Strategic Advisory Board

Jack Herschend has served as an elder at one of LFM’s church partners and joined the Strategic Advisory Board in 2023.

For nearly 50 years, Jack served as Chairman, President and CEO of Herschend Family Entertainment and its portfolio of theme park, resorts, and aquariums.

Today, Herschend Family Entertainment and its parent company Herschend Enterprises are considered the nation’s largest family-owned themed attractions corporation in the US. Our team of more than 11,000 employees creates, develops and operates entertainment, tourism and hospitality properties that currently span 26 locations across the US and British Columbia.

Herschend’s roots date back to 1950 when the Herschend family founded their first attraction, a small cave tour in Branson, Mo., which later expanded into the famed Silver Dollar City®. Operating companies within Herschend Family Entertainment include Dollywood® Parks & Resorts, Silver Dollar City® Attractions, Adventure Aquarium®, Newport Aquarium®, Kentucky Kingdom®, Vancouver Aquarium, and Wild Adventures®.

Jack’s intensity and deep caring for people shaped the company culture into what it is today. Jack attended Northwestern University and served as a Lieutenant in the Marine Corps before returning home to focus on the family business. He has a deep passion for personal service and giving and has actively served several Christian ministries including including Lives Under Construction Boys Ranch, Kids Across America and the National Institute of Marriage. In 1992, Jack founded The Gift of Green which has planted nearly 200,000 trees to counter deforestation due to development in the Missouri Ozarks.

Jim and Suzi recently founded Tandem Spirituality; before that, Jim served on staff at Church at Charlotte in Charlotte for 42 years, 37 as the senior pastor. Jim has a BA in Biblical Literature from Northeastern Bible College, where Suzi is also a graduate.

Jim has also served on various non-profit boards. Most recently on the EFCA Board of Directors, where he was chairman for the last four years.

Suzi has a heart for God’s Word and women. She has brought those two passions together in her work designing and teaching women’s Bible studies in the church and the community. Suzi’s heart is to lead women back to the truth of scripture and the heart of the gospel.

In addition, Jim and Suzi have traveled extensively overseas to teach marriage, pastoral health, and encouragement to national leaders in Ethiopia, China, Costa Rica, Cuba, and Thailand.

Jim and Suzi have been married for 46 years and have three married daughters and eight incredible (just ask them) grandkids. The Kallam’s live in Charlotte, NC

Dr. MaryKate Morse is Dean of Portland Seminary and lead mentor for the Leadership and Spiritual Formation D.Min. track.  In addition to her extensive leadership and teaching at the seminary, she is currently a mentor and trainer for Lausanne Young Leaders, serves as part of the Mentoring Community Board, and is a mentor trainer and advisor for Leighton Ford Ministries.

MaryKate began her ministry living in the Andes Mountains of Bolivia and Peru doing evangelism, theological education by extension, and social projects with the AymaráIndians.  Upon return, she studied spiritual formation and direction, was certified as a spiritual director, and was recorded as a pastor with the Evangelical Friends.

She is lead author of Lifelong Leadership:  Woven Together Through Mentoring Communities, an LFM resource published by NavPress in 2020.

Wendy Ramos is Director of Global Mobilization with United World Mission and lives with her husband, Ivan, in Mexico City, where they serve with UWM as career missionaries.  Wendy went to Mexico as a “short-term” missionary in 1998 and has now lived and served in Mexico for over 17 years!

Wendy received her master’s degree in Missions and Evangelism from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where she first got involved with Leighton Ford Ministries.  She has been in an LFM mentoring community for over 10 years, launched a mentoring community in Mexico, and has helped lead mentor training events in Mexico and Asia.

Bishop Claude Alexander is senior pastor for The Park Church in Charlotte, N.C. and serves on the governing boards of Christianity Today, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Wycliffe Bible Translators, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, and Mission America Coalition.  He is past president of the Hampton University Ministers Conference, the oldest and largest interdenominational gathering of African American clergy in the United States.

Bishop Alexander has served as senior pastor for The Park Church for 30 years.  Under his leadership, The Park Church has grown from one local congregation of 600 members to a global ministry of thousands with three locations and weekly international reach.  Leighton and Claude are members of the Leadership Breakfast Group in Charlotte and have served on several boards together.

Ken Shigematsu is senior pastor of Tenth Church in Vancouver, British Columbia, one of the largest and most diverse city-center churches in Canada.  Before entering pastoral ministry, he worked for Sony in Tokyo, Japan.  The intense work schedule led him to explore personal disciplines that could bring order to his life, from those of his samurai ancestors to St. Benedict’s rule for Christian communities.

His first book, God in My Everything:  How an Ancient Rhythm Helps Busy People Enjoy God (Zondervan, 2013) describes how a personal rule, or spiritual rhythm, can support the growth of a God-filled life.  His second book, Survival Guide for the Soul:  How to Flourish Spiritually in a World that Pressures Us to Achieve (Zondervan, 2018) examines how specific spiritual practices reorder our lives and focus our priorities.

Ken is a longtime member of Leighton’s mentoring community.

The Rev. Dr. David Swanson is Senior Pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Orlando, as well as founder and principal teacher for The Well, a national media ministry focused on presenting the Gospel with fresh clarity and passion.  His congregation is part of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church and is among the largest Presbyterian churches in the country.

An active community leader, David serves on the Board of Trustees for Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, the Executive Board of the Central Florida Commission on Homelessness, and the board of The Camaraderie Foundation.  He was recently named one of the top five most influential leaders in Orlando.

Together with Kevin Ford, David co-leads a Leighton Ford Ministries mentoring community for a specially-selected group of younger, missional pastors.

Dr. John Bernard has served as president of United World Mission since 2001.  Prior to serving in organizational leadership, John and his wife Melinda were missionaries in Spain involved in church planting and leadership training.  John has also served as a local church pastor in New Hampshire.

John earned a Doctor of Ministry degree from Columbia International University in 2005 with a dissertation entitled, “Training Church Planters in Vietnam.”  In 1987 he earned a Master of Divinity Degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and was ordained by the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference (CCCC).  John is a member of Leighton’s Charlotte-area mentoring community.

Bishop Ken Carter is Resident Bishop of the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church and Immediate Past President of the Council of Bishops of the United Methodist Church.  Along with the Cabinet, he gives pastoral and administrative leadership to almost 800 congregations, fresh expressions of church, campus ministries, and outreach initiatives in an episcopal area that stretches from Tallahassee and Jacksonville to Miami and the Keys.

Ken is the author of ten books, most recently Embracing the Wideness:  The Shared Convictions of United Methodists (Abingdon Press, 2018).  He came to the Florida Conference in 2012 following a ministry of almost thirty years in Western North Carolina.  Bishop Carter has participated in LFM’s mentoring ministry at The Bellfry and is a long-term personal friend of Leighton’s.

Rob Kelly’s concern that churches in Charlotte were divided and declining led to the 2015 launch of FORCLT (ForCharlotte), a ministry working to connect local pastors and open their eyes to the mission field God has given them in their own backyard.  As founding President and CEO, Rob leads the FORCLT network, engagement platform, Movement Day Charlotte, and annual State of the City Report.

Prior to FORCLT, Rob served as a pastor for 13 years, co-founded the CLT/ONE young adult ministry, and lectured at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.  He also coaches city networks, both locally and globally, on how to build a healthy, sustainable backbone organization to support gospel-centered city transformation.  Rob has been a member of Leighton’s Charlotte mentoring community for several years.

Mark Slaughter is an Evangelist and Director of Evangelistic Partnerships for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.  His twin passions are to communicate the Gospel and to mentor younger evangelists.  Mark has served for over 30 years with InterVarsity, including his unique “Question Mark” open forums on college campuses.  He also spearheads various initiatives for mentoring a new generation of evangelistic leaders through Leighton Ford Ministries, Lausanne Movement, National Day of Prayer Task Force, Arrow Leadership, and the Luis Palau Association.  Prior to joining InterVarsity, Mark served as an Evangelical Free Church pastor in the Indianapolis area.

Tom Moser retired as Vice Chairman of the accounting and advisory firm KPMG and has served on several boards, including New York Life Insurance Co., Save the Children, and Hope for Haiti.  He and his wife, Mary Lynn, led the mission outreach committee at their church, and that experience led them to advocate for charitable organizations who actively share the Gospel of Jesus Christ in their programs.

Having met Leighton and Jean Ford through mutual friends a few years ago, they have become proponents and supporters of Leighton Ford Ministries and are excited about the promising opportunities afforded by Kevin’s advisory background and experience.

Dr. Mike Moses is Founding Pastor of Lake Forest Church and served as Moderator (president) of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church from 2015-2017.  He founded Lake Forest Church in 1998, originally preaching under a disco ball in the local skating rink.  Under his leadership, Lake Forest has grown to a church of 3,000 people in four congregations, known for their mission activity in the community and around the world, while maintaining a singular focus on following Jesus.

As Moderator of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, he initiated a new position paper on biblical sexuality, prioritized church planting, and helped form a church planting partnership with the Mexican Presbyterian Church.  Mike is a graduate of the Arrow Leadership Program and has been a member of Leighton’s Charlotte mentoring community for several years.

Ron Scheese is President and Chief Executive Officer of Andesa Services, an Allentown, Pennsylvania-based provider of integrated policy administration, plan administration, and illustration solutions for life insurance and annuity carriers and brokers.  Prior to Andesa, Ron held a variety of financial leadership roles with faith-based, not-for-profit healthcare ministries.  Also, he is the Board Chair at Albright College, in Reading PA.

Ron first became connected to Leighton Ford Ministries while serving as an elder at First Presbyterian Church of Reading, PA, where Kevin Ford led a strategic planning process.  Ron then hired TAG Consulting (which Kevin led prior to joining LFM) to lead a multi-year consultation with Andesa, which resulted in significant increases in profit and growth, driven by high levels of employee engagement.

Chuck Stees is a passionate mentoring leader who spent the majority of his professional career working for Lockheed Martin, including Vice President of Marketing for Lockheed’s commercial satellite business unit and Executive Vice President of Space Imaging.

In 2008, Chuck retired from Lockheed Martin to pursue other interests, including serving as Board Chair for a non-profit providing home renovation for low-income homeowners in Silicon Valley and creating a mentoring program for individuals preparing to re-enter the workforce.

Chuck became acquainted with Kevin Ford when his church in Boulder, Colorado, engaged Kevin’s team to lead the congregation through a visioning process.  During that time, they discovered their shared passion for mentoring.

Stephan Tchividjian is Founder and President of the Board of the National Christian Foundation of South Florida and Co-Executive Director of Lifework Leadership of South Florida.  The eldest grandson of Billy Graham, Stephan proudly carries on his family’s tradition of ministry, serving as Chairman of the Board at Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale and Associate Pastor.

He has more than 25 years of experience serving on a variety of boards of directors and leadership teams for both for-profit and non-profit organizations.  Stephan has lived in South Florida since 1979 where he and his wife, Lisa, have raised their five children.

Dr. John Walker has been an economics professor and a highly successful entrepreneur.  As the founder of Andesa Services, Dr. Walker is a pioneer of the information economy, whose business vision was a direct outgrowth of his economics training.  Because of his belief in the fundamental importance of economics as a field of study, in 2001 he announced a gift of nearly $7 million to fund the expansion and enhancement of Clemson University’s economics department.

John has been active in supporting the ministry of Young Life.  He first became associated with Leighton Ford Ministries when Kevin Ford directed a multi-year consultation with Andesa through TAG Consulting, the firm Kevin led prior to LFM.