For the past twenty years, Dr. Howard Foltz faithfully served Accelerating International Mission Strategies (AIMS) as founder and president. As the ministry has grown and expanded, Foltz has decided to move into a different leadership role within the organization and turn over the daily administrative duties to a new president. In January, Daniel O. Crosby officially joined the AIMS ministry team as the organization’s new president.
Crosby brings fourteen years of ministry experience and leadership to the AIMS team. He began leading short-term missions groups in 1991 with Teen Mania Ministries (based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA) and helped establish Big World Ventures, a missions organization that introduces nearly one thousand youths to missions every year. In 1996, Crosby joined Living Stones Fellowship Church in Crown Point, Indiana, USA, where he served as missions pastor and began Fuel International, a mobilization and advocacy missions organization. As Crosby joins the AIMS ministry in January, Fuel International is expected to assimilate as well.
During his service at Living Stones Fellowship Church, Crosby met Foltz and began a long-term partnership with AIMS. Foltz helped the church make their short-term missions program more effective, while Crosby served as AIMS' East Africa coordinator.
“I know of no one else who shares Dan's experience, gifts, and understanding of AIMS,” said Foltz, who will continue to lead AIMS as CEO. Foltz will work closely with Crosby in an effort to see the vision of AIMS realized in this generation.
After seven years of mentorship under Foltz, Crosby anticipates the transition to be smooth. Building on the foundation Foltz began, Crosby has developed a five-year plan to mobilize six major regions in the world for missions. These regions include China, India, the Malay World, the Horn of Africa, Tanzania and the United States. Crosby has deemed these areas “epicenters,” out of which he believes God will bring in the resources to complete the Great Commission.
“We believe, through prophetic insight, that these epicenters will be focal points through which the earth will be shaken and the unreached will be reached with the gospel of Jesus Christ,” says Crosby.
Crosby's wife of fourteen years, Maria, joins him as he initiates the new level of ministry at AIMS. Their two children have traveled with them to more than fifteen nations around the world.
For twenty years, AIMS has challenged the Church to take the gospel where it has never been proclaimed. During that time, AIMS has equipped more than seventy-five thousand national pastors and businesspeople to minister more effectively, produced dozens of seminars and launched a humanitarian outreach called Compassion Aid Network. As a result, twenty-nine million people have heard the gospel (many for the very first time), fourteen thousand churches have been planted in partnership with national denominations and church movements and more than 2.2 million people have received Jesus Christ.
This article is edited from a news release from Accelerating International Mission Strategies (AIMS)