About us
Director
Kevin and his wife Laura, have served with Youth With A Mission since 1978. They led the first permanent YWAM ministry in Belize, Central America. The ministry, called Project LORD, combined community development and evangelism (the ?two-handed? gospel). From Belize they served with YWAM in Tacoma, WA., starting the first program within YWAM for training teams to take the two-handed gospel to the poor. (Today these community development programs are offered by YWAM throughout the world.) Kevin and Laura have four children: Caleb, Corrie, Sean, and Emily.
In 1986, Kevin began doing cross-cultural church planting with Dr. George Patterson of Church Planting International. Using this training and experience, the Sutter family moved to Singapore where Kevin served as a trainer and coach for YWAM church planting teams working throughout Asia.
Kevin now directs Youth With A Mission?s Church Planting Coaches in Arcata, CA. The office coordinates a growing international network of field-based church planting coaches. These coaches provide training, advice, networking and practical resources to help the hundreds of YWAM church planting teams reach their goals in planting churches among the unreached. In addition, Kevin serves on YWAM?s International Frontier Missions Leadership Team as well as YWAM’s Global Leadership Team (GLT).
Kevin travels internationally, regularly teaching cross-cultural church planting skills and concepts as well as doing on-field coaching. He is actively involved with the growing house church movement in North America and is associated with DAWN North America and House2House Ministries.
Assistant Director
Brian and his wife Louise, have served in missions since 1987. From the Navajo Tribe to Outer Mongolia, their passion has been to see Jesus glorified and lifted up among those who have never known Him.
From 1993-1996 their team pioneered a church planting movement in Erdenet, Mongolia that continues to grow under fully indigenous leadership to this day. Their Mongolian disciples are now training and sending out their own missionaries to other unreached people groups. The story of the work in Erdenet can be read in Brian’s book: (), and in the case study article – “Mongols Follow the Khan of Khans” – included in the 1999, third edition of : A Reader, ed. Winter & Hawthorne (William Carey Library).
Brian and Louise have four children: Melody, Mollyanne, Alice, and Peter.
Currently this family makes their home in Northern CA where Brian manages the YWAM Church Planting Coaches office. In addition, he coordinates the Church Planting Coaches activities in Africa and Europe. Brian travels extensively conducting workshops and seminars on cross-cultural church planting skills and Frontier Missions.
North America
Scotty and Heather Meades joined Youth with a Mission in 1987. While serving in YWAM, both worked in training and led international field training until 1993. They then took a sabbatical and worked with their sending church, Harvest World Outreach Ministries in Hammond, Louisiana. While there they developed and facilitated a discipleship school, Youth Ministries International, which was run in Costa Rica.
Following the sabbatical in 1995, the Meades reconnected with YWAM and joined a small mercy focused team headed for New Delhi, India. They attended Foundations of Community Development School, studying Coaching for Communities. Once in India, Scotty narrowed his focus to indigenous, cross-cultural church planting and began coaching indigenous workers. Scotty and Heather joined hands with an Indian ministry called Din Bandhu and embraced learning a contextualized indigenous style of church planting. The newly learned style was added to the principles Scotty had learned from Dr. George Patterson of Church Planting International.
In 2003 the Meades family moved to North Cyprus, a place where there were no believers, no churches, nor other missions organizations working. As pioneers, Scotty and Heather created a gateway for others to come and work among the North Cypriot Turks. This endeavor they called the North Cyprus Task Force. After establishing a peer coaching network, a Turkish fellowship of believers and seekers, and an International Church, the Meades relocated to Chiang Mai, Thailand in 2007.
In Thailand Scotty served as a field-based church planting, ministry and life coach. As a coach he provided training, advice, networking, and practical resources to help YWAM church planting teams reach their goals in planting churches among the unreached peoples of the Indo-China region.
Scotty and Heather now live in Wylie, Texas with their three children, Olivia, Levi, and William. They are opening a new North American office for church planting coaches. Scotty continues to coach church planters in Asia via Skype; and as a certified life coach, he offers life and ministry coaching here in North Texas.
More info
Scotty can be contacted directly by clicking here
North Africa
JB* and his wife began working cross-culturally in 1983 when they set up a Bible book table to reach out to the 3,000 Muslims students at the University of Minnesota. After serving a dozen years as an pastor in his own people group and a church-planter to same and near-neighbor cultures in the U.S., they joined a multi-mission church-planting team beginning a work among Muslims in the Ivory Coast, West Africa. The Lord then sent them to help start another multi-mission church-planting team among the Muslims of North Africa using a tent-making business role. In recent years they have also served in a North Africa regional project coordinator/church-planting coaching role. Their passion is to effectively train and sustain church-planters who are working among the unreached people groups of the world. They have a special heart to help those working among Muslims and to help develop Church Planting Movement coaching materials in French, Spanish and Arabic. JB travels regularly to North Africa and occasionally to West Africa, Europe, Latin America and North America to conduct training seminars and coaching visits.
*JB’s real name has been changed for security reasons.
JB can be contacted directly by Clicking Here This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Networking
Since the early 1980′s RG has worked in poor and broken communities worldwide. His experiences range from initiating sports ministries in juvenile prisons to training community health workers in U.N. refugee camps. He believes that in order for authentic transformation to take place, a holistic approach needs to be utilized; one that addresses spiritual, physical, mental, emotional, and relational brokenness. Inspired by Dr. John M. Perkins, in the mid-1990′s RG relocated to a high crime/low income inner city neighborhood and lived out faith, hope, and love in Jesus with others in that community for several years. During that time, RG met and was mentored by Dr. George Patterson. As a result of their time together RG decided to try to start a Christ gathering in the crack house next door. The impact this had on the lives of the people there convinced him that reproductive house churches are an amazing tool for facilitating life change and promoting community transformation. He continues to work towards the exponential growth of the global house church movement and along with that, transformed lives and communities.
Due to his frequent work in regions of the world that present a high-security risk, RG prefer to keep a low-profile on the internet and so uses his initials only on this website.
He may be contacted through CP Coaches by Clicking Here