Our Guest for this Episode – Mike Johnson:

Mike served as resident pastor at New Life Church in Spring, Texas, and then planted and pastored Community Life Church in Missouri City, Texas. During this period, Mike developed and implemented the Texas Leadership Development Network, which was the predecessor to Ascending Leaders. Mike helps church leaders refocus. He has been involved in the city-reaching efforts of the greater Houston area.

Mike started Ascending Leaders in 2005 and is the core author of much of Ascending Leaders’ material. He has developed coaching practices that have blessed a myriad of churches.

Click Here for Books Mentioned in The Episode

Our Guest for this Episode – Harry Vein:

Harry retired in 2022 from serving churches throughout the Texas Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church for the past 40 years. He served churches in Houston (Chapelwood – my home church), Cleveland (FUMC), Brenham (FUMC), Cypress UMC and Spring Faith UMC. 

Throughout his ministry, Harry loved leading people into an intimate relationship with Christ that would lead their faith to come alive. In planning for life in retirement, Harry was trained through Coach Training For Leaders in order to empower pastors, leaders and churches to be all that God created them to be. His passion in ministry is to see lives and churches transformed as people fall in love with Christ and one another. 

Our Guest for this Episode – Janet Ables:

Janet is the Minister of Development (Leadership, Curriculum and Women) at CityView Bible Church in Round Rock, Austin, Texas and she also serves as the interim Student Pastor.  She made the “exodus to Texas” just before the pandemic in 2019 and before coming to Texas she served for over 15 years in vocational ministry in California. The bulk of this was within the scope of women’s ministry and adult discipleship.

She’s written 3 Bible-study books, Faith Refined: How God Uses Hard Times to Redefine Our Faith, Deceived: Destroying the lie that we are not enough, and To Know by Name: An Intimate Look at the Names of God.

She’s also the founder and president of the Esther Movement, an organization dedicated to reaching women in vulnerable places with the love of the gospel. And if that is not enough, she is also a recent graduate from the Evangelism and Leadership program at Wheaton College.

Our Guest for this Episode – Emmanuel Kwizera, M.A. ’23:

Emmanuel is a Billy Graham scholar in the M.A. program for Evangelism and Leadership at Wheaton College. He first arrived on campus with his family in 2021 after spending years working in Kenya as an evangelist.

He is originally from Rwanda, the son of missionary evangelists. In 1994, he survived the brutal genocide that ripped the country apart and led to the death of over one million of the Tutsi people, including over 100 of his own family members. Raised in a Christian family, Emmanuel was left wondering how God could have allowed such horror to happen, especially in a country that identified overwhelmingly as Christian. Join Ascending Leaders’ podcast to hear what he learned about discipleship and forgiveness.