That Started It All

There's a backstory to Balluzzo's willingness to do things scared, and it begins at age five. Severe bronchial asthma landed him in the hospital multiple times a year. During one attack, his condition turned fatal. A priest administered last rites. Balluzzo remembers seeing the white light, the tunnel, the sensation of being taken.

And then his mother's prayer: "Lord Jesus, if you're going to use my son, use him to do your will."

He came back. Seventy years later, he's still here — still teaching, still reaching, still doing it scared.

"Anything I can do, any wonderful thing I've done — it's because of that prayer," Balluzzo reflects. "I'm a miracle."

That's the secret underneath all his radical obedience: he knows he's living on borrowed time, called back from death for a purpose. When you've already died once, leaving a government job doesn't seem quite so scary. Starting a church in a hallway becomes an adventure. Walking into a prison becomes an opportunity.

The Loneliness of Pioneering Faith

But Balluzzo's journey hasn't been without cost. For years, he felt like a lone ranger — churches sent financial support, but few wanted to truly know him. "Everybody threw money at me, but nobody wanted to get to know me," he admits. "I feel lonely sometimes. I'd like to be candid with them. I'd like to be able to just tell them my needs and be honest without hearing, 'Where's your faith, brother?'"

It's the hidden burden of faith-driven leadership: the isolation that comes from pioneering paths others won't walk. Business leaders living out their faith know this tension — the loneliness of making decisions that don't fit conventional wisdom, the isolation of integrating kingdom values into marketplace realities.

We need each other. We need spaces where we can be honest about our fears without being judged for having them. We need accountability that doesn't mistake vulnerability for weakness.

Balluzzo feels so blessed because his wife Kellie has been such a great partner in this calling. She has stood by his side every step of the way willing to support and encourage even when times were tuff. They always knew together Jesus would see them through.

Your Next Step: What Will You Do Scared?

Gregory Balluzzo's life poses an uncomfortable question to every leader who claims to follow Jesus: What would change if you actually obeyed the next prompting you sense from God?

Not the safe, logical, budget-approved prompting. The uncomfortable one. The one that makes you check your bank account and question your sanity. The one that requires you to do it scared.

Maybe it's a conversation with an employee you've been avoiding. Maybe it's a business pivot that doesn't make financial sense but feels spiritually right. Maybe it's showing up in a part of your community where your kind of people don't usually go.

Balluzzo's counsel is simple: Start your day in Scripture and prayer. Let the Word do its work of transforming how you see the landscape around you. And when you sense that illogical prompting, take the first small step — even if your hands are shaking.

Because God doesn't promise to pay you every two weeks like a salary job. But seventy years of evidence suggests He does pay. And the adventure of obedience beats the safety of logic every single time.

What's the one thing God has been nudging you to do that you've been avoiding because it doesn't make sense? That's probably your hallway in Holland. That's your school without an auditorium. That's your invitation to do it scared.

The question is: Will you?