Robert E. Colwell is the senior pastor of Calvary Chapel Crenshaw in Los Angeles. He has spent most of his adult life helping others to experience the freedom to shine victoriously for God. In 1981 he started an outreach to free troubled teens, which later developed into a church. He served 17 years as an inmate chaplain at the Los Angeles County jail, during which time he ministered to inmates in more than a third of the prisons in California.

In 1985 he founded a non-profit organization to provide help to parents with disabled children, and another non-profit in 1992 to improve situations for parents and children in foster care. His personal journey through foster care is chronicled in his book Love Leaves No Regrets. 

Robert has been the keynote speaker at state and national foster care conferences in 27 states and has hosted marriage conferences and workshops for over 28 years. He earned a Masters degree in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary in 2004.

With his latest book Free to Shine, Robert focuses our attention on the matter of spiritual freedom and guides us to the truth that makes us free (John 8:32). Because the word of God is not chained (2Timothy 2:9), we can and must break the chains that bind our voice and deny us the freedom that results from operating God's grace gift of prayer (1Corinthians 14:14).