Francis is the pastor of Cornerstone Church in Simi Valley, where he has been serving for the past 15 years. He is also the Founder of Eternity Bible College and serves on the board of directors for Children's Hunger Fund and World Impact.
Francis spends much of his time speaking to high school and college students and is the author of Crazy Love and Forgotten God. His commitment is to teach directly from the words of Scripture. It is his passion to see the next generation of American Christians display a much deeper love for Jesus and their neighbors.
Francis is married to Lisa and they have three daughters and one son.
Matt serves as lead pastor at The Austin Stone, which he planted in 2002. The first meeting of 30 people now encompasses 5000 worshippers on Sundays, making The 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 an MDiv from Southwestern Seminary and lives in Austin with his wife Jennifer and their children: John Daniel, Annie, and Samuel.
Alan is the founding Director of Forge Mission Training Network. He is the co-founder of shapevine.com an international forum for engaging with world transforming ideas. He is also part of the leadership team of Christian Associates, a missional church-planting agency with focus on Western Europe. Known for his innovative approach to mission, Alan is a teacher and key mission strategist for churches across the western world. His popular book The Shaping of Things to Come is widely considered to be a seminal text on mission. Alan's recent book The Forgotten Ways, has quickly become a key reference for missional thinking, particularly as it relates to movements. His latest book ReJesus is a radical restatement about the role that Jesus plays in defining missional movements. His experience in leadership includes leading a local church movement among the marginalized as well as heading up the Mission and Revitalization work of his denomination. Alan is and adjunct professor at Fuller Seminary and lectures frequently throughout Australia, Europe, and the U.S.
Dave is a founding pastor of Community Christian Church. He is also the visionary and Movement Leader for the NewThing Network. Dave is also an adjunct professor at Wheaton College Graduate School where he teaches a course on "Planting and Growing Reproducing Churches" in the evangelism and leadership department.
He also serves as the President of the Exponential Conference and on the National Board of Directors for the Exponential Network. Dave is one of the founders and board members for the Institute for Community. He has also co-authored The BIG IDEA - Focus the Message, Maximize the Impact.
Dave is an executive coach, consultant and expert on culture, strategy and social movements. 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, serves on the Board of World Vision US, and is the CVO of Xealot. Dave is also Creative Catalyst and Founding Partner of The Awaken Group, a global leadership development consulting firm.
He is the author of a new book 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!
Neil Cole is the founder and executive director of Church Multiplication Associates, which has helped start hundreds of churches in thirty-five states and thirty nations. He is seen by many to be one of the key founders of what is known as the organic- or simple-church movement. One of the key training components of this expanding movement is the Organic Church Planter's Greenhouse - Story 1 and Story 2 Trainings.
He is the author of multiple books including recently released Organic Leadership, Search & Rescue, Cultivating a Life for God, Organic Church, TruthQuest, Beyond Church Planting and Raising Leaders for the Harvest. He lives in Long Beach, California with his wife Dana, and their three daughters.
John serves as lead pastor at Gateway Community Church in Austin, Texas, a congregation dedicated to helping unchurched people become a unified community of growing Christ-followers, no matter what their background or past. He is also the president of Emerging Leadership Initiative (ELI), a non-profit organization founded to help establish a multiplying network of missional churches that envision, equip, and empower young emerging leaders to plant innovative churches. He is the author of No Perfect People Allowed and Soul Revolution. Before starting Gateway, John was the executive director of ministries at Willow Creek Community Church. He and his wife Kathy are the parents of two children, Ashley and Justin.
Hugh 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 mission.
Ed has planted, revitalized, and pastored churches. He has trained pastors and church planters on five continents, holds two masters degrees and two doctorates, and has written dozens of articles and books. Ed is a contributing editor for Christianity Today, a columnist for Outreach Magazine and Catalyst Monthly, serves on the advisory council of Sermon Central and Christianity Today's Building Church Leaders, and is frequently cited or interviewed in news outlets such as USAToday and CNN.
Ed is Visiting Professor of Research and Missiology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Visiting Research Professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and has taught at fifteen other colleges and seminaries. He also serves on the Church Services Team at the International Mission Board.
Ed's primary role is President of LifeWay Research and LifeWay's Missiologist in Residence.
George Patterson spent 21 years in Central America training pastors in a way that multiplies churches. George's strategies and materials for church multiplication have became known and used worldwide. He mentors workers who seriously want to follow New Testament guidelines to sustain church planting movements, many of whom have made significant breakthroughs.
He teaches at Western Seminary and has authored Church Multiplication Guide, Train & Multiply, Paul-Timothy and other training materials. See some of his work on MentorAndMultiply.com.
Jeff is a church planter and an equipper of church planters and leaders. He served the Church in Youth Ministry for 14 years and in Church Planting for almost 7 years. Presently, He is one of the Pastors of Soma Communities, a multi-expression church planting church and Vice President of Acts 29 Western USA. Jeff is married to his wife of 16 years, Jayne, with whom he loves and shepherds their three children in Gospel life and mission.
David Watson serves as the Vice President of Global Church Planting with CityTeam Ministries, San Jose, CA. His primary responsibility is to catalyze Church Planting Movements in difficult to reach cities and countries around the world. The primary methodology used is the training of local leaders in evangelism, discipleship, disciple making, church planting, leadership, church planting strategies and church planting movements. God has used the leaders David trained to start over 40,000 churches in the past 15 years, and more than 2 million people have been baptized as a result of God's moving in the areas where trained local workers have devoted themselves to God's work. David has trained leaders in more than 120 countries around the world.
For twenty-five years Dr. David Garrison has served as a missionary pioneer and missions leader among Southern Baptists through the International Mission Board. His assignments have included Associate Vice President for Global Strategy, Regional Leader for South Asia, Interim Regional Leader for Central and Eastern Europe, and Interim Regional Leader for Northern Africa and the Middle East. Prior to that, Garrison directed the work of the International Mission Board's innovative Cooperative Services International program which opened new work in 40 previously closed countries. Garrison's quest to understand and join God's global mission has led him to study a dozen languages and visit more than 80 countries, serving as a missionary in Hong Kong, Germany, France, England, Egypt, Tunisia, and India.
Aaron Ivey believes that all worship is a response to a creative and compelling God. Serving as one of the worship pastors at The Austin Stone, Aaron now views touring ministry as an extension of what goes on within a vibrant, healthy local church. With a passion for living out God's word, compassion for God's children, and a deep, abiding love of God, Aaron and his bandmates are challenging a generation of believers to take their experiences in corporate worship out into the world, to marry song with service.
