Founders

John and Joyce Stanley

John and Joyce came to understand and experience Christ as their life through some very serious difficulties.  After struggling for years with hurts, rejections, and depression, Joyce saw all of this affecting her marriage and her roles of wife and mother.  As the mother of one young son, Doug, and the wife of a husband who was gone a good deal because of his career, she began experiencing severe migraines, sleeplessness, and depression.  After trying a few types of “counseling”, she and John were led by God to a counselor utilizing the biblical truths of the “Exchanged Life” approach.  This was in 1979, a seeming lifetime ago.  Because God not only used these truths to save Joyce’s life, literally, and her and John’s marriage, they began a quest to become knowledgeable and trained in order to help others in the way they had been helped.  Prior to this, they had always been the people to whom others came for “help” in their church, even though they were falling apart themselves.


In 1984 John and Joyce attended what was then the Advanced Training in the only existent training center, Exchanged Life Ministries in Denver, Colorado.  Upon returning to Houston, Texas, they began discipling/counseling people immediately.  Out of their years of experience, Joyce working with women and John working with men, in 1995 God led them to incorporate Exchanged Life Ministries, Southeast Texas.  Today they teach and mentor those involved in the ministry.  John serves as the President of the ministry, Joyce the Vice-President, and both remain on the Board of Directors.


They have seen literally thousands of people embrace God’s truths of the “Exchanged Life”, which has led to transformed lives and saved marriages and families.  They are passionate about this message and live to see God’s truths transform lives.  Their vision is to see these truths, the “Exchanged Life” or the Grace-Life, impact the church and set her free from everything hindering the life of Christ from being witnessed by the world.  They are both available to teach, lead retreats, and present the “Breakthrough Conference.”