A native Hoosier, Pastor Mike Riggins attended Bloomington North High School, where he met his wife Linda. They graduated from Indiana University and he went on to Princeton Theological Seminary while Linda taught. Upon ordination Mike served as an Associate Pastor for youth in suburban St. Louis. Five years later he accepted the call to Pastor the First Presbyterian Church of Seymour, Indiana. In 1997 he and Linda joined a group of elders in planting a new congregation in Traverse City, Michigan. They served with that church for the next twenty-one years.