Kirk Lithander came to faith through the Navigators and at different times in the following 10 years was blessed to have five godly men mentor and disciple him. “The reason I’ve been in ministry for over three decades is because of how they coached me,” he says. No wonder mentoring and coaching are large factors in his approach to ministry.

With a varied ministry background including missionary service, Kirk became outreach pastor at Fairhaven Church in Dayton, Ohio, in 2002. Fairhaven is a large church that has seen 16% annual growth over the past couple of years. This rate of expansion could easily have outstripped the church’s ability to integrate newcomers into outward-focused ministry. But missions has more than kept pace because Kirk has focused on building a team of high-capacity, influential leaders who coordinate a wide variety of outreaches. . .[Click below to continue]