Main Session Speakers
Paul Burkhart
Paul and Crystal Burkhart have been in full-time ministry together for over 24 years. They served for 9 years as Global Missions Workers in Southeast Asia, leading pioneering teams and helping open up a closed and communist nation to the Gospel. In 2013 God supernaturally called the Burkharts from Asia to Alaska and in 2014 they pioneered Alaska Chi Alpha. They have served as the Alaska Chi Alpha District directors and lead pastors in Fairbanks Alaska for 10 years.
Recognizing the opportunity for Chi Alpha graduates to use their degrees for marketplace, in 2019 they co-founded "Alaska Student Partnership" a marketplace ministry mobilization initiative to send teams of bi-vocational ministers into Alaska’s remote and under-reached villages. In just a few years, their team has trained and sent 26 to pioneer marketplace ministries to 5 village communities and are currently establishing a remote training center in Bethel, Alaska.
Dave Wigington
David Wigington is the lead pastor at Cornerstone Christian Fellowship in Bloomington, Indiana. He, along with Cornerstone’s 14 founding “core group” members, founded the church in 1997. David’s two core passions in ministry are communication and missions.
David has been invited to over 65 countries to speak and teach about leadership and missions. David also serves as a part of the LiveDead Global Elder Board and the board of the Business as Mission Office of AGWM. He also serves as the Vice President of Strategic Fundraising for The Stone Table and the Director of Church Partnerships for Project Rescue.
Erik Cooper
After starting his career in the business world, Erik spent 12 years in full-time ministry before returning to the marketplace. He now serves as the President of The Stone Table, a marketplace and missions organization that uses business to reach the world with the Gospel.
In addition, he serves in executive leadership of Community Reinvestment Foundation, a nonprofit real estate company that owns, manages, and builds high-quality affordable housing and assisted living facilities, giving its profits to global missions through The Stone Table.
Tara Kenyon
Tara leads as the Area Director of Central America for Assemblies of God World Missions, serving 50 missionary units and the national churches in seven countries. She is currently pursuing her PhD at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies.
Tara is passionate to disciple the emerging generation to respond to the Great Commission and to empower women called to ministry.
Kenji Kuriyama
Kenji Kuriyama is the director of Chi Alpha at The Ohio State University. He came to the United State as an international student from Costa Rica. Having a Costa Rican mother, and a Japanese father, Kenji grew up bi-lingual and bi-cultural. Kenji got plugged in the Chi Alpha group at Louisiana State University during his undergrad and came to know the Lord during his time there. He then went to Indiana University to help pioneer the Chi Alpha group there during his grad school years. He now leads a staff of 10 missionaries at OSU along his wife Sierra and the team pioneered the Chi Alpha group in 2020.
Shawndra Lucas
Shawndra Lucas has served as a Chi Alpha missionary since 2014. She and her husband, Todd, lead Chicago XA, a multicultural citywide community of student disciple-makers.
Shawndra is passionate about using her gifts to build the Kingdom of God and seeing others released into their callings through discipleship and Spirit empowerment. Shawndra is a spoken word artist, essayist, and author who describes herself as a “high-functioning introvert”. She holds a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and a master’s degree in education. Shawndra is a connoisseur of syntax, water bottles, the 90s, and pound cake.
Joe G
Joe G. serves as Eurasia Regional Director for Assemblies of God World
Missions. Joe oversees ministries in 44 nations within seven distinct areas that represent over 4,400 unreached people groups. Only 1.5 percent of Eurasia’s 2.4 billion inhabitants are evangelical Christians.
Joe, and his wife Laurie’s passion, has always been planting the church where it does not exist. They worked on the ground planting churches in unreached areas and partnered with the National Church to start three Bible Schools to train workers for church-planting efforts. Additionally, they spent six years in Southeast Asia pioneering in a restricted access country.