"Roger Leenerts is an executive with the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod,

serving as associate executive secretary for North American missions on the

Board for Mission Services.  He has been a key instrument in introducing church

growth principles and practices into the LCMS through sponsoring church growth

seminars and workshops for key denominational personnel.  Under this new

emphasis, church planting became the primary mission emphasis for the synod.  In

the mid seventies only twenty new congregations were being started per year.

Currently the number is over 100, and the goal for 1990 is 500 new congregations

per year."

C. Peter Wagner, ed., with Win Arn and Elmer Towns,

Church Growth: The State of the Art,

Wheaton:

Tyndale House,

1986,

p. 246.