Our Story
Chris Small
Chris loved baseball, Scouts, and riding his bike, as a child. In junior high and high school he was in marching band, and for a time thought architecture would be his life’s career. In college he refocused his priorities, majoring in Psychology with a minor in Youth Ministry.
His dance career began reluctantly at age 26 when he took a line dance lesson to placate a friend. He quickly realized that couples dancing was uniquely fulfilling and great exercise. Within two months of his first dance, he was social dancing 6 - 7 nights per week. Within 6 months he was teaching a social dance class for a community college. Couples dance brought him out of his shell and led him to having the courage to ask Michelle for that fateful first dance. Chris undeniably understands how couples’ dance changes lives!
Michelle Small
Michelle began her competitive dance journey at the age of 8. She studied various forms of dance, finding couples dance her senior year of high school. Her amateur dance career culminated with winning the 1990 Pro-Am American Rhythm National Championship. In college, she majored in Speech Communications, quickly realizing that public speaking was her favorite aspect. In 1993 she began her professional dance career, teaching the four main types of couples dance: ballroom, latin, swing, and country western, traveling 1,000 miles per week to do so. On June 1, 1997, she opened her first dance studio and outgrew it in only 3 years. Next was a ballroom studio and event venue which was almost five times larger than the first. Michelle’s passion for couples dance began with her very first lesson!
Chris & Michelle met in November 1993, through couples dance. Chris became Michelle’s student and teaching assistant in December 1993, and during the next 3.5 years of traveling 1,000 miles per week, he was at all of the group classes and workshops she taught, while holding down a full time job. Their first kiss was on New Year’s Eve ’93. They were boyfriend and girlfriend for 10 years, prior to their marriage in April 2004. After marrying, Chris became a full-time dance instructor, and taught 50+ hours per week. In January 2005 the Smalls won the United Country Western Dance World Championships Crystal I Division championship title.
As their partnership grew from student/teacher to professional dance partners, as well as the gigantic shift from boyfriend and girlfriend to husband and wife, their life and business paradigm shifted as well. Through that change of perspective, the seed of their ministry concept was planted. From 2007 - 2012 they taught a workshop throughout the Pacific Northwest and at several couples dance competition events across the USA that was the genesis of what has become their Follow by Faith Ministry. That workshop was titled “Why Can’t He Lead & Why Won’t She Follow?” It was specifically designed to help couples dancers of all ability levels understand the unique and particular dynamics that is dancing in concert with another person. Chris’ studies in both Ministry and Psychology, as well as Michelle’s in Communications, allowed them to explore and expose a depth of meaning in the connectivity of couples dance that other dance professionals don’t teach, and other marriage seminars don’t grasp.
They know that the Holy Spirit has led them to this time and place that long-ago planted seed has finally come to fruition. Follow by Faith Ministries is the result of Chris and Michelle’s 55+ years of combined couples dance experience. Their expertise as couples dance instructors, competitors, coaches, mentors, and performers gives them the ability to demonstrate real-life, practical ways of how to fully embrace God’s plan for marriage and change lives!