About Dan Reeves
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.
Dan has personally worked with more than 600 congregations in the US, Canada, Taiwan, Philippines and Europe. His approach is adaptive and highly intuitive.
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 pop music group called the "Forerunners", 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 infiltrate and interact with post Christian worldviews in 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, 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 three online seminars with Easum & Bandy and associates on "Anchoring Teams with Life Mapping" in recent years.
Dan’s future writing projects include leading edge resources related to Paul's Missionary Band, missional teams, the formation of global missional networks and the necessary demise of institutional structure.
He will also continue to develop in 2010 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 riding, and reading.
What others say about Dan Reeves
“Let me recommend Dan Reeves. Dan has been coaching leadership teams for more than 25 years. Dan knows our approach well, and is able to adapt it to a wide range of ministry settings. During the last 18 months alone Dan has effectively helped 35 congregations make the transition to fractal teams. He has the understanding and heart necessary to build churches that reach the harvest.”
Dr. Wayne Cordeiro, New Hope Christian Fellowship Honolulu, Hawaii
“Dan Reeves is one of the few professionals who actually studied with Donald McGavran. McGavran valued Dan as one of his most gifted, perceptive and industrious students who, in his own way, would advance missiological thought in his generation. That expectation has been, and is still being fulfilled. Today, Dan stands prominently in the front ranks of church consultants. Indeed, with astonishingly contextual wisdom, he consults with churches and judicatories across a remarkable range of denominations and traditions. He is universally trusted and appreciated across that range. To his consulting, Dan continually brings the blend of classical church growth lore with demographic studies and futurist studies that help churches find their way forward. The leadership he brings, in recent years, in Ecclesiology may prove to be historic! One day, through Dan Reeves’ catalytic influence, hundreds of churches will be reaching people and (at least) several denominations will actually have a coherent doctrine of the Church in Mission!”
George Hunter, Dean, School of World Mission and Evangelism, Asbury Theological Seminary
“You continue, Dan, to under-promise and over-deliver! Your efforts have been above and beyond our expectations. Very impressive. I love your proposal and I'm very enthusiastic about this partnership. Many thanks.”
Dave Ferguson, Lead Pastor, Community Christian Church, Naperville, Illinois
“Dan Reeves' LifeSystem consultation process has been a transformational experience for our middle-sized congregation. Reeves encourages and resources a process that includes an eye-opening analysis of present ministry, teamed with a model for transforming nonfunctional structures and ministry approaches to systems that allow for effective sharing of the Gospel in a twenty-first Century setting. As a direct result of our consultation, Northminster Church has moved to a more efficient staffing model tied to our mission and vision. We have traded thirteen unwieldy and difficult-to-staff committees for six functional ministry teams made up of people who have zeal about their ministry and a real commitment to one another. We also created and staffed an outreach oriented contemporary worship service without the oft experienced "worship wars." Most importantly, we have introduced many unreached people to Jesus, helped them discover and grow their gifts, and are in the process of helping them to find their ministries in our family. I heartily commend Dan Reeves to you as a consultant who helps get the work of Christ done, not just talked about.”
Rev. Bill Ekhardt, Northminster Presbyterian Church, Bakersfield, California
“I have known Dan Reeves for 20 years and have grown to appreciate his love for our Lord and passion for His church. Dan has a keen ability to ask the right question at the right time to draw out the truth of a matter. His descriptions and prescriptions are biblically based and systemically sound. In my mind he is clearly one of the top five church consultants in the United States today.”
Gary McIntosh, Author and Professor, Biola University
“Dan is a person who brings knowledge, wisdom and passion to his calling. The fruit of his ministry is found in churches that have been revitalized and which have experienced significant growth through the spiritual foundations he has helped lay.”
Eddie Gibbs, Professor of Church Growth, Fuller Theological Seminary
“The work that Dan Reeves has done in church consultation has helped hundreds and hundreds of churches to carry out the Great Commission to all nations.”
Elmer Towns, Dean, School of Religion, Liberty University
Contact Dan by E-mail: ReevesSC@aol.com
