International (MNN)–Global Advance’s David Shibley set an ambitious goal for one Frontline Shepherd’s Conferences per week in 2006. He not only met that, he’s poised to double that in 2007.
The ministry is equipping one million pastoral leaders with hopes of challenging them to plant a million new churches. As to why this is important for the Gospel, he says: “The last several years, there have been pastors throughout the United States who have bought on to this vision, have really imbibed our DNA of equipping pastoral leadership, especially in the areas of healthy church growth, church planting, and turning the church in that nation into a missionary-sending church.”
So far, the team is slated into 104 Frontline Shepherds Conferences for pastors, and Marketplace Missions conferences for Christian business leaders. That’s twice what 2006 promised.
It’s also a tall order to fill. Shibley says they have more pastors onboard teaching teams, plus, a quarter of the conferences in 2007 will be run by nationals. “National pastors will assemble their own training team and go to extremely remote areas gathering perhaps 50 or 100 pastors and church leaders with the same challenge of healthy church growth and church planting and turning that national church into a missionary-sending church.”
It seems that the farther away they get from major cities, the hungrier the leaders are for training. In the past, Shibley has noted that, “Often it is the rural and smaller city church leaders who are the greatest church planters and senders of missionaries in the world.”
Often the only thing holding them back is funding. Click here if you want to help fund this Great Commission vision.
