5 Million Churches To Win 1 Billion People by 2020!

The Latest Word from John Ed Mathison

One specific commitment for the next six years for me will be to give more time and leadership to the God-sized vision of starting 5 million churches to win 1 billion people to Christ. This was the initial vision of Dr. Bill Bright, Founder of Campus Crusade. I was the Methodist he invited to be on the leadership team to bring this vision to reality. I am the Co-Chairman for North America.

In October I went to Europe to meet with 12 invited leaders from around the world to develop a specific strategy and set a time line to accomplish this mission by 2020.

The key is training pastors around the world. Five important areas for training have been identified: visionary networking, evangelism and discipleship, leadership development, global missions, and planting churches. We have 40 outstanding people who have prepared 90-minute lessons on specific topics in these areas. You can go to www.globalchurchlearningcenter.com and see these courses written by such people as Howard Hendrix, Ronnie Floyd, George Wood, David Sobrepena, Leonard Sweet, James Davis, and others. I also wrote one.

The plan is to establish 10 hubs around the world in 2014. About 1,000 pastors will attend each hub to be trained. The pastors will come twice a year. The pastors will take 10 courses in a 3-day period, then come back each 6 months for 3 more times. This means they will take 40 courses and receive a graduation certificate in 2 years. Each teacher will teach the same course curriculum at each hub. My course on Everyone in Ministry is one of the core courses that will be taught in all hubs.

The buy-in for each of these 1,000 pastors is that they will go back and teach at least 100 pastors and leaders in their places of ministry. You can see how the multiplication of training of ministers will occur in each hub. We plan to start another 20 hubs in 2015 and 20 more in 2016.

This global goal of starting 5 million churches to win 1 billion people by 2020 is a network of some 1,300 Christian ministries and denominations and involves over 400,000 churches!

I have committed to teach 4 sessions in Delhi, India and 4 in Chennai, India in 2014 and 2015. Our organization has no paid staff people and no direct funding. Each teacher going to a hub is making a commitment to pay his own expenses, pay for the printing of material for the 1,000 pastors who will be attending. Each participant will receive a lesson plan and workbook and will be produced in their own language. The cost will be a lot of dollars per person for printing. The teachers also are assuming responsibility for helping feed the 1,000 pastors for each of the 3-day sessions. The host pastor for the hub will provide dormitory style lodging for the pastors.

These hubs will be hosted by highly respected pastors in their region, like Brian Houston from Sydney, Australia; David Mohan from India; David Cho from Seoul; David Sobrepena from Manila. Future hubs are scheduled for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Auckland, Fiji, Johannesburg, Turkey, Latvia, and others. People have offered to host these hubs.

There is so much more information you can receive by going to www.globalchurchlearningcenter.com or you can google Billion Soul Initiative.

I am committed to teaching in those hubs over the next couple of years. The degree of my participation beyond that will be related to the finances that are available. As you can see this is a major financial obligation.

I will continue to spend most of my time in the U.S. preaching, teaching seminars, training pastors and leaders, mentoring pastors, writing the weekly blogs, recording the daily 2-minute audio messages for Facebook, ministering in the sports world, serving as individual coach for a small number of Pastors, etc.

Thank you for your support in the past, and I invite you to invest prayerfully and financially in the God-sized vision of creating 5 million churches to reach 1 billion people by 2020.

The Latest Word — Weekly Blog

Satisfying Your Soul's Thirst For More — Books & Devotionals

Timeless Truths For Turbulent TImes
Got A Minute?
John Ed's book "Quotient Quizzes: What's Your Score?"
John Ed Mathison's book Change Change! How to Creatively Cope with Change
Read More
READ

Check out our Weekly Blog or you can sign up for our Daily Devotional email.

LISTEN

Tune-in to our Daily 1-Minute Radio Message to begin your day!

WATCH

Don't miss our Weekly Video Message from John Ed on "Got A Minute".