Craig Groeschel (born December 2, 1967) is the founder and senior pastor of Life.Church, the largest church in the United States with twenty-nine locations in nine states. He is married to Amy and has six children and one grandchild. They live in Edmond, Oklahoma, a suburb of Oklahoma City, where Life.Church is based.
Video Craig Groeschel
Personal life
Groeschel grew up in southern Oklahoma, attending Ardmore High School. After high school, he attended Oklahoma City University on a tennis scholarship and was a member of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity and received a bachelor's degree in Marketing. Shortly thereafter, he met his wife Amy and the two married in 1991. That same year, Groeschel entered the ministry as an associate pastor in the United Methodist Church. He attended Phillips Theological Seminary, which is affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and earned a Master of Divinity degree. He was an associate pastor at First United Methodist Church in Oklahoma City during the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing.
Maps Craig Groeschel
Pastoral career
In 1996, Groeschel and a handful of people started Life Covenant Church in a two-car garage. He later told Business Week that he started the process by performing market research of non-churchgoers and designed his church in response to what he learned. Groeschel's non-traditional style was successful and attendance of Life Covenant grew rapidly, eventually evolving to become (as of September 2016) the largest church in the United States with twenty five Life.Church campuses. Groeschel began using video to deliver some of his sermons, when his fourth child was born in 2001, and he was unavailable for the Sunday service, discovering that the videos were popular with his churchgoers. In 2006, he set up a website called Mysecret.tv as a place for people to confess anonymously on the Internet. Groeschel also began delivering his services to the Second Life virtual world on Easter Sunday 2007.
Life.Church was named America's Most Innovative Church by Outreach Magazine in 2007 and 2008. Life.Church innovations include its free resource library with sermons, transcripts, videos, artwork, and a digerati team that develops free software like ChurchOnlinePlatform.com and YouVersion the Bible app, which has been downloaded over 200 million times by December 2015.
According to Newsmax website, Life.Church is listed on the top 50 churches of America in 2015, being the largest church with approximately 100,000 people attending weekly.
Leadership
Craig Groeschel started a free podcast in 2016 about leadership; he believes that a person does not have to know it all to become a great leader. In his podcast, he focuses on helping people reach their maximum leadership potential.
References
Bibliography
- Chazown: A Different Way to See Your Life (2006) ISBN 1-59052-547-7
- Confessions of a Pastor (2006) ISBN 1-59052-720-8
- Going All the Way: Preparing for a Marriage That Goes the Distance (2007) ISBN 1-59052-938-3
- It - How Churches and Leaders Can Get It and Keep It (2008) ISBN 0-310-28682-4
- The Christian Atheist: Believing in God but Living as if He Doesn't Exist (2010) ISBN 0-310-32789-X
- Weird: Because Normal Isn't Working (2011) ISBN 0-310-32790-3
- Soul Detox: Clean Living in a Contaminated World (2012) ISBN 0-310-33368-7
- Altar Ego: Becoming Who God Says You Are (2013) ISBN 0-310-33371-7
- Fight: Winning the Battles that Matter Most (2013) ISBN 0-310-33374-1
- From this Day Forward: Five Commitments To Fail-Proof Your Marriage (2014) ISBN 978-0-310-33748-5
- #Struggles: Following Jesus in a Selfie-centered World (2015) ISBN 978-0-310-34293-9
- Divine Direction: 7 decisions that will change your life (2017) ISBN 978-0-310-34283-0
External links
- Craig Groeschel resumed bio at Life.Church site
- Life.Church leadership resources
- Craig Groeschel web site
- http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/megachurches-top-united-states-newsmax/2015/11/11/id/701661/
Source of article : Wikipedia
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