Francis Frangipane was born in 1946 and grew up in Lodi, New Jersey. After graduating from high school in 1964, Frangipane entered the U.S. Air Force, where he was discharged honorably as a sergeant on February 2, 1969. He relocated briefly to Berkeley, California and then Honolulu, Hawaii before returning to the mainland U.S. These were the days when the hippie movement was emerging, and Frangipane, like countless other young people, was searching for meaning. He traveled extensively throughout the United States and Canada. Eventually his travels brought him to the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia where he became a Christian on November 26, 1970. Five months later he met his wife-to-be, Denise Piscitelli, and led her to the Lord. In October of 1971 they were married.
In 1972 Francis and Denise received ministerial training at Grace Chapel in Southern California; by early fall they had moved to Hilo, Hawaii to start a church. Their little work grew to about twenty-five people, most of whom they had personally led to Christ. They also had their first child during this time.
After fourteen months, however, they felt their time in Hawaii was complete. A church in the Detroit, Michigan area offered them a pastoral position. For the remainder of the seventies, they led a small church of approximately 100 people; they also planted eight churches and home groups in southeastern Michigan and Ontario, Canada.
They relocated to Iowa in 1980 where, with the addition of four more children and a Vietnamese foster child, their family grew to eight. These were hard times. Francis was self-employed and the family was very poor. It was during this time that Francis began to develop his writing skills. It was also a three year season of being shut in with God; the only spiritual food that nourished him came from the words of Christ in the Gospels.
In 1982 the opportunity to pastor a church in the Cedar Rapids area was offered to the Frangipanes. After a season of prayer, they accepted this new assignment. Pastor Francis soon found himself united with several other pastors from various evangelical denominations who met in one another's sanctuaries for monthly prayer. After three years, the founding minister of this prayer group left the city, and in 1985 Francis and another local pastor (from the local Assemblies of God) picked up the prayer initiative. They opened it up for intercessors as well and increased their times together from monthly to weekly. The group soon multiplied, which led to many other interdenominational citywide events.
During this time, Pastor Frangipane began to write in earnest. His first book,
Holiness, Truth and the Presence of God, was a compilation of his essays and sermons. It was published in 1985. He wrote his second book,
The Three Battlegrounds, in 1989 when asked to speak on spiritual warfare at a conference in Kansas City. Both these books became best sellers. Since 1985, he has written fourteen books including four
In Christ's Image Training manuals, which were developed for his online school, plus a number of study booklets.
Francis is the founder of River of Life Ministries in Cedar Rapids IA and has traveled throughout the world ministering to thousands of pastors and intercessors from many backgrounds. Francis' heartfelt prayer is to see established in every city, Christlike pastors and intercessors, united before God, revealing the love of Christ to their communities.
Over the past decades, Francis has served on a number of other ministry boards. However, in recent years he has gradually resigned from these various boards. As of June 2009, he has also retired from his position as senior pastor of River of Life Ministries. In this more simplified life, Frangipane is devoting himself to prayer and the ministry of God's word.