Brian Bloye: He is the Founder and Lead Pastor of West Ridge Church. In addition to seeing the metro Atlanta area reached for Christ, he has a passion to see churches planted all over the world. Since 1997, in just 12 years, West Ridge has grown to over 4200 in regular weekly attendance. The church has been involved in planting 49 other churches around Georgia and the US. Five years ago, West Ridge launched the West Ridge School of Church Planting. Brian is also the Founder and President of Engage Atlanta, an organization that is bringing the pastors of Atlanta together for the purpose of community transformation. Brian has a B.S. degree from Liberty University and an M. Div. from Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary. He and his wife Amy have two boys, Taylor, and Zachary.
Rick Campbell: He is the President and CEO of INJOY Stewardship Solutions (ISS). Over the past 16 years, ISS has helped over 4,000 churches raise more than $4 billion for the Kingdom. Before coming toISS, Rick planted two successful churches over a 17 year period. He now has the opportunity to work with many of the fastest growing and most innovative churches in America, helping them through temporary facilities, relocations, remodeling, land purchases and building multi-million dollar facilities. Rick resides in the Atlanta area with his wife Deborah and two daughters.
Matt Carter: He serves as lead pastor at Austin Stone Community Church, which he planted in 2002. The first meeting of 30 people now encompasses 5,000 worshippers on Sundays, making Austin Stone one of the 100 fastest growing churches in America. Matt’s vision is to foster the churches passion for Christ, love for each other, and outreach to their communities – ultimately planting churches throughout America and the nations, supporting missionaries who are loving the peoples of the world and bringing them the hope of the gospel. In addition to pastoring at The Austin Stone, Matt is a cancer survivor, author and speaker for camps and conferences nationwide. Matt holds a MDiv from Southwestern Seminary and lives in Austin with his wife Jennifer and their children: John Daniel, Annie, and Samuel.
Mark DeYmaz: He is the founding pastor and directional leader of the Mosaic Church of Central Arkansas, a multi-ethnic and economically diverse church where significant percentages of Black and White Americans, together with men and women from more than 30 nations, walk, work and worship God together as one.A recognized leader in the emerging Multi-ethnic Church Movement, his book, Building a Healthy Multi-ethnic Church (Jossey-Bass/Leadership Network, 2007), provides the Biblical mandate for the multi-ethnic church and outlines seven core commitments required to bring it about. His next book, Ethnic Blends (Zondervan/Leadership Network) will be released in April 2010. Mark is a graduate of Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA (B.S., Psychology), Western Seminary in Portland, Oregon (M.A., Exegetical Theology) and Phoenix Seminary in Phoenix, Arizona (D. Min.).Married since 1987, Mark and Linda have four children - Zack, Emily, Will and Kate. www.markdeymaz.com
Steven Furtick: He is the Lead Pastor of Elevation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. At the three year mark, Elevation has grown to more than 5,000 in attendance each week between its three campuses and has seen over 3,000 people receive Christ. In 2007 and 2008, Elevation Church was named one of the 10 fastest growing churches in America. The heart of Pastor Steven’s message is revolutionary faith and how to approach every experience from a visionary perspective. He attended North Greenville University, received a B.A. in communications and went on to complete a MDiv from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. www.stevenfurtick.com
Dave
Gibbons: The fringe, the misfits, the artists, the poor, urban and rural innovators, international students, business executives, community development specialists and non-profit leaders are the domains Dave intersects with in many of the major cities of the world. He is the CVO and founder of YangDang.com, a new cause driven, east/west social tool to enable people to radically make a difference. He is the Lead Ethos Architect of the NEWSONG Global Alliance which catalyzes churches with multiple sizes, forms and styles. Dave serves on the Board of World Vision US and is also the CVO of Xealot, a community development organization that develops movement leaders. Dave is the author of a new book that addresses one of the most critical aspects of leadership in the midst of change economically, spiritually, politically and culturally. It’s called The Monkey and the Fish: Liquid Leadership for Third Culture Leaders. He’s also contributed to such books as Unchristian. He is the father of four and has been married to his best friend Rebecca for 25 years! www.davegibbons.tv
Casey Graham: He is the Founder of and Chief Bean Creator for The Change Group. He previously served as the Chief Financial Officer at Mountain Lake Church in Cumming, Georgia. When asked about his passion, this is what he had to say: “As the CFO at Mountain Lake, I felt a calling to plant an organization that would change the landscape of how church leaders view church finances. In church finance, I believe there are two types of people: BEAN COUNTERS & BEAN CREATORS. Both are very important to the life of a healthy church; however, I believe that most churches are staffed with people that are BEAN COUNTERS. My passion is to develop BEAN CREATORS all over the country that creates more money for ministry!” Casey is married to Kacie (funny, huh?) and they have a daughter, Darby. They live near Atlanta, GA. www.thechangegroup.tv
Hugh Halter: He is the national director of Missio, a ministry team committed to training, developing, and apprenticing Incarnational leaders for the church. Within Missio, Hugh co-directs the MCAP, an online collaborative training environment for Incarnational leaders, pastors, and church planters. Hugh is also lead architect of Adullum, a local movement of missional communities in Denver, CO. As co-author of The Tangible Kingdom and the accompanying Tangible Kingdom Primer, Hugh is an advocate for disoriented God seekers and loves to inspire and re-orient leaders around the mission of God.
Charles Hill: He is a founding pastor, church planter, blogger and conference creator. Charles and his wife Tiffany and their 3 children planted New Hope in 2002 in a small town of 2,800 people. On the launch day 200+ showed up at NH and it's been growing ever since. NH is now a multi-site campus located in Loudonville [pop:3K], Wooster [pop:25K], and Ashland [pop:22K], OH along with one international campus in southeast Asia. Charles passion is to plant churches in small to medium size towns. His family recently moved to Utah, the most un-churched state in the country to do it all over again with Mission West. His passion for those who are off the radar is contagious and their desire is to foster a network of under the radar churches in a place where "relevance meets revival!".
Alan Hirsch: He is the founding Director of Forge Mission Training Network. He is known for his innovative approach to mission. Alan is a teacher and key mission strategist for churches across the western world. He’s the author of three important books: The Shaping of Things to Come, The Forgotten Ways, and ReJesus. www.theforgottenways.org
Billy Hornsby: He is a minister that has worked for over 30 years with church leaders nationally and internationally. He is a published author who directs a nationwide church planting organization, Association of Related Churches, and serves as the Senior European Consultant for EQUIP, John Maxwell's global leadership training organization. He is a keynote speaker for churches, conferences, and business groups speaking on the topics of team management, leadership and how to maintain productive relationships. He has been married for over 42 years to his wife Charlene.
Shaun King: The Lead Pastor of Courageous Church in downtown Atlanta, Shaun also serves as a regular social commentator on NPR, blogs at ShaunInTheCity.com, and is a grad student at Emory University. A happily married father of five, Shaun has a gift of making conservatives and liberals angry and then reconciling them.
Shawn Lovejoy: He is Lead Pastor of Mountain Lake Church, a church he planted along with Chad Ward and their families in January of 2000 in Cumming, a suburb north of Atlanta. Several years and 2,000 people later, Shawn still has a heart for helping people belong and become. Shawn is also the co-founder of churchplanters.com and author of the popular blog www.shawnlovejoy.com.
Tricia Lovejoy: She is the wife of Shawn Lovejoy and has been involved with the planting of Mountain Lake Church while raising three children and keeping Shawn straight. She is a stay at home mom and has a passion for helping other church planter’s wives navigate the dangerous waters of church planting. Tricia has been involved with just about every aspect of planting.
Michael Lukaszewski: He is the Lead Pastor of Oak Leaf Church, which meets in Cartersville, Georgia. He is married to Jennie and they have three children. Michael is originally from Jacksonville, Florida, and he graduated from Florida State University. He was a youth pastor for 12 years before moving to Cartersville in 2005 to start Oak Leaf Church. www.oakleafchurch.com/blog
Will Mancini: He emerged from the trenches of local church leadership to found Auxano, a first-of-kind consulting ministry that focuses on vision clarity. As a "clarity evangelist," Will has served as vision architect for hundreds of churches across the country. Will's style blends the best of three worlds: the process thinking from the discipline of engineering, the communications savvy as an ad agency executive, and the practical theology as a pastoral leader. His education includes a ThM in Pastoral Leadership from Dallas Theological Seminary and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Penn State. He is the author of Church Unique: How Missional Leaders Cast Vision, Capture Culture and Create Movement, a Leadership Network Publication, and of Building Leaders. www.willmancini.com
Chris Mavity: A ministry veteran of 22 years, Pastor Chris Mavity joined the leadership staff at North Coast Church in 1997. He has been instrumental in the continued development of North Coast’s Sermon–Based Small Group ministry; serving 5 years as the lead pastor of that ministry. This vital network of home fellowships is the hub of the ministry at North Coast and is the place where the average weekend crowd of 7,000 becomes a church. The small group ministry of North Coast serves more than 80% of our adult attendees on a weekly basis. Chris also created the first North Coast “Video Worship Venue” a preferred worship environment that spawned the Multi-Site ministry movement that has spread across the country. North Coast now has 23 different worship options spread over 4 campuses.
Tony Morgan: He is a strategist, coach, writer, speaker and consultant who equips leaders and churches to impact their communities for Christ. More important, he has a passion for the local church. He’s all about helping people meet Jesus and take steps in their faith. For more than 10 years, Tony served on the senior leadership teams at NewSpring Church (Anderson, SC) and Granger Community Church (Granger, IN). With Tim Stevens, Tony has co-authored Simply Strategic Stuff, Simpley Strategic Volunteers and Simply Strategic Growth–each of which offers valuable, practical solutions for different aspects of church ministry. His newest book, Killing Cockroaches (B&H Publishing), was released in 2009. Tony and his wife, Emily, reside in Anderson, South Carolina with their four children. www.tonymorganlive.com
Jeff Murphy: Jeff loves helping people find their way back to God. After being completely broken through his first church planting adventure, God set him back on his feet and led he and his wife Christy to plant My Church in Columbus, GA. They launched in January 2009 with an unexpected 625 people outside in a tent! In their first 3 months, over 130 people accepted Christ, an average of 550 continued attending weekly, with a record 800 on their 12th Sunday (Easter). www.jeffmurphylive.com
Larry Osborne: He is the Senior Pastor at North Coast Church, which is recognized as one of the Ten Most Influential Churches in America for its pioneering work in the area of multi-site, video venues and sermon-based small groups. Larry is also the author of STICKY CHURCH: Slamming The Back Door Shut, A CONTRARIAN’S GUIDE TO KNOWING GOD: Spirituality For The Rest of Us, and THE UNITY FACTOR: Developing A Healthy Leadership Team. www.northcoastchurch.com/pastors
Darrin Patrick: He founded The Journey in 2002 with a desire to plant a church in the heart of Saint Louis, Missouri. Darrin is Vice President of Acts 29 Church Planting Network, and serves as the executive director for another church planting movement called 360-St. Louis, a network which joins the church and the business community in planting gospel-centered churches. Darrin's passion is to equip the church to live the gospel in the world. He is working on his first book,The Man, The Message, The Mission. Today, The Journey runs six services across four campuses, and continues aggressively plant churches in St. Louis and beyond. www.journeyon.net
David Putman: He is one of the Pastors at Mountain Lake Church (MLC) where he serves as the Strategic and Operational Leader. His responsibilities focus on issues related to "growing" the church's impact in its community and around the world. David has been a part of MLC prior to its inception. David is co-founder of www.churchplanters.com. He is also author of Breaking the Discipleship Code and co-author of Breaking the Missional Code with Ed Stetzer. His third book Detox for the Overly Religious is due to be released in January 2010.
John Shepherd: He serves as Associate Pastor at Mountain Lake Church where he oversees the Connections ministry. Additionally, he serves as a Lead Navigator with Auxano Church Consulting Group. He has worked previously as the Director of Pastoral Ministries at LifeWay Christian Resources in Nashville, Tennessee. He has served as a Strategy Coordinator at the North American Mission Board (NAMB) in Alpharetta, Georgia. He has planted and pastored innovative, missional churches in Florida and Tennessee, as well as served as a church planting missionary with NAMB in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received his Master of Divinity from Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary in Memphis and his Doctor of Ministry degree from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He and his wife Joy have three sons: Aaron, Seth, and Joshua.
Tim Stevens: He is the Executive Pastor of Granger Community Church located in Granger, Indiana and for 15 years, his leadership has helped Granger connect with people who think church is irrelevant. He has done this through the creative blending of architecture, strategy and technology. He’s acutely tuned in to popular culture and is instrumental in balancing operations, building creative teams and inspiring artists to brand each message series and sharpen the weekend experience. He has co-authored three books in the Simply Strategic series, and author of his latest book, Pop Goes the Church, released in 2008. You can find Tim blogging at http://www.LeadingSmart.com and on Twitter @timastevens.
Sherry Surratt: She serves as the Director for Women's Initiatives in Leadership for Leadership Network, where her passion for helping women reach their leadership potential shines through. She joined Leadership Network in 2008 with an extensive background in ministry, most recently serving as Central Support Pastor for Seacoast Church in Mt. Pleasant, SC. At Seacoast, Sherry directed the core ministry leaders at Seacoast’s13 campuses and helped develop the online ministry leadership development model and curriculum. Prior to church ministry, Sherry was a teacher and administrator in the Houston public school system and holds a BAT from Sam Houston State University. She resides in South Carolina with her pastor husband Geoff, two beautiful children and one big, hairy dog named Moose.
Rick Warren: Pastor Warren founded Saddleback Church in Lake Forest in 1980 with one other family. Today, it is one of America’s most influential churches, with approximately 20,000 people attending the weekend services. He is the author of The Purpose Driven Life, the bestselling hardback in American history, with over 30 million copies sold worldwide. He built the Purpose Driven Network, a global alliance of pastors from 162 countries and hundreds of denominations who have been trained to be purpose driven churches. He also founded Pastors.com – an online interactive community that provides sermons, forums, and other practical resources for pastors. Pastor Warren and his wife Kay are passionate about global missions and what he calls “attacking the five global giants” of poverty, disease, spiritual emptiness, self-serving leadership, and illiteracy. His solution – The Peace Plan – is a massive effort to mobilize Christians around the world into an outreach effort to attack these five global giants of today by promoting reconciliation, equipping servant leaders, assisting the poor, caring for the sick, and educating the next generation.
Carlos Whittaker: He is an artist, pastor, thinker, experience architect, and Web 2.0 junkie. Having served at Sandals Church in Riverside, California, for ten years during a high growth spurt for the church, his most recent work has been with Andy Stanley’s Buckhead Campus of NorthPoint Ministries. Carlos served as the Director of Service Programming at the Buckhead Church in Atlanta. In addition to leading worship, Carlos oversaw all the Sunday adult experience and design, including all areas of Hosting, Production, Creative, Video, Music, and Programming at Buckhead Church. Carlos continues to lead worship at Buckhead Church, sits on the creative sermon planning team for Andy Stanley, and contributes to the creative planning for Catalyst Conferences.
Pete Wilson: He is the founding pastor of Cross Point Church in Nashville, Tennessee. Cross Point is a 7 year-old church which reaches over 2,500 people each weekend through its 4 campuses located around the metro Nashville area.
Pete's a pastor, speaker, and author who resides in Nashville with his wife, Brandi, and their 3 boys, Jett, Gage, and Brewer. His highly-anticipated first book, entitled Plan B will be released in 2010 through Thomas Nelson Publishing.
John Worcester: Over the last 30 years the Worcester’s have planted and pastored seven churches in a variety of settings, as well as apprenticed and coach dozens of other planters. He has trained 5,000 church planters, and missionaries from over 30 countries, and 42 denominations. While on Saddleback staff John created a Purpose Driven Church Planting Basic Training curriculum that helps church planters contextualize and practically apply the Biblical principles found in the Purpose Driven Church. Dr. Worcester has also pioneered a comprehensive church planting strategy called the ACTS Strategy that Assesses, Coaches, Trains, and Supports church planters. John is married to his best friend and invaluable church planting teammate Diane. They have raised two sets of twin sons that are all heavily involved in college ministry or church planting. www.missiontrailschurch.com
Ed Young: He is the founding and Senior Pastor of Fellowship Church. The church has its main campus just north of the DFW Airport and operates five satellite campuses in the greater Dallas/Fort Worth area and one in Miami, Florida. Ed Young Ministries airs a weekly television program throughout the U.S. and Europe, including TBN, and Daystar. Ed's latest book is The Marriage Mirror. Other books include Beauty Full, Outrageous, Contagious Joy, The Creative Leader, The Creative Marriage, YOU! The Journey to the Center of Your Worth, and Rating Your Dating While Waiting for Mating. Ed is a frequent conference speaker, and he provides resources for church leaders through CreativePastors.com and the Creative Church Conferences (C3). Ed and his wife Lisa have been married for 26 years and have four children.
Chad Ward
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