Introducing Our New GO Director

Matthew 28:19-20 says, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” At Gateway, when we talk about being a “going” church, this is what we are talking about. Going into the world - our workplaces, schools, neighborhoods, city, nation and God-willing, even to the ends of the earth - for the sake of making disciples of Jesus Christ. This winter, everyone involved in our Life Group ministry is reading a book by J.D. Greear called Gaining by Losing that is challenging what many of us may believe about who is called to be a “goer.” As church leadership, we recognized the need to have a dedicated staff member specifically focused on leading the way in our local Go efforts, so back in July, Ryan Rebold joined our staff team as the Director of Local Outreach and Evangelism. He has brought renewed energy to our local outreach efforts and has a contagious passion for equipping us to share our faith. Yet despite all of the great things happening locally within our Go ministry, we have been prayerfully searching for a Go Director - someone to oversee the entire Go ministry including international missions - for over a year.

Through a series of events over the past several months, it has become increasingly clear that our Go Director has actually been among us all along. Kelly Green joined Gateway’s staff in October 2017 as the Director of Operations, where his responsibilities include overseeing our facilities, finance, human resources, risk management and database departments. However, prior to coming on staff here, Kelly and his wife Becca (currently the director of our Next Gen ministry), were actually wrestling with the possibility of returning to the mission field. Both Kelly and Becca grew up in missionary families and have served together as a married couple in Africa and Central Asia. As Gateway begins to focus more of our international attention toward reaching the “hard places,” we believe Kelly’s passion for Muslim peoples, as well as his previous missionary experiences make him the perfect person to lead this charge. (For more information about this vision, check out a previous article titled “Why Go to the Hard Places?”) God has blessed Gateway with some great staff in our Operations department which will allow Kelly to take on this new role while still serving as the Director of Operations.