Fun and strategic time with Gary & Margaret Mayes!

Recently Jill and I spent a few days with our friends Gary and Margaret Mayes. Gary is the Executive Director of ChurchNEXT, the division of CRM through which Jill and I serve. To make a long story short, after a lot of debriefing and dreaming about what “could be,” Gary dropped an idea bomb that has become (after much prayer and processing) our new role and ministry as missionaries with CRM. While there are numerous facets to our new roles where we will offer strategic leadership together to the whole of ChurchNEXT, I will be assuming a new position in our movement entitled, Director of Pioneering Initiatives. Simply put, I will be working to help identify and equip apostolically gifted leaders who will launch new expressions of missional church across the world. Directing these kinds of leaders who are doing this kind of ministry feels like a God-appointed fit for me. I’m grateful and excited!

            Jill will assume leadership of a new team in ChurchNEXT that will give attention to helping the different generations represented in our movement relate and serve together well and with honor. Her title at this point is, Director of Intergenerational Collaboration. This role will include facilitating training seminars for CRM teams as well as in churches along with a lot of coaching. Like my new role, this feels like a natural/supernatural fit for Jill.

            An implication of all this means that we will not continue facilitating the Life Equipping Community as we have been doing over the past five years. While this was a difficult decision full of mixed emotions, we are confident that with this new arrangement we will be able to multiply our impact with even more emerging leaders. And we are excited to finish this season strong with our 9 outstanding LEC interns. Our time together culminates with a missions trip to Glasgow, Scotland in May. 

What do you think? We would love to hear from you, so please leave a reply!

Our Life Equipping Community interns. These peeps have dedicated their lives to making disciples of Jesus and transforming communities through gospel movements. Kingdom come!