Orlando Confusion

I've seen church splits, but how often is it that the leader of a large ministry resigns and launches another ministry?

In the same town.

With the same name.

And with the same mission.

The Orlando-based Billion Soul Initiative has been started by James Davis, who was, until January, president of Global Pastors Network and its Billion Soul Initiative. According to each of their "about" pages, both organizations have the goal of reaching 1 billion souls in the next 15 to 20 years. Both have pastors conferences scheduled for January '08 (GPN's in Orlando and Davis's in Atlanta). And both trace their lineage to Bill Bright.

GPN's chairman John Maxwell attempted to clear up the confusion with an e-mail sent to GPN's constituents (and also posted on GPN's site) stating:

James O. Davis resigned as president last January and has no role with GPN or our Billion Soul Initiative. He does not represent GPN in any capacity.
...
I fully endorse and pray for and will continue to support GPN and its Billion Soul Initiative. Dr. Bright, who coined the words “Billion Soul,” had a special calling from God to see the great commission completed.

I'm not privy to the details surrounding Davis's resignation and the obvious conflict behind who will carry Bright's torch to reach 1 billion people. However, a cursory observation of the speakers lined up to speak at the organizations' events in January makes me wonder whether there was a difference of opinion related to conference style and theological DNA.

Following the GPN tradition of having 30 to 40 speakers per event, Davis's event features pastors from Africa, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, leaders in the word-faith movement, a handful of evangelicals and--for good measure--legendary mountaineer, Sir Edmund Hillary. In contrast, GPN's list of speakers is surprisingly smaller and represents a cross-section of the mainstream evangelical world.

I've been to several GPN events and wondered how long the "scatter-gun" approach it utilized would be effective. Do people still want to sit in a large auditorium while speakers come from the green room to the platform one at a time, speak for 12 minutes about the aspect of ministry they're passionate about and hop on a flight home?

Call me pomo, but I've always enjoyed the smaller, more intimate events where three or four speakers share their journeys and interact with attendees in between sessions. On that note, I appreciated National Community Church's Buzz Conference precisely for the fact that it was small, focused--and the speakers were accessible.