Who We Are & Where We’re Going

Our Founders

Bryan and Jenni Rouanzoin have served in local church ministry for over 15 years. They began their journey together leading worship in a variety local churches and ministry contexts in Southern California before moving abroad for a season in Belfast, Northern Ireland. They carry a shared conviction that everything flows out of an intimate connection with God and are privileged to lead people into deeper places of worship, prayer, and response to the work and ministry in the Holy Spirit.

Bryan previously served as the Campus Pastor at Vanguard University, during which they also cofounded TheWayOC and the Apprentice Track, county-wide initiatives to foster spiritual formation and renewal within the local church. It was in these contexts that they discovered a shared calling and gifting to personally guide men and women through the unique seasons of their discipleship & formation journeys towards wholeness in Christ.

Together they have served as leaders on the planting teams of three thriving churches in Southern California, where Bryan also served as teaching pastor and formation pastor, respectively. As a frequent collaborator and contributor with Practicing the Way, they also help shape formation resources for the global Church and lead retreats for leaders abroad.

Bryan and Jenni live in Costa Mesa, CA with their three children and are committed to giving their lives for the sake the local Church and its leadership as pastors, coaches, trainers, and guides.


Our Mission

ROOTS&EMBERS exists to see the Church flourish. You don’t have to look far to find pain and hurt and brokenness in this world. And whether they know it or not, a hurting world needs a flourishing Church. We want to see pastors and leaders marked by intimacy with Jesus, relational health and wholeness, and ultimately equipped for longevity for the sake of the communities they lead.

We draw on the the best resources across many fields (e.g., biblical scholarship, historical church writing, psychology, spiritual formation, leadership development, coaching, & team theory, etc.) in order to create environments for transformation to happen. We aren’t just a resourcing organization, we journey into the depths with leaders, in relationship with them, and with their teams—to help navigate and guide them in the context of their particular journey. Because transformation always happens in the context of relationship.

This means that the fruitfulness of the local Church is most limited, not by the excellence of its services, but by how its staff and leaders love each other and operate with increasing measures of health and maturity. Spiritual maturity and relational maturity. Everything flows out of that. When we get that right, the fruit follows. Generation after generation. When we tend to our roots, the fruit will follow.

A Hurting world, Needs a Flourishing Church


“A leader is someone with the power to project either shadow or light onto some part of the world and onto the lives of the people who dwell there. A leader shapes the ethos in which others must live; and those as light filled as heaven or shadowy as hell.  A good leader is intensely aware of the interplay of shadow and light lest the act of leadership do more harm than good.”"

— Parker Palmer