Phone: 704.201.3939
Email: churchhealthresources@gmail.com
Passionate about Mission-centric and stewardship-oriented intentionality to the glory of God, John Edwards is a licensed Christian pastor with various servant-leadership experiences in and beyond churches.
Believing in the Kingdom potential of each local church, his call is to remove “effectiveness lids” through encouraging, challenging, and equipping pastors, staff members, and congregants. There is great hope, with a great future!
During each consultation/coaching partnership, he seeks to inspire Aaron and Hur support (Exodus 17:10-12) for pastors and church leaders through prayerful assessment, Holy Spirit-led and strategic facilitation, along with identification of next-level action steps. There are no “one-size-fits-all” recommendations.
As a catalyst for church health and effective ministry, John’s experience as a consultant/coach spans nearly 35 years. Broad-based perspectives are offered through personal involvement in grassroots ministries, church administration, nonprofit development, and community relations. His recent ministry consultations have taken place in 22 states, each specific to the designated community and/or regional context.
As an Executive Pastor, he has facilitated planning, ministry implementation, facility operations, and communications. Other direct church ministry experiences have included personal, class-based and small group discipleship of adults and youth, facilitating assimilation, shepherding single adult ministry, engaging in hospitality supports, vocal worship via choirs and praise teams, co-directing a youth camp, etc. Within churches and/or parachurch ministries of various sizes, John is a public speaker regarding development-related topics.
Beyond the local church setting, professional experience includes serving as a two-state Community Relations and Development Director for an international ministry organization, while facilitating extensive board development. Public information roles included “9-11” mission outreach at The Pentagon, the Oklahoma City bombing, and more than 20 hurricane, tornado and/or flood-related disaster responses. He is a former radio news director, advertising agency operations director, newspaper and Associated Press correspondent, and served with Kendrick Brothers Productions as Volunteer Coordinator for filming of the “War Room” movie.
Along with wife Marie, the couple is blessed with eight children and nine grandchildren during nearly 40 years of marriage. In addition to Certified Church Consultant designation by the Society for Church Consulting, the Charlotte, N.C. native is a Certified Church Revitalization Consultant with Church Answers University. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, along with nonprofit leadership certification and ongoing continuing education endeavors.
Consulting Focus Areas:
- Comprehensive and stewardship-oriented church health assessment, with data-supported recommendations
- Guiding principles development: Mission, Core Values, Vision
- Community needs assessments: identifying opportunities for outreach and improved missional alignment
- Programmatic effectiveness: data-gathering, measurement, analysis
- Infrastructure analysis: staffing, volunteer base, support, etc.
- Property/facility capacity: challenges and development opportunities
- Board, committee, and task force development
- Strategic planning facilitation
- Stewardship of service: engaging congregants through discovering and aligning spiritual gifts, personality/behavioral tendencies, relatable skills, experiences and interests with meaningful and impactful service opportunities
- Interactive coaching for pastors and church leaders
