Skye Haruyama represents a new generation of faith active Christians who will be leading the way in establishing the kingdom of God in the workplace in the years to come. His journey with faith began when he was seven years old, but, with a smile, he says he was born again -again- in Kansas City at the International House of Prayer. When he talks about his faith at that time, he says “I knew God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Bible. But I met God the Holy Spirit at the House of Prayer. From that time forward I decided I was going to do ministry. But ministry to me did not look like 9-5 or a corporate job. Ministry looked like vocational, pastoral care. For where I was in my faith, that was fine. When you are a three-year-old in the natural, certain things are permissible. But when you turn twenty-five, the way you think has to change and adjust. And the same is true in the kingdom. When I was new to everything, how I saw ministry was permissible for that moment. But as I grew in the faith, God started stretching me in my views, especially about ministry.”
He continues, “I gathered with a bunch of my high school friends and told them that I wanted to do a worship night. Pretty soon we went from nine kids in my parent’s living room to four hundred students in a YMCA. We had no idea what we were doing but the Holy Spirit had ambushed us with a movement! I ended up going to school for a little bit. Then Covid happened, but afterwards the same group of students were waiting for me. We started a house group and were meeting in a barn in Lebanon, Ohio. That’s where God gave me a vision for a house of prayer called Ruach, which means breath of God or the Holy Spirit. In the Jewish mind they were interchangeable. Which is why when God makes man out of the dust and breathes into him, he is not just breathing His breath in to him, He is breathing the Holy Spirit, He is breathing life, He is breathing power into Adam. A few months later, the Holy Spirit told me that this needed to be under a church. So I met with the pastors of Revive Ministries in Mason, Ohio and told them that we were supposed to submit what we were doing under their leadership. They hired me as the prayer director, and I was on staff there for a little bit.”
Skye’s life changed dramatically in 2021. He says “In the fall of 2021, I hit my wall. I had lost my brother in July of that year, and the same month I got extremely hurt within ministry. What’s beautiful is that I’m still with that ministry today; it was no one in the ministry that hurt me. But when you’re young and elevated very fast, you learn that it’s not your ability that God is delighted in: it’s your belief in Christ. I think I had a lot of trust in my ability. And when my ability had been weakened and shortened by grief, I had a rude awakening. During that time, I was at a place on unknowing and confusion. Many times people had given me prophetic words that I would go into business.” At first he thought this was a false word, but after connecting with an old friend who introduced him to business and the faith at work community, the Lord started planting a new definition of what ministry means.
During this time, grieving with his family, stepping back from what he had been doing, and working in business, the idea of ministry began to mean more than preaching in front of a group.
He comments, “ministry became taking out the trash and encountering God doing the dishes. Suddenly the idea of God becoming a human became a reality in my life. The Christian walk we call our faith is more than just a God who is far off in heaven. The faith we believe in is God coming into our natural paradigm. It’s Him becoming a human being, a carpenter, and having 12 scoundrel friends that He walked with. Pretty soon I had to confront that my version of Christianity was all supernatural and not natural, and that contradicted Christ. It’s only accepting 50% of who God is. But God was fully God and fully man.”
Currently Skye works as a customer success representative with Edoc Service, Inc. His many responsibilities include account management, assisting with sales, and working directly with the product director helping enhance their products. He also helps with program management with At Work on Purpose Young Professionals. (YP AWOP), making sure that their groups are healthy and running smoothly.
When asked how his faith intersects with his work at Edoc, Skye says “with me starting a professional journey, it’s been in the small things. Moments where we are in a pickle and don’t have an answer for a client. We are an agile environment and are constantly improving our product, but sometimes there are problems our clients have that we don’t have solutions for right away, and where I would like to trust my own ability to communicate those, I’m not the best. It’s nice to have Holy Spirit to help communicate with clients in a way that’s sensitive to their needs and confident in our ability.”
He also keeps his faith top of mind throughout his day using technology to assist him. He says “one small thing that I love that I have implemented into my life is that I have a little buzzer that goes off every ten minutes so I look at Jesus and give awareness to God. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing, that buzzer is going off. It doesn’t mean I have to have this big encounter moment. I just say, ‘hey, Jesus, where are you right now?’. Awareness is very important in order to abide in God. You get as much of God as you want in a day. He is fully present in every room you enter. That is something that has really helped in my work day.”
His closing thoughts: “I would encourage everyone to not settle for where they have been in faith at work. For example, faith at work looks like a Bible study or faith at work looks like a conversation about how I attend church. Those things are great but if the living God who breathed the galaxies and made man out of dust and tells the oceans where to go and no further: if the living God can dwell in a human body and be a carpenter, think about where His brain had to be to do that. The humility. The kind of revelation he had to carry to be a baby that nursed or to be a little boy. Then there has to be a way that we can have the supernatural in the natural that looks more than just segmented Bible studies on your work premises. It has to look like something real and tangible.”
Skye was born in upstate New York. His parents have been married for 36 years, and he has one sister and three older brothers, one of whom has gone before them to be with the Lord. He has a girlfriend in Virginia, and he lives in the Cincinnati area with five other young men in a discipleship setting.
