Observing. Interpreting. Partnering. Encouraging.
In 1991, during my fourth year as a pastor, I was asked to take a leading church consultant’s training materials and develop them into a book. The experience became a major turning point in my life. The book, which sold over 100,000 copies, showed me a powerful way to multiply someone’s influence. It taught me the importance of partnering my gifts with someone else’s, preferably someone far more gifted than me, to expand their impact even further. It also helped me personally, giving me new ways of seeing how God is working through various church leaders today.
Since that turning point, I have been blessed to come alongside the leaders of many spiritually passionate, healthy, innovative and growing churches from across the country, observing God’s work in and through those ministries. Though research and personal involvement, I strive to identify the principles at work within effective ministries, and then to share those insights, spiritual breakthroughs and relevant ideas with other church leaders through multiplication tools that include books, resources, conferences and other kinds of interaction.
About Warren Bird:
Warren Bird researches cutting-edge churches and works with their leaders to multiply their evangelistic and disciplemaking impact.
Warren Bird, Ph.D., serves as Director of Research and Intellectual Capital at Leadership Network, a nonprofit that helps innovative Christian leaders increase their impact.
An ordained minister for more than 20 years, he most recently served on staff at Princeton (N.J.) Alliance Church, an innovative church with a worship attendance approaching 2,000. Previous pastoral experience includes leading a C&MA church-planting team from 1987 to 1991. He has also served as a long-time regularly contributing faculty member at Alliance Theological Seminary.
A winner of the prestigious Gold Medallion Award (the top honor given by the international trade association for Christian publishers), Warren has co-authored 22 books. He has also contributed collaborative chapters or sections to 6 other books. He has published almost 200 magazine articles. He has served on advisory boards for several magazines and several other book projects.
Warren’s Ph.D. is from Fordham University in sociology of religion. He is an honors graduate of Wheaton College and Wheaton Graduate School, Wheaton, Ill. (B.A., M.A.) and Alliance Theological Seminary, Nyack, N.Y. (M.Div.). He has been licensed with The Christian and Missionary Alliance Metropolitan District since 1986.
From 1991 to 1995, Warren served on Carl George’s senior management team of the Pasadena-based Charles E. Fuller Institute of Evangelism and Church Growth. His responsibilities included visiting, interviewing, researching, and profiling many of the largest, fastest-growing, or newest churches in North America.
In subsequent years, he has done similar research and development for the Canadian-based International Leadership Centre – Willow Creek Canada and for the Asbury Theological Seminary-based Beeson Institute for Advanced Church Leadership.
Warren and his wife Michelle have been married for more than 25 years. They have two grown children and they live in a suburb of New York City.