CHICAGO, IL (August 26, 2016) – Alex Rahill has been named the new national director of church planting with Start and Strengthen Churches. He currently serves as pastor of LifeChurch in Canton, Michigan, and as the director of church planting for the Great Lakes Conference.

Rahill planted LifeChurch in 2002 with 25 people. It has grown to 1,200 attendees, many of whom came to Christ through the church’s ministry. The congregation has also started two churches—LifeChurch Southfield and LifeChurch Livonia.

The congregation has helped train church planters formally on staff as well as informally as people learned ministry skills and principles at the church. Earlier this year, Rahill launched LifeTrac, an internship devoted to recruiting, mentoring, and equipping a new generation of leaders for the church.

Dick Lucco, ECC executive director of ministry development and former Great Lakes Conference superintendent, commented, “Alex is among the highest capacity leaders I have ever known. He has the ability to help others grow into their gifts and abilities while engendering a high degree of loyalty, respect, and affection among those he leads.”

Rahill takes the new position with a strong sense of purpose. “I love my church and seeing people come to Christ and grow in their faith,” he said. “To have the exponential opportunity to plant 300 to 500 new churches is exciting.”

The goal is audacious, he admitted. “I did not come here to be part of something small. We should be radically committed to planting Christ-centered churches. Every community deserves a life-giving church.”

Rahill was ordained in the Covenant in 2012 and said the denomination’s commitment to personal evangelism and social justice will help the ECC reach out to millennials, whom he noted the broader church is “losing by the truckload.” He added that church planting is the best way to reach that generation.

Prior to planting LifeChurch, he served as director of Bair Lake Bible Camp in Jones, Michigan, from 1997 to 2002. During his tenure there, overall attendance grew 300 percent.

John Wenrich, executive minister for Start and Strengthen Churches, says, “Alex’s passion for church planting is contagious. His level of experience, both as a church planter and as DCP of the Great Lakes Conference, makes Alex a great fit. He is a leader of leaders and has gravitas. It is clear that the Holy Spirit has been preparing Alex for this new role.”

Gary Walter, ECC president, described Rahill as a wise and engaged leader who understands the vital contribution church planting makes in many directions for the mission of God. “He has seen it in his own ministry setting, and in the variety of contexts and populations he has coached. We are thrilled that Alex will build on the foundation of church planting by John Teter and others.”

Teter served as the ECC part-time director of church planting while also pastoring the multiethnic, multi-class congregation Fountain of Life Church in Long Beach, California. “Covenant church planting is in great hands,” he said. ” Alex has developed leaders across race, class and culture.”