Rev. Dean H. Cowles
Dean Cowles is an urban pastor, an author, and a speaker. More important, he's happily married to Cheryl (obstetrician/gynecologist) and a dad to three young men entering college. Dean wears his passions on his sleeve: family, missions, and reaching children, youth and their families with the gospel.
Dean is a popular speaker in college chapels, missions conventions, retreats, and a conductor of urban ministry seminars. He also has a tremendous gift for generating vision and motivating people to become involved in active Christian ministry. In addition to writing numerous articles on urban ministry, Dean is the author of The Calling: Urban Suburban Partnerships (Dreamtime: 1999) and CAST: Throwing Your Nets for Effective Ministry (Franklin House, 2004).
Dean began his full time urban work in 1985 when he founded Shepherd Community, an inner city Compassionate Ministry Center and congregation in Indianapolis, Indiana. Today Shepherd employs 40 staff with a budget of over $3 million and has become a national model of compassionate evangelism.
After many years of fruitful urban ministry, Dean and Cheryl felt a call to serve in foreign mission work. The Cowles' left for two years of voluntary missionary service at Tenwek Mission Hospital in rural West Kenya, Africa. Dean's ministry was with the national chaplains and local churches. While in Kenya, he founded the L Nelson Bell International Chaplaincy Training School in honor of Ruth Grahams father with a grant provided by Samaritan's Purse, founded by Franklin Graham. The Chaplaincy Training School has trained hundreds of African ministers.
In 1996 Dean accepted the call to move to Denver to become pastor and director of Crossroads of the Rockies, an inner city church, and direct their ministry outreach efforts. In addition to birthing two English and Spanish congregations they started a Community Development Corporation that created jobs for clients which also generated extra sustainable income for the ministry.
Dean was asked by Compassion International to serve as their USA Ministry Director in 2000 overseeing all of their domestic programs and staff. During that time, the USA ministry started its advocacy approach and enlarged its national partnership network. In July 2003 Compassion launched the USA Ministry into a new organization called YouthPartnersNET in order to provide greater impact and flexibility to reach more children and youth and access new funding sources. Rev. Cowles is the founder and President of YouthPartnersNET, based in Denver, Colorado, assisting hundreds of urban, rural and native American ministry partners across the nation through its unique program model of Networking, Education, Training.
YPN also birthed CityConnexx to connect urban and suburban churches for a season of sharing. The goal of CityConnexx is to promote short-term missions opportunities for long-term impact in at risk communities across America through the efforts and outreach of the local church. Visit CityConnexx for more details.
Expertise Areas/Seminar Titles:
- Compassionate Evangelism: The goods & the Good News
- Cash Poor, Program Rich: Tapping into God's resources
- Funding For the Future: From eBay to Yahweh, internet to hisNET
- Strategic Planning, SWOT analysis
- Theological Foundations of Compassionate Ministries
- Cross-cultural Competency
- Board Development: Thus Saith the Board
- Staff Development; Avoiding Mutiny, creating Harmony
- Fundraising Techniques: 20 ways to raise a boatload of cash
- Community & Economic Development
- Starting a 501c3 Organization
- Planting Self-Sustaining Urban Churches
- Avoiding 'Sloppy Agape'
- Working with Local and State Grants
- Grant Writing 101
- Developing After-school Tutoring Programs
- Developing Your Child Sponsorship Program
- The City: the New Mission Field
- How to Combine Compassion and Personal Salvation
- Improving Your Serve: Principles for Churches Wanting to Unleash the Ministry Passions of their People
- Creating a Vision for Your Ministry,
- Those Who Fail to Plan - Plan to Fail
- Compassion: a Heritage of Holiness
- Effective Personal Policies and Procedures
- Getting Started—the How-to's and Hands-on.
