Recognized as a top influential leader for pastors, Andy Stanley is senior pastor of one of the fastest growing ministries in the country, North Point Ministries. With campuses including North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, Georgia; Buckhead Church in Atlanta, Georgia; and Brown's Bridge Community Church in Cumming, Georgia; North Point Ministry locations are visited by more than twenty thousand congregants each week.
Son of the internationally recognized pastor and author Charles Stanley, Andy is widely known as a man who carries on the tradition of excellence in ministry. Before becoming senior pastor of his own church, he served for several years as a youth minister in his father's church. For the past twelve years of his ministry, he has consistently mentored a young group of future leaders and Christian ministers. He has also hosted conferences for leaders under forty.
As founding pastor of North Point, Stanley learned the importance of establishing a vision for an enterprise and setting a practical action strategy. His speaking skills flowed effectively into his writing with the publication of Visioneering, a 1998 Foreword Book of the Year finalist. A bestselling author with more than one million copies of his book sold, Andy has written The Next Generation Leader, How Good Is Good Enough, Choosing to Cheat, The Best Question Ever, Am I Good Enough, and 7 Practices of Effective Ministry, among others.
Andy earned a master's degree from Dallas Theological Seminary and bachelor of arts in journalism from Georgia State University. He and his wife, Sandra, coauthored The Toddler ABC Book. Making their home in Atlanta, they are the parents of two sons, Andrew and Garrett, and a daughter, Allison.
At ADVANCE, Andy will be teaching about Making Vision Stick: How to create and cast a compelling vision. Vision casting will always include an element of waking people out of their apathy. Vision casters rarely bring new information to the table. What they bring is an impassioned concern about an existing problem. They bring fresh eyes…position and present your vision as the solution to a problem that must be addressed immediately. A vision: You as a leader may have it, but has your organization caught it? If a leader's vision is all about what could be and what should be, why are you buried under what is? Andy Stanley points out that if followers don't get the vision, it's because the leaders haven't delivered it. He reveals the three reasons vision doesn't stick. And then he delivers three ways to make vision stick, to make you a leader worth following.