April 20-24 we had the wonderful privilege of bringing together 17 church planting leaders, both nationals and missionaries, for the Exponential New Church Conference in Orlando FL. We met as a team before and afterwards and went together to take in some amazing speakers. The theme was "The Art of Movements." Our discussions were primarily about raising up and training church planters. It helped me a lot to get people together face-to-face as I build the new Global Church Planting Team.
George Klippenes, Church Planting Director for the EFCA, was so helpful generating prayer and finding scholarship money to bring the international leaders together. Good things are coming our of the interaction between USA church planters and those from other countries. The learning goes both ways. Ehab shared how God is bringing revival to some traditional churches in Egypt and sending our a wave of church planters from that country to others around. One of the biggest lessons is the variety of people God uses to multiply churches. Sometimes it is very grassroots and spontaneous; at other times it needs to be deliberate and strategically planned.
Between these two pictures you have all of our ReachGlobal team. What a joy it was to share with this rainbow coalition of battle tested leaders. They are working in:Europe: Spain, Germany, Czech Republic
Asia: Indonesia, Myanmar, N. Thailand
Latin America: Brazil, Costa Rica
Africa: Ethiopia, Liberia, Congo
Middle East; Egypt
USA: Miami, CA and Chicago
Please pray for these men to advance Church Multiplication Training and to invest in many others through mentoring and coaching. Two of them from Africa launched the training in Togo in June and will be continuing in the Congo in July. The guys from Latin America will be working with me on training for leaders from 10 Latin American countries in November. Praise God for the reproduction He is bringing about and for the part I can play as a catalyst and coach.
