Articles

By Daniel Yang This article was originally posted on February 3, 2022 at churchleaders.com. Editor’s Note: Daniel Yang and Ed Stetzer recently interviewed The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill creator and host Mike Cosper on the Stetzer ChurchLeaders Podcast. Listen to that episode here. By now, likely thousands of people in church leadership have listened to Christianity Today’s The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast created and hosted by Mike Cosper. The series especially perked the ears of those involved in church planting in North America because of Mars Hills’ unique influence on the wave of new churches that started in the late 1990s and until around 2014. As the podcast got underway, people weighed in on whether or not it was adequately addressing the problems raised in its first episode—particularly around abusive leadership, spiritual trauma, and the systems that perpetuate them. For some, it’s been seen as an unnecessary airing of the bad parts of American evangelicalism. […]

By Gary Rohrmayer Twenty years ago this fall, Converge MidAmerica experienced a breakthrough moment in launching four church plants within five weeks of the attacks at the World Trade Center on 9-11. Up to that point, this had never happened in the history of Converge MidAmerica. NorthBridge Church in Antioch, IL, launched September 16th under the leadership of Mark & Michelle Albrecht. Christ’s Church of Wrigleyville, in Chicago, IL, celebrated the restart of this historic church on September 16th under the leadership of Dave & Tiffany Gwartney. Both churches celebrated their starts just 5 days after the attacks. Dave told me that they opened the doors of this historic church blocks from Wrigley Field, and people came in just to pray throughout the week. On October 14th, Heartland Church in Fishers, IN, was launched under the leadership of Darryn & Loree Scheske and Crosswinds Community Church by Mark and Jill Savage in Bloomington, IL. Three of these churches are still […]