Carl Slezacek is the Assistant Minister.

Carl joined the church in December 2008. His spiritual journey started at the age of 17 when this misdirected and angry teenager's life was dramatically changed by an encounter with Jesus. He has a passion to connect people from all walks of life to Jesus and help them to discover and grow in a personal relationship with Jesus.

Carl enjoys life with God and seeing God at work in the life and situations of others. He has many interests which range from a variety of sports, both traditional and extreme, movies, theatre, photography, socialising, and meeting with people and hearing ‘their story’.

Carl was born in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk and did all his early education there, GCSE’s, BTEC National Diploma in Art and Design, City and Guilds in Lithographic printing. It was whilst in the printing industry that he felt called to pursue full time Christian ministry and moved to Bournemouth to study Applied Theology at Moorlands Bible College and gained a BA with honours.

After which he returned to Bury St Edmunds and the printing industry and prayerfully sought what God was calling him to and where. Since then over the past 10 years Carl has been a Youth Pastor in Sevenoaks, Kent and an Assistant Pastor in Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands before coming to VBC to be the Assistant Pastor. Here Carl has responsibility for the vision and spiritual direction of small groups, meeting and integrating new people into the life and body of the church, discovering and empowering peoples spiritual gifts as well as general preaching and teaching role with Ian the Senior Pastor.

Carl is married to Chrissie who is his best friend and they have a son Samuel.