Jack and his wife Dona met at Bible college. Immediately after their wedding in Maryland they drove all the way to Southern California where Jack and Dona taught at a Christian college and Jack served as youth pastor in a local church. A few years later they were given the opportunity to serve as missionaries and educators in South Korea. After four wonderful years in Korea, they moved to the Fiji Islands to plant churches and a Bible college.
During and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Jack was given an unprecedented opportunity to travel and speak in churches in Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. The initial visit which began in 1990, grew into an annual practical theology conference in Ukraine.
Through the providence of the Lord a door was opened for Jack to come onboard with Awana Clubs International as their international director at the end of 1997. A year later the Awana board of directors asked Jack to become the president and CEO.
During his tenure with Awana Jack led ministry expansion from 8,600 churches to 45,000 churches in 117 countries. Awana also founded 5 subsidiary ministry organizations that specialize in everything from prison ministries to church planting to sports ministries to biblical grand parenting.
Soon after leaving Awana in 2016, Jack was challenged by the prominent missions leader Luis Bush (10-40 Window) to reach several million churches around the world that lack leadership training solutions and ministry resources, especially in the area of parental discipleship. In January of 2017, Jack and a group of ministry associates founded Global Children’s Network, a ministry dedicated to helping pastors build a partnership bridge between the church and home in order to reactivate parents in their God-given role as spiritual mentors to their children.
Global Children’s Network now serves churches in 52 countries. By design, Jack and his ministry team decided to first launch GCN in Africa, Europe, Latin America, and Asia before bringing it to the United States. They are now in the process of overseeing several tests in U.S. and Canadian churches that will hopefully usher in a new next generation discipleship paradigm for North America.