About Your Track Leaders
Teresa Stewart
Teresa J. Stewart is the author of The Small Church Advantage: Seven Powerful Worship Practices that Work Best in Small Settings (Market Square Books, 2023). Her passion is creating resources that actually fit small congregations. For nearly 20 years she has written for them, studied their strengths, shared their successes, and offered workshops designed for their particular challenges and advantages.
Her work starts with this simple truth: small churches are not miniaturized big ones. And small churches have superpowers and distinctive gifts unavailable in big settings. Ministry requires more than trying to replicate big-setting successes. It requires unleashing a variety of small-setting strengths. Like reclaiming lay rather than expert leadership. Or “going local” rather than chasing after a one-size-fits-most program. Or returning to practices of participation rather than performance. The result is not a “fix” for small congregations. It’s a hope for them to lead differently. To become local laboratories, indigenous innovators, and good news diagnosticians for the mission of the whole Church.
Teresa lives in the Kansas City area with her husband, Scott, and a yellow lab who serves as office manager always ready for snack time. You can reach her at [email protected].
Jason Stanley
Rev. Jason C. Stanley is an ordained deacon in the United Methodist Church. After twenty years of ministry in the local church with children, teens, and their families, Jason works with churches of all sizes in revitalization efforts. Jason is an experienced facilitator, a certified church consultant, and an ACC coach through the International Coaching Federation. Jason is the co-author with Kay Kotan of An Effective Approach to Cooperative Parishes: A Congregational Guide to Discernment and Implementation, available from Market Square Books and Amazon.
Rob and Donna Ernest
We started Strategy for Ministry as a means to support churches, pastors and other dynamic leaders who are low on time and staff by helping them manage their ministry and tell the old, old story in a new way.
It’s a challenging time to be in ministry. We get it. We've been in the same adaptive state in our ministry, experimenting with new ways to stay connected, and navigating completely uncharted waters. We don't have all the answers, but we do know that we have to keep moving forward, reaching out to those who need to hear a good word and receive hope.
Donna has spent many years in marketing and retail including several years in radio advertising. She's also served the church as an administrative assistant at the conference level, and in the local church sometimes serving as producer, camera operator, and A/V director for the Sunday broadcast!
Rob spent 35 + years in radio broadcasting before answering the call in to ministry over 15 years ago. Since then he's been using his expert skills from his first career to broadcast the good news in a different medium.
Kay Kotan
Kay’s purpose is to Equip and Empower Leaders of Faith Communities How to Engage in More Effective Ministry.
Kay Kotan is the founder of You Unlimited (coaching, consulting and training company) and The Greatest Expedition – a collaboration of more than twenty thought leaders providing resources and insights for a congregational journey to develop new MAPS (ministry action plans) to reach new people in your community. Kay also launched Multipliers’ Movement – a gathering of kingdom multipliers for sharing, equipping, and encouraging.
She is a CoachU and Advanced CoachU Graduate, an accredited coach (PCC: Professional Certified Coach) with the ICF, International Coaching Federation, a Certified Path 1 Coach, and once served on the faculty at Coaching4Clergy. As a passionate lay person, she has a banking background and has been a business owner for more than 25 years. Kotan has served as a church developer for conferences and worked with churches, pastors, conferences, and judicatory leaders across the country for more than a decade. She is most proud to be the wife of Bob for over 30 years and the mother of their adult son, Cameron.
Kay is the author of multiple books, workbooks, and resources including Gear Up: Nine Essential Processes for the Optimized Church, Full Schedules, Barren Souls, Being the Church in the Post Pandemic World, and Journey Preparation: Surveying Your Church’s Landscape, as well as the co-author of the books entitled: IMPACT!: Reclaiming the Call of Lay Ministry, Small Church Check-Up, Insights on Productivity, Renovate or Die – Ten Ways to Focus Your Church on Mission, Ministry 3.0 and Get Their Name , Ten Prescriptions for a Healthy Church, Necessary Nine – Nine Things Effective Pastors Do Differently, Launching Leaders: Taking Leadership Development to New Heights, Strategy Matters: Your Roadmap to Planning a Strategic Ministry Planning Retreat, Voices of Christmas: A Daily Devotional for Advent and Expanding the Expedition Reach Through Marketplace Multipliers. Cry From the Pew, Mission Possible for the Small Church. Inside Out: Everting Ministry Models for the Postmodern Church, and more. Kotan and her co-author Bradford published their third version of the best-seller, Mission Possible: Simple Structure for Missional Effectiveness.
Mrs. Kotan spends her time investing in pastors, laity leaders, congregations, and judicatory leaders through equipping, coaching, and creating resources to help them discover and live into their fullest missional potential of effectiveness and fruitfulness to reach people for Jesus Christ. Through her enthusiasm, truth-telling, and passion, she challenges those who encounter her in both their thinking and their doing.
Blake Bradford
Blake Bradford is passionate about coaching and encouraging Christian leaders in our common mission of making disciples and transforming the world. Blake has recently completed almost a decade of service as a District Superintendent and conference staff member in the Arkansas Conference of the United Methodist Church.
Blake has co-authored several books: IMPACT! Reclaiming the Call of Lay Ministry was written to encourage and equip lay leaders take ownership of Christ's mission and vision of the congregation as it seeks to engage their neighborhood and community. Mission Possible 3+: A Simple Structure for Missional Effectiveness (and it’s predecessor volume were designed as a handbook for churches seeking to use the simplified accountable leadership structure often called the “one board model.” Mission Possible for the Small Church expands on his previous work with simplified leadership, along with chapters on small church ministry planning and “leading from the porch swing,” He is also the author of a volume in The Greatest Expedition Series, Strengthening Decision-Making & Governance for New Expeditions.
Currently the new lead pastor of First UMC of Fort Smith, Arkansas, Blake has pastored churches of different sizes and contexts, including serving in a small church in the Arkansas River Valley and as executive pastor of a 3500-member congregation in Little Rock. Before his appointment to the Cabinet, Blake served the Arkansas Conference Center for Vitality as a congregational coach, consultant, and conflict transformation mediator. Dr. Bradford, a graduate of Hendrix, Vanderbilt, Iliff School of Theology, and Perkins School of Theology at SMU, has taught at conferences and trainings across the country, and continues to serve as a consultant and coach for church judicatories across the UMC connection. Blake also holds a second-degree black belt, which he believes might possibly have been his best training for ministry. Learn more and download resources at www.blakebradford.org.
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