Growing Missional Leaders: Biblical Strategies to Reach Your World For Christ (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781456320324)

I was born in Wisconsin. I was unaware of my need for Jesus Christ as personal savior until high school. As a sophomore, my history teacher shared The Four Spiritual Laws with me. I prayed to receive Jesus Christ as Savior and put Christ on the Throne of my life as Lord. Changes happened to me quickly. Soon my Spanish teacher, asked me to help begin a teen Bible study. 40-60 teens were meeting for a weekly study within just a few weeks. Pastor Myron Higby challenged me to consider full-time Christian service. After a trip to the Moody Bible Institute and Trinity College, I began to pray over God's will for my life. God called me to Moody and Trinity. It was at Moody that I surrendered to the call of God for ministry. Marrying the joy of my eyes, Melodee Joy, in 1979 we moved to Southern California in 1980 where I served as a volunteer youth pastor, as a part-time youth pastor and as a missionary pastor. God brought about a life-changing step in Melodee and my life when we accepted the call to the Pico Rivera Bible Church in East Los Angeles County. This was a time of great growth and development from a leadership standpoint for them. Turning around a dying church in a Hispanic community, the next 11 years allowed them to teach and train countless leaders in the Southwest and Mexico through leadership conferences and consulting opportunities. While there, I earned my Masters of Arts in Ministry in Chicago and my Doctor of Philosophy in Christian Theology in Southern California. I have since pastored churches in Iowa and Florida. These opportunities allowed us to expand God's Kingdom and reach out with mission teams throughout the United States, Mexico and France. Currently I am the Transformation (Senior) Pastor at the First Baptist Church of Palos Verdes, California. I have also been adjunct faculty at California Baptist University in the School of Christian Ministries department, California Pacific School of Theology as an adjunct professor of Theology and at Colorado Christian University, as an online professor. My habit of rising early to read the Bible and prayer has been a source of great strength and understanding when it comes to leadership development. I read the Bible at least once per year; enjoying an intimate walk with God with hundreds of answers to prayer every quarter, and hundreds of new insights monthly from God's Word (having read it cover-to-cover some 28 times since 1993).