Dear PLI Family,

Next week, Ben Haupt joins the PLI team as its next executive leader! Ben and I will have two months together before I retire from PLI on August 31 and begin to explore what comes next.

It will be a busy two months for Ben and for me!

Ben is going to do a great job! He will build out a fresh vision, and dream new dreams. He’ll build on some incredible things that the team and the enormous pipeline of gifted PLI trainers in the U.S. and around the globe are already doing. He will add to it, innovate from it. And bring his incredible mix of gifts to bear on training and investing in leaders for the sake of the mission of God!

In many ways he, and his equally gifted wife Celina, have been living out and embodying the mission-focused leadership training that he’ll now be heading up.

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It seems like almost every day I tap into the news of the day, and I sadly find examples of kingdom leaders that…

• Lead with power and control and manipulate their agendas forward.
• Lead with little integrity and demonstrate moral compromise.
• Lead with whatever focus they have that’s anything but the simplicity of fulfilling Jesus’ desire to see His lost children found.

And then I think of Jesus’ words to the disciples:

“You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.”

Mark 10:42-44

And, I think of very gifted, humble, mission-focused leaders like you in the PLI family who lead courageously and differently! And I am grateful for you.

I’m excited!

I’m excited for you to get to know Ben in the coming months and to be blessed by his leadership. And I’m excited for some of the new things that I’m sure you will see and experience in the coming months.

I’m equally excited about what Gail—who I was blessed to lead with in PLI for ten of my eleven years—and her team are doing at Multipli. I’m particularly excited for all the churches that are seeing Multipli as the “missing link” to actually training some of their people to confidently and consistently live out the mission of God in their own lives. And, re-energize their congregations toward a vital future. 

I envision PLI and Multipli together creating a virtuous cycle! PLI focuses on training pastors and spouses, and Multipli provides the training of the people of God (that they’ll never get any other way). And, when Multipli trains the people of God from other churches, they point their pastors toward PLI for its training!

PLI trains pastors and spouses.

Multipli trains the people of God.

I’ll share in a blog next month more personally about my own future. I’m confident that, if God continues to bless me with good health, I’ll find a new arena to be useful in His kingdom.

For now, as July 1 approaches…

If you haven’t seen the new PLI website, please take a look. 

Thanks for who you are and for the partnership that we share in the Gospel.

Thanks for welcoming, encouraging and praying for my brother Ben and for what will, over the next two months, become his team at PLI.

Thanks for taking a little bit of your time each week to encourage and offer hope to other leaders and pastors of churches where hope seems in short supply.

You are a gift! And I am honored to share a little piece of the journey for a few more short weeks as I finish my tenure as executive leader at PLI!

by Rev. Dr. Jock Ficken