Dan Reeves
is a missiologist and coach who has been leading cross-cultural,
missional teams and coaching pastors and lay people in team
building for more than twenty-five years.
He is the founder of IMLT,
the Institute for Missional Leadership Teams – an
initiative to mentor, coach, and connect people, teams and
churches who have, or desire to have, a kingdom mentality,
a global, cross-cultural perspective, and a vision to “go
and grow” with other Christians in relationship and
mission.
Dan
earned a Masters and Doctorate in Missiology at Fuller Seminary’s
School of World Mission in Pasadena, California.
However,
some of Dan’s most formative and valuable training
occurred in real-life, “in-the-foxhole” experience
and through the intervention of God-given mentors in his
life. One of the most significant mentors came at a time
when Dan, and his wife Ethelwynne, were at a point of decision
and seeking God’s will for their lives.
Bud
Hinkson, a man of contagious faith and a visionary team
leader with Campus Crusade for Christ, challenged them to
“invest their lives in the changing of lives.”
They joined a team of 55 young college graduates, whom Bud
had recruited, who would go to Europe to share their faith
with post-Christian University students in the turbulent
late 60’s and early 70’s.
Dan
formed and led several pioneering teams, including a folk
singing group which traveled in fourteen countries performing
and interacting with people in bars, cafeterias, cathedrals,
student lecture halls and concert venues. They regularly
engaged young Europeans in life-changing conversations,
helped establish a variety of radical Christian communities
and trained young “commandoes” to take the “beach-heads”
in post-Christian European Universities.
The
family, then, spent four years in France, working with students
and Christian lay people. Dan was a delegate to the 1974
Lausanne World Congress on Evangelism where he met another
mentor, Peter Wagner. When Dan heard Wagner’s analysis
of and ideas for the church, he was intrigued to learn more
about Fuller’s School of World Mission for which his
experience in Europe had prepared him.
After
working in the trenches and having his assumptions challenged
in the crucible of this European experience, Dan returned
to the US where he studied with and met new mentors:- Donald
McGavran and Peter Wagner at the School of World Mission
of Fuller Seminary, and John Wimber, who was then director
of the Fuller Institute in Pasadena, CA .
John
invited Dan to join him in the consulting work of the institute
and taught him many of the foundational principles that
have formed Dan’s approaches in helping pastors and
churches. Soon after, John left to found the Vineyard, but
Dan continued on for ten years with Carl George working
cross-denominationally as a lead consultant for the Fuller
Institute.
During
this period, Fuller Institute was widely recognized as the
premier consulting resource for American congregations.
Dan’s concentration was in the areas of congregational
diagnosis, strategic planning, conflict resolution, team
building, and problem solving. At Fuller, Dan also helped
train and certify fifty mid-career consultant interns in
their field apprenticeships; many of these men and women
have gone on to have significant kingdom ministry.
Since
1990, Dan has pioneered and refined an innovative, relational,
and team-based network strategy (Congregational Clusters)
for helping pastors and congregations of small and mid-sized
churches to maximize their God-given potential for health
and fruitfulness. Dan, also, provides a LifeMapping service
for Christian leaders based on the work of yet another mentor,
Tom Paterson, and has created a LifeSystems approach to
strategic mapping for congregations of all sizes.
In the
mid-1990’s Dan served as President of the American
Society of Church Growth. There he brought together denominational
executives to work through the core issues facing the Church
of the 21st Century. This led to his founding of the Council
on Ecclesiology in 1997.
The
Council on Ecclesiology developed out of a deep concern
over the unnecessary fragmentation among Christian groups
and denominations concerning the nature, function and mission
of the church. The council, which Dan, convenes, concluded
its sixth meeting in 2004. The Council includes such diverse
groups as Willow Creek, Mosaic, Christianity Today, New
Apostolic Reformation, and the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals,
as well as young leaders and inner city pastors.
Over
the years, Dan has, also, worked closely and consulted with
several national and regional denominational offices, including
Free Methodists, Presbyterians, Wesleyans, Church of God,
Cleveland, and most recently, the Synod of the Great Lakes
for the Reformed Church in America.
Dan
has been published on such subjects as Church Growth, revitalization,
team ministry, and strategic mapping. His latest book, Thriving
Churches in the Twenty-First Century: Ten Life-Giving
Systems for Vibrant Ministry, is co-authored
with Gary McIntosh, and was published by Kregel in 2006.
Dan facilitated his third online seminar in 2006 with Easum
& Bandy and associates on "Anchoring Teams with
Life Mapping."
He will
also continue to develop in 2007 his four part missional
team resource series in collaboration with Wilbert Shenk,
Charles Van Engen and Eddie Gibbs, as a post-doctoral research
project at Fuller Seminary’s School of Intercultural
Studies in Pasadena. His series title is “What kind
of church does God want in a multicultural, postmodern world?”
The
resource series addresses the following four questions:
•
What were the emergent ecclesiologies in the New Testament?
• What are the peculiar characteristics of the postmodern
reality that are going to impact or determine the church?
• How do the changing demographics affect the shape/growth
of the church?
• What are the emergent characteristics of missional
ecclesiology? (as observed among the current edges of global
Christianity?)
Dan
enjoys the company and ministry partnership of his wife,
Ethelwynne, who is a professor of communication and works
with Dan in ministry projects. They have three children
and six grandchildren with whom they enjoy frequent get
togethers and lively conversation. Dan enjoys swimming,
banjo strumming, dune-buggy riding, and reading.
