Category Archives: News

We recently introduced the first and second installments of a new series of videos that we are making that share some training tips from our Management for Church Leaders™ training. These training tips are meant to be informational and draw interest from pastors and church leaders around the world to our free training resources. These short 3 minute videos are being posted on our ministry FaceBook page, which currently has about 1,000 followers. They are also posted for the general public so that anyone can view them. I am posting them monthly on the first Thursday of the month.

I am also posting them on our website and will continue to add them to our website each month after they are posted on FaceBook. Our first training tip was posted on March 4^th and the second one was just posted last week on April 1^st.  

Each video has the same opening and closing and just the training tip itself is different. There is a call to visit our website to request our MCL Self-Training Book at the end of each video. This will help maintain continuity and visual branding. Click on the image below to view our 2^nd training tip video:

We encourage you to watch the video and give us your feedback on it via email, or by liking or commenting on the YouTube video itself. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel to be notified of future training tip video postings. We would also request that you share the link with anyone you may know who might have interest in our training, whether abroad or in the USA.

Thank you all for your encouragement and support of this ministry!

“Only God makes things grow.”

1 Corinthians 3:7

FaithLife Ministries is pleased to release a new video that celebrates reaching 100 nations with our Management for Church Leaders™ training. We reached 100 nations back in early September when our training was received by a pastor in the nation of Belize. This was the culmination of the vision that God had given to us back in 2008.

This video shares the story of how this training began and how it spread around the world. It has done so only by the hand of God! And it was the result of many people working together in ministry as God has directed them over the past 19 years.

Please click on the video below to watch how it all happened.

Thank you all for your support and prayers that has made reaching this vision possible.

To God alone belongs the glory!!

“Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.“

Proverbs 19:21

We are thrilled to announce that our Management for Church Leaders™ training has reached it’s 100th Nation! Last Saturday, our MCL Trainer in Guatemala, Dr. Diego Cruz, held an MCL training on Facebook Live that was attended by 16 pastors and leaders from several nations, including Belize. That made Belize the 100th nation to receive our training! As you may recall, Diego and I had planned to take our training to Belize in May but the training conference had to be postponed due to the virus. Instead, our original host in Belize, Pastor Julio Quiroz from the Belize Church of God, attended the online training. Here are a couple of screenshot photos from the training. Diego is pictured on bottom photo:

God gave us the vision to reach 100 nations back in 2008 and this goal has been the focus of our ministry the past 11 years. It is what led us to publish a self-training manual in 2012 and create our Global Trainer Network in 2014 so that we could multiply and spread our training.

We recognize that it took many people, especially our global trainers, to reach this goal, and it was all by God’s Hand and not our own! We are also thankful to all of our ministry donors and supporters who helped provide the funding and prayers that God used to bring this about. We truly thank and praise the Lord for leading us, and using all of us, to reach this wonderful milestone in this ministry!

We will be releasing a video in the next several weeks to celebrate this accomplishment for the Lord, which will include a look back on how we got here. We will let you know when it is available for on-line viewing.

“I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.”

1 Corinthians 3:6

Our ministry vision the past 13 years has been to reach 100 nations with our Management for Church Leaders™ (MCL) training. As of today, our MCL training has been taught in 99 nations. We had envisioned reaching the 100th nation through a training that was scheduled for the Seychelles in March by Pastor Wilson Esambe from Cameroon. But this training did not happen because of the global virus pandemic. We are hopeful that training can take place soon. Consequently, we expect to reach our goal of 100 nations sometime in the next month or two.

Our original ministry intent was to “scatter the seed” of our MCL training. In other words, God directed us to spread it to as many nations as we could. As a result, the vision God gave us was to plant our training in 100 nations. With that vision nearing achievement, it became evident to us that we needed to ask God for a new vision.

Last year I began that process of prayer and meditation for a new vision from the Lord. I presented some ideas that the Lord had revealed to me at our annual board of directors meeting last November. We discussed them but decided to continue to pray for God’s direction and clarity. Earlier this year I presented the vision that I believed the Lord was calling us to achieve. Our board approved that new vision a few months ago, but we decided to wait to announce it until after we had accomplished our current vision. However, since we are so close to our goal of 100 nations, we believe that now is the time to let you know where we are headed in the future.

After much prayer, deliberation and discussion with our board, we believe that God now wants us to make sure that our training is more “firmly planted” where we have sown its seed. As a result, our new vision will be to establish an active global MCL trainer in 50 nations by the year 2025. An active global trainer is someone who conducts our training on a regular basis each year. Although we currently have 73 global trainers in 39 nations, only 20 nations currently have an active trainer providing regular, annual training. That means we need to establish an active trainer in 30 more nations over the next 5 years.

This vision is based on 1 Corinthians 3:6. The church in Corinth was praising Paul and Apollos for their work in establishing the gospel there. But Paul proclaimed that “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.” We have done what Paul did by planting our training in 99 nations. But now we need to do what Apollos did. We need to feed (“water”) the training seed we have planted by providing trainers and resources in those nations without an active trainer to help our training grow and develop there as well.

Our strategy for achieving this new vision is three-fold. First, we will begin with nations where we have a global trainer who is not active and work to have them become an active trainer. That may require funding training expenses or providing additional training tools. Second, we will look to establish our training in the curriculums of the Bible Colleges & Schools where we have taught our MCL in the past, or where we now have contacts. That could mean revising our training to fit school curriculum formats. It also might include some travel costs for us to introduce it or teach it ourselves. Finally, we will look to identify potential global trainers in nations where our MCL training has been planted but there is no global trainer. That may entail communication or travel costs.

By establishing an active global MCL trainer in 50 nations we will be strengthening our ministry, expanding our training within more nations, and ensuring the training of more pastors and church leaders in the future. We believe that this new vision is God’s will for this ministry. As we turn our attention to fulfilling the call that He is now giving to us, we look forward to seeing how God grows this ministry in the years ahead. Please pray for us as we embark on this new adventure!

We are pleased to announce that our Management for Church Leaders™ (MCL) training has formally reached the Middle East with our recent training in Cairo, Egypt! Egypt was an ideal location as it is safe to travel to and has an estimated 25% Christian population. Although the training material was in Arabic and we had translators, about 50% of Egyptians speak English.

The training conference was held October 4-6^th and was attended by 68 pastors and church leaders from Egypt, Lebanon and South Sudan. We were invited to bring our training there by Dr. Wahid Wahba, founder and president of the Middle East Leadership Training Institute (MELTI). I was referred to Dr. Wahba by Ali Khalil, a pastoral trainer from Lebanon that I met at the Global Proclamation Congress for Pastoral Training in Bangkok in June, 2016.

MELTI has been working in the region for 20 years and has provided Christian training to pastors and church leaders throughout the Middle East through their training center in Cairo. A few of their instructors attended our training and will now be able to teach our MCL material along with their other training material where needed. They are also considering adding our MCL training to their regular training curriculum.

What was particularly encouraging about this conference was that before the 2^nd day of training was completed 4 attendees asked for copies of our MCL Training Manual in English along with the MCL Trainer Manual in English with the goal of teaching our training to others. We have provided them with this material and will be following up with them on their training results in the months ahead. One of these individuals is from Lebanon who also has his own training ministry and goes to many other nations in the region. We are hopeful that he will consider being part of our Global Trainer Network as well and include our training where applicable and useful.

During our training we also discovered a few translation errors that are now being corrected by MELTI so as to improve the training in Arabic. They will also provide an Arabic translation of our MCL Trainer Manual so that those who do not speak English can teach our training as well.

We have now planted the seed of our training in Egypt and look forward to watching how God uses us, and those we have trained, to expand His Kingdom in the Middle East! As the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3:7, “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.”

We thank God for this wonderful opportunity to spread our training throughout the Middle East and look forward to seeing the fruit that is produced from this one seed of training!

To God alone be the glory!!

FaithLife Ministries announces the move of its ministry offices to Cumming, GA effective February 17th, 2016.  Our new mailing address is as follows:

6170 Crescent Landing Dr.

Cumming, GA  30028

All of our other contact information remains the same. Please use this new address for all correspondence and donations by mail.

Thank you!

Barry Voss, President

Today, January 22, 2016, FaithLife Ministries celebrates its 15^th anniversary of ministry. We are amazed at what God has done in and through us these past 15 years, where he has led us, and how He has provided for us and used us to minister to church leaders around the world! This was never our plan, but God indeed had a plan for us! It reminds me of Proverbs 19:21 where it says, “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.”

When we began this ministry in 2001, we simply had a vision to take Americans to the mission field to experience the joy of serving our brothers and sisters in other nations. God has blessed America, and Americans, and we have so much to offer the Body of Christ in other parts of the globe. God has blessed us with education and financial resources, two resources in short supply in many nations. We just wanted to be obedient to God’s command to share what we have with others less fortunate (Hebrews 13:16 – “And do not forget to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.”)

But little did we know what God had in mind! We have seen this ministry grow quite rapidly in the past 5 years, primarily when we followed God’s leading to establish a global trainer network. This has enabled others around the world to join us in this mission and vision, and thus multiply our efforts and our resources. Today, our training has reached 48 nations and we have 49 Trainers in 25 nations involved in our network teaching others what we have taught them! Wow! We are now halfway to our goal & vision of seeing our training reach 100 nations.

Additionally, so many of you have contributed your financial resources to help us train and equip these leaders. And others have gone with us to help us train them. We could never have done this on our own. There is power when God’s people work together for the benefit of others! Thank you so much for your partnership with us in this ministry!

God is so good and we praise, thank and acknowledge Him as the source and reason for whatever has been accomplished in this ministry! As it says in 1 Peter 4:11, “If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ.”

To God alone be the glory!!

Last year FaithLife Ministries established our Management for Church Leaders™ Global Trainer Network. Our strategy was simple – to multiply and spread our training through indigenous ministry trainers around the globe rather than sending more Americans abroad to train our material. Not only is this a less costly means of training, it has also proven to be more effective as well since national trainers know their cultures and needs better than we do.   When we started this network there were 28 pastors and leaders we had previously trained who agreed to join our network and commit to training others on our behalf. However, we did not anticipate how successful this strategy would become.

In its first year, 2014, our network of 28 global MCL Trainers trained 3,401 leaders in 21 nations through 70 training conferences.  The training was also taken to two new nations – Pakistan and Togo. That compares with our training of only 400 leaders in 8 nations through 7 international trips.  The effectiveness of this strategy in the first year alone would appear to be obvious, and the results were great!

So as we entered 2015 we set some goals for our network of global trainers to reach. We wanted to see them train 2,000 leaders in 20 nations, and we wanted to add 10 new trainers to the network. Although these goals may seem a bit low, we were unsure after only one year if the results from 2014 would continue.  We soon found out that it would! As of today, our network has exceeded all of these goals, having trained 2,496 leaders in 21 nations through 70 conferences, including the 3 new nations of Burkina Faso, Mali and Chile.  And our network has plans to train in 20 more conferences still to come, including 4 new nations (Niger, Zambia, Botswana and Bhutan). We have also added 16 new MCL Trainers this year, bringing our network total up to 47 trainers! God is indeed awesome and we are thankful to Him for everything that has been achieved so far! As Paul reminded the church at Corinth in 1 Corinthians 3:6-7, “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.”

Realizing the success of this strategy, and what God was doing, we began to direct more of our mission funds towards supporting our network of trainers financially and developing more support tools for them, such as a Trainer’s Manual and more recently some instructional videos on how to teach our material to others. We are now focusing our efforts on establishing our training in new nations, raising up more MCL Trainers in new nations for our network, and training and equipping our network of trainers to train others. Our overall vision is to see our training reach 100 nations.  We are currently at 41 but expect to be close to 50 by the end of this year, due in large part to our network which will take our training to 7 new nations this year, compared to our 3. We believe that this strategy will also enable us to achieve this vision in the next 10 years.

All the glory, honor and praise goes to God our Father, and His Son Jesus Christ, whom we seek to serve, obey and trust for the success of this ministry!

Barry Voss, President of FaithLife Ministries, has written a new book about Christianity and the American culture today.  The book is entitled “About Face: A Call to Turn America Back to God.”

In this book Barry discusses how the American culture has changed during his lifetime.  Growing up in the 1960s he saw America start to change its values.  He witnessed America turn away from God over the past fifty years and become more secular. He breaks down the ways this has become evident by looking at how eight different values in our culture have changed. They include the erosion of Biblical influence, sexual idolatry, devaluation of life, coveting wealth, rampant dishonesty, an entitlement mentality, a lack of personal responsibility, and a rise in socialism. He shows how America has lost its respect for the Church, moved away from Christian and Biblical values, and how it now values personal choice above God’s Word.

But he also offers a solution and shows how followers of Christ and the Church can lead America back to God.  Although Christians are strangers and aliens in our nation (1 Peter 2:11), we are still called by God to influence our nation and be “salt & light” (Matthew 5) in it.  He provides eight ways Christians can influence our culture by being who we were called to be.  He demonstrates that it is only when Christians focus on being the Church, sharing the gospel, and making disciples of Jesus, that the Holy Spirit can use us to turn our nation back to God.

> Watch video trailer

The book was published by Xulon Press, the largest Christian self publisher and was released on April 9th, 2015.  It is available in a variety of formats.  Please click on any of the links below to purchase a copy.  All proceeds go to FaithLife Ministries to support the mission work that we do.

Paperback:  Xulon Press or Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble

Kindle:  Amazon.com

Nook:  Barnes & Noble

Apple:  iStore

We would certainly welcome your feedback on the book after you have read it.  Please feel free to return to this blog page to post your comments and feedback.