The Acts 29 church planting network announced today that it will move its headquarters from Seattle to Dallas, and Matt Chandler, lead pastor of The Village Church, will become the organization’s president.
Chandler, who has served on the network’s board, will select his own staff for Acts 29.
Mark Driscoll, lead pastor at Mars Hill Church in Seattle and the founder and current president of Acts 29, wrote in a blog post today that he sought counsel from Chandler and Darrin Patrick, lead pastor of The Journey church in St. Louis and also an Acts 29 board member. Together, they decided to make the leadership changes.
Driscoll wrote:
As a young church planter I wanted a tribe to belong to. So, I started gathering a few other young church planters for mutual learning, accountability, and encouragement. Before long, Mars Hill Church was formally supporting church planters in both the U.S. and India. Then, I met Pastor David Nicholas, whose Spanish River Church had generously supported church planters for many years. Together, we founded the Acts 29 church planting network.
For the first years, the network offices were housed in Florida, as David served as our president. Then the offices were moved to Seattle when I assumed the presidency. Since that time, David has passed on to see the Jesus he loved face to face, and Acts 29 has grown rapidly, now totaling more than 400 churches in the U.S., as well as international church planting involvement. Since then, other qualified men have taken the reins of Acts 29 and run with the vision David and I had years ago.
Recently, I sensed that not all was well in Acts 29. As my concerns grew, I recently resumed the presidency of Acts 29 to work directly with our network captains, most influential pastors, and staff. It seemed to me that some of our relationships, board size and structure, communication, systems, and such were not as effective as we needed, which is to be expected to some degree in a large, complex, fast-growing entrepreneurial network such as ours.
Seeking wise counsel, I asked Darrin Patrick and Matt Chandler to fly to Seattle in order to meet with the executive elders of Mars Hill for a full day to decide a course of action. They graciously did so, and in our time together was a rich, true brotherhood, a renewed and deepened commitment to Acts 29, and a Spirit-lead unity.
Together, we decided, in light of all the complexity we’re facing, that the best thing for Acts 29 going forward would be for Matt Chandler to assume the presidency, move the network offices to Dallas, and select his Acts 29 staff.
In light of this, I want to sincerely thank the people of Mars Hill for investing millions of dollars over the years in Acts 29 and the people of The Village for being willing to house the Acts 29 headquarters.
As for myself, I want to humbly serve Jesus and his men in Acts 29 by doing whatever is best for them. Going forward, I will gladly remain on the Acts 29 Board supporting Matt, along with Darrin and whomever else Matt believes best fits the Board.
Mars Hill gladly stays in Acts 29 as well. I’ll be spending much of my time going forward serving all of Acts 29, pastoring at Mars Hill, helping the Resurgence, writing books, organizing preaching campaigns, and doing media interviews.
Lastly, I love Pastor Matt, respect him, and appreciate him. He is a bridge-builder across many tribes, a great Bible teacher, godly man, and geographically located in an easy place to travel to and from. His church is now large enough and well established to greatly serve Acts 29. He has my support, and I pray he would have yours as well.
