Through a two-year cohort that meets monthly for two hours, pastors learn how to revitalize their congregation by helping them to become “conversion communities”, where churched and de-churched people come to faith, grow in their faith, and their congregations become more welcoming places for emerging and young adults.
Cohorts will focus on challenges facing African American congregations such as effectively reaching the next generation, fruitfully navigating shifting contexts and demographic changes occurring around their churches, developing team ministry approaches and leadership pipelines in congregations to launch new ministries, and creating new evangelism models that work effectively in a new era.
The new cohorts will begin yearly with senior pastors of African American congregations, and aim to integrate an outreach leaders, and a leadership development person from each church into the process, with the ongoing goal that one of these leaders will be under 40 years of age.
Established in 1980, the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center stands as a global hub for evangelism and mission training. With a commitment to develop and mobilize Christ-followers for individual and corporate witness, the center boasts nine specialized institutes dedicated to research, teaching, and fostering a world where every believer actively makes Jesus Christ known.