Small Groups, Big Impact: Connecting People to God and One Another in Thriving Groups

Jim Egli serves as the Develop & Deploy Pastor at the Vineyard Church (Urbana, IL), where he strategizes leadership development, church planting, missions and multi-campus growth. Although Jim’s day job is pastoring, he feels like his ultimate calling is to do research and share the practical findings with leaders and churches around the world. He has published a dozen books about small groups, evangelism and discipleship. His books have been translated into Spanish, German, Korean, Russian and Portuguese. He has led seminars on small group ministry in the United States, Canada, Korea and Mexico. Jim has a Ph.D. in Communication from Regent University. He and his wife Vicki have four awesome children and a growing number of adorable grandchildren.

Dwight Marable is the Founder and Director of Missions International. Missions International (MI), www.missions.com, has worked in over 50 nations in the past 30 years equipping national leaders. In the past decade, Dwight has focused on quantitative research to provide proven resources that get ministry results. MI has completed three major research projects, of which the work with Jim Egli on the drivers behind conversion growth in small groups was one. MI has also studied, and continues to examine, the drivers behind grass roots movements, primarily in Asia. In one Asian country where the “Movements That Move” principles were applied, there have been over 10,000 Muslims baptized in the past 3 years. The third major project that MI has focused on is understanding the drivers behind congregational revitalization in the United States. Among the 400 US congregations which participated, the reporting churches have seen an average of 12% growth. Most of these were plateaued or dying churches. For more information on any of these projects, contact Dwight Marable at [email protected]. Dwight lives in Franklin, Tennessee, with his wife Linda and is blessed to have 3 married daughters and 4 grandchildren at the time of this writing.