Gary Rohrmayer is an executive leader with a get it done attitude. Leading both start ups and historic organizations in significant growth and lasting impact. Growing up in a family of entrepreneurs after he experienced a dramatic conversion in his early 20’s, he turned this entrepreneurial energy into starting new churches throughout the Midwest. As a pastor, author, speaker, coach, trainer and executive leader he has a unique focus in mobilizing and mentoring leaders in the mission of Jesus.

Gary has been involved in church planting since 1987. During this time he has been involved in over 150 new church plants and training thousands of church planters across the country. He was the founding pastor of Countryside Community Church (now White Stone) in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin from 1988 to 1998.

In 1995, Gary and his wife Mary launched a resource and consulting ministry called Your Journey Resources, (www.yourjourney.org), which specializes in developing reproducible, evangelistic and discipleship materials for adults and children. He has authored 5 books, multiple eBooks and his spiritual conversation tool, The Spiritual Journey Guide that has sold 2.2 million copies. He has consulted, coached and spoke for multiple denominations and mission organizations.

In 1998 the Rohrmayers made the hard decision to leave their new church to launch a new movement of churches throughout the Midwest, as Gary became the Director of Church Planting for Converge MidAmerica from 1998-2010. On March 1, 2010 Gary became the President of Converge MidAmerica overseeing its business and ministry interests that supports regional church planting and ongoing care of its over 200 church plants and partner churches.

He was asked to provide national leadership to Converge Worldwide’s Church Planting Ministry from September 2006-April 2010 and then again from September 2013-April 2015.

Gary and Mary have three grown children and live in the suburbs of Chicago, IL.

Dr. Ed Stetzer was appointed July 1st, 2016 in the newly created position, The Billy Graham Distinguished Endowed Chair for Church, Mission, and Evangelism. In this role, he has been named Executive Director of the Billy Graham Center for Evangelism at Wheaton College (BGCE).

Ed Stetzer, Ph.D., was the Executive Director of LifeWay Research, is a prolific author, and well-known conference and seminar leader. Stetzer has planted, revitalized, and pastored churches, trained pastors and church planters on six continents, holds two masters degrees and two doctorates, and has written dozens of articles and books. Stetzer is a contributing editor for Christianity Today, a columnist for Outreach Magazine, and is frequently cited or interviewed in news outlets such as USAToday and CNN. He is the Executive Editor of The Gospel Project, a curriculum used by more than one million individuals each week. Stetzer is also Executive Editor of Facts & Trends Magazine, a Christian leadership magazine with a circulation of more than 70,000 readers. Since 2012, Ed has hosted a weekly TV and radio program called The Exchange where he interviews some of Christianity's top thinkers, authors, leaders, and pastors. In 2015, he began serving as the co-host of the BreakPoint This Week radio program with John Stonestreet.

Stetzer also serves as Visiting Professor of Research and Missiology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Visiting Research Professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and has taught at many other colleges and seminaries. He also serves as a pastor of Grace Church in Hendersonville, TN., a congregation he planted in 2011.

He has written the following books:

* Planting New Churches in a Postmodern Age (2003)
* Perimeters of Light: Biblical Boundaries for the Emerging Church (w/ Elmer Towns, 2004)
* Breaking the Missional Code: Your Church Can Be a Missionary in Your Community (w/ David Putman, 2006)
* Planting Missional Churches (2006)
* Comeback Churches: How 234 Churches Turned around and Yours Can Too (with Mike Dodson, 2007)
* 11 Innovations in the Local Church (with Elmer Towns and Warren Bird, 2007)
* Compelled by Love: The Most Excellent Way to Missional Living (with Philip Nation, 2008)
* Lost and Found: The Younger Unchurched and Churches that Reach Them (with Richie Stanley and Jason Hayes, 2009)
* Viral Churches: How Church Planters Can Become Movement Makers (with Warren Bird, 2010)
* Spiritual Warfare & Missions (with Jerry Rankin, 2010)
* Transformational Church (with Thom Rainer, 2010)
* MissonShift: Mission Issues in the Third Millenium (with David J. Hesselgrave, 2010) * Compelled: Living the Mission of God (with Philip Nation, 2011)
* The Mission of God Study Bible (with Philip Nation, 2012)
* Subversive Kingdom: Becoming Agents of Gospel Transformation (2012)
* Transformational Groups (with Eric Geiger, 2014)

I was born in a small town in northeast Wisconsin, and I came to know Christ by reading the Bible during high school. I went to college near Green Bay (St. Norbert College), spent a year in Africa, then went on to Denver Seminary. After that I was married and we moved back to Wisconsin to plant a church. It went well, and then I became part of our regional and national church planting efforts (what we called TeAmerica) in the Baptist General Conference. I eventually became the first regional director and then the first national director of church planting for our fellowship of churches (now known as “Converge Worldwide”). Together we saw over 800 new churches successfully planted.

I have spent my ministry career learning how to do things better and conveying that to others. That goes for starting new churches (I’ve published books and spoke on that quite a bit), but it goes for other things as well. I’ve enjoyed being a coach and encourager for people in all walks of life. I have made good decisions and I have made many mistakes. As I often say, no one gets the life they thought they’d get and no one behaves the way they say they’ll behave. That’s why we need God. I’m a very good public speaker and presenter. I enjoy teaching from the Bible, and people like my humor, insight, and practical applications. My Myers-Briggs preference is ENFJ. My StrengthsFinder themes are: Maximizer, Context, Activator, Positivity, and Developer. People are very comfortable around me, and they find me to be a practical “how to” communicator.

In August of 2014 my most recent book (co-authored with Steve Pike) was released. It’s called Leading Church Multiplication: Locally, Regionally, Nationally, and it’s about the practical aspects of leading a church planting organization.

Steve Pike is the President and Founder of Urban Islands Project, a national collaborative organization dedicated to increasing the presence of the Church, the urban core of America’s 40 largest urban centers.

Prior to initiating Urban Islands Project, Steve served as the Founding Director of the Church Multiplication Network. CMN serves church multipliers to effectively equip, strategically fund and innovatively network new faith communities in America. Since its formation in 2008, CMN has assisted with the starting of over 2000 new congregations in every region of the US.

Steve is the co-author with Dr. Tom Nebel of “Leading Church Multiplication,” available from ChurchSmart Resources.

Steve’s passion for church multiplication began in 1989 when Steve and his wife, Cherri, pioneered a new church that became the catalyst of a church planting movement in the state of Utah that continues to this day. The Pikes make their home in Denver, Colorado. They are blessed to be the parents of Lindsy and Jeremy and the grandparents of Myles, Koen and Wesley.

Dave and his wife Elena have served in church planting since 1990. They launched a church in Huntington Beach, CA in 1991 that launched several more churches over the years. They recently attended the 25 year celebrations of the church they planted and one that they helped launch.

In 1998, the Reynolds moved to Vancouver, WA to launch Northwest Church Planting, an interdenominational church planting organization that assessed, coached, trained and supported hundreds of planters and continues today. In 2003, the Reynolds were called back to Southern California to launch another multiplying church, and also launched Southwest Church Planting which continues today. In 2014, Dave was asked to direct planting nationally for the Alliance, where he developed a national strategy to prepare all kinds of churches to become “Greenhouses” that grow planters. Dave currently serves on the Alliance national team, coaches planters, leaders and teams, and is planting another church.

Dave is also a musician and plays gigs solo and with his son in the beautiful wine country of the Temecula Valley. Dave and Elena have three grown children and live in Southern California.

Larry and Shelby Barker were married in June of 1978 and have been in full time ministry ever since. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in Church Ministries and a Masters of Theology from Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA. He pastored over twenty years, planted a church in 1992 in Northern Illinois, and served as a missionary in Romania.

In 2005 Larry was elected to serve the Baptist Missionary Association Missions Department in a dual role as Romanian Church Planting Coordinator and to lead Barnabas Touch Ministry teams to conduct pastor and missionary trainings internationally. Then in 2007 he became the Director of Operations for North America overseeing church planting. He has a passion to see hundreds of churches planted throughout the USA and Canada. His purpose statement is, “raising up a generation of church planters to transform their communities with the gospel.”

Shelby is an RN and serves as a charge nurse at Saline Memorial Hospital in Benton, AR. The Barkers have three children: Meredith with her 2 sons Lincoln and Lucas, Matthew (wife Allison) with 2 sons Calix and Chael who are church planters in Nixa, MO, and Benjamin (wife Kimi), their son Bear and their daughter Finley.

Brian Ehlers is church planting director for Open Bible East. He obtained a B.S. in Business with a major in Finance from Miami University of Ohio and a M.A. in Practical Theology from Regent University. A Charted Financial Analyst certification was earned while working in the Mutual Fund Industry. Brian transitioned to vocational ministry in ’98.

He was a senior pastor from 2001 to 2011. Since 2011 Brian has developed Open Bible East church planting systems under the tutelage of Gary Rohrmayer. With God’s blessing, healthy churches have been birthed and others are in the pipeline. Brian is excited to coach movement leaders as a part of Church Multiplication Partners, sharing what he has learned with others. He lives in Englewood, OH with his wife and twin daughters.

Scott Thomas is the US Director for C2C Network, a multi-denominational North American church-planting network. Scott served as President of Acts 29 Network for many years and is currently planting a church. Scott is the co-author of Gospel Coach: Shepherding Leaders to Glorify God (Zondervan, 2012). He regularly trains leaders in the Gospel Coach Training and Certification system.

He authored the Gospel Coach Workbook (C2C Network, 2014), Redeeming Grace (2016), and Twenty Great Truths (Zondervan, 2010) to help pastors develop leaders within the local church. Scott and Jeannie have been married for 35 years and have two grown married sons, two beautiful daughters-in-law and two grandchildren. They all live in Nashville.

Ken Nabi is the Regional President of Converge Great Lakes. He has had a passion for making Christ known to the world since he decided to follow Christ at the age of 18. That one decision changed the trajectory of his life and led him to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School where he earned a Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology. Ken’s passion for church multiplication began when he attended his first church plant in 1989 right out of seminary. In the years to follow, he became a certified marriage and family therapist working with troubled teens, broken marriages, and family dysfunction.

In 1995, Ken obeyed God’s call to full-time ministry and joined the staff of Community Church in Fond du Lac, WI where he would serve for the next 21 years. He led multiple capital campaigns, a major campus relocation, and an expanding staff while keeping the church moving toward multiplication by planting new works locally and establishing global partnerships for the spread of the gospel in Galati, Romania and Senegal, West Africa. Currently, Ken has been helping start and strengthen churches all over the Great Lakes region. His experience has equipped him to walk with pastors and churches, coaching them through the unique struggles of ministry, church & home life. He is recognized as a gifted, strategic leader with a counselor's heart, and his ministry is marked with an emphasis in whole-life change. He loves the local church and is passionate about the gospel as the source of true life transformation. His desire it to live a life of influence that impacts leaders, churches, and regions to become healthy and reproductive for the glory of God.

Ken and his wife, Karen, are parents to four boys and still live, worship and serve together in Fond du Lac, WI.