|
Kurt Kandler is the Founder and Executive Director of The Global Outreach Network (GON), a closed peer network of U.S. churches committed to global mission done well. GON exists to help church leaders make better decisions, be accountable to what they say matters most, and get better at what they do over time. Its members are the missions pastors, directors, and staff carrying the weight of their church's global work, often in isolation. GON is where that isolation ends.
Kurt founded GON out of two decades of work in extreme poverty. He previously founded The 410 Bridge in 2006, a Christ-centered, community-initiated development organization named for 1st Peter 4:10, which grew to serve communities across Kenya, Uganda, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, and Indonesia. That work shaped his conviction that poverty is not primarily a resource problem, and that the way the Western church engages the poor often does more harm than good. He wrote If You Really Want to Help: Redefining the War on Poverty to make that case, and the framework in that book continues to shape how GON evaluates healthy global mission today. GON is the next chapter of that same conviction, moved upstream. The churches sending people and money into places like the ones 410 Bridge has served for nearly twenty years are the leverage point. Help them think more clearly, and the whole system gets healthier. Kurt and his wife, Erika, live in the Atlanta area and have an ever-expanding family with three grown (and amazing) children and three grandchildren. |