Vapor Ministries founder speaks at mayor's prayer breakfast

“How are we stewarding our lives?” Vapor Ministries CEO and founder Micah McElveen asked the crowd at the 2019 Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast.

There are a “million temptations and a million distractions” every day, McElveen said. The question for those who want to make an impact, he said, is to invest your life in what matters.

McElveen grew up on the West Coast, and from an early age, he had two constants in his life: Jesus and sports. After moving to Florida, his dad had to tell him life isn’t about a game, but McElveen remembers at one point telling God, “This is my life, and I have a plan for it.”

One day in 1995, while living in Florida, McElveen and his brother went surfing. He crashed into a wave, which paralyzed and trapped him under water, unable to breathe. Between five and seven minutes passed before a stranger found his body, which was medically dead, floating in the water. He had no heartbeat, but was sent to the intensive care unit on a helicopter.

McElveen was able to survive and be brought back to life, and awoke a little while after the accident. His first words, he said, were directed toward his father.

“How did I do in the game?” he asked.

“You didn’t play in a game,” McElveen’s dad answered. “You broke your neck.”

Four vertebrae in McElveen’s neck were shattered. With any dreams of being a professional athlete gone, McElveen realized a truth that would change his life.

“Life, at the end of the day, is like a vapor,” he said. “The question for all of us with breath in our lungs … is will we waste it or will we invest it?”

McElveen talked about better stewarding time, talent and money.

“Time is your most valuable commodity,” McElveen said. “... Live today like there is no tomorrow.”

As for talent, McElveen encouraged those unsure what they brought to the world.

“Heaven’s design is coursing through your veins,” McElveen said. “You are not an accident. … The God who spoke the world into existence knows the hairs on your head.”

In his various mission trips to third-world countries, McElveen saw extreme poverty and decided to alter his lifestyle in America.

“To invest my life, I had to be more intentional as it pertains to coming alongside the hurting,” McElveen said.

Out of the change in McElveen’s life came Vapor Ministries, whose thrift store opened in Vestavia Hills last August, and supports various missions around the world through five centers. The ministry seeks to create disciples of Jesus Christ, alleviate poverty, create sustainable centers and other areas of need.

“We’ve been able to do great good,” McElveen said.

McElveen closed with a story about a little boy he met overseas years ago. The boy, he said, smelled like a trash can and was extremely poor. He was also homeless. He smelled, McElveen said, because he lived in the city dump.

Despite his circumstances, when the boy found a lost coin, he assumed McElveen dropped it, and ran to give it to him. McElveen hadn’t dropped the coin, and told the boy to keep it. The boy used it to buy a meal and to get a bath and a haircut.

As McElveen and his team got to know the boy, they found out his father had died from AIDS, and that his mother was assumed dead from AIDS. However, they found, not only that his mother was alive, but that he had two sisters. While the mom had AIDS, the ministry was able to buy her treatment and she now serves on their staff. Both the boy and his two sisters are not affected by AIDS, and the boy will soon join his sisters as college graduates.

The little boy that McElveen invested his life in is now investing his life in others, making Christian disciples in his village, McElveen said.

“That is why we exist, at the end of the day,” McElveen said.