Ed Stetzer
DOVER, Del.—This 2008 BCM/D Ministers’ Conference, at the Dover Sheraton Hotel, will feature guest speaker Ed Stetzer, research director for LifeWay Christian Resources, on Monday, Nov. 10.
The conference, which precedes the BCM/D annual meeting, begins with a coffee and light breakfast time at 8 a.m. This year’s conference theme is “Marketplace Ministry: Leadership in the 21st Century,” and is designed to help pastors equip their leaders with the tools necessary to move preaching out beyond the walls of the church.
Stetzer is well known in “Baptistdom” and beyond. He’s planted churches, transitioned declining ones and trained planters and pastors throughout the world. He is an author of many books, including “11 Innovations in the Local Church” with Elmer Towns and Warren Bird; “Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can Too”, with Mike Dodson; “Planting Missional Churches”; and “Breaking the Missional Code: Your Church Can Become a Missionary in Your Community.” Stetzer is also a columnist for several magazines and an in-demand speaker.
Mike Logsdon, pastor of First Church, Easton, is president of this year’s conference. Logsdon got the idea of the theme “Marketplace Ministry” while he was on a mission trip to Turkey and walking through the ruins, through Ephesus and through the agora, the marketplace, gathering area and heart of the ancient cities. Logsdon said the agora was where much of the action of the book of Acts occurred.
“We tend to think of preaching being centralized to the church, but it’s not,” Logsdon said.
Logsdon said he invited Stetzer to be the guest speaker for the conference after meeting him at a conference.
“He has a broad range of appeal, from church planters to very established traditional pastors. He does a lot of stuff in the sense of the church moving out from its walls and being the church – not just ‘doing’ church,” he said.
Written by Sharon Mager, BCM/D Correspondent