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Jud came to Central in the middle of a process that began with his predecessor, Gene Appel. By 2000, Gene had been the Senior Pastor at Central for 15 years, leading them to grow from 400 to 3,400. They planted 3 other churches in Las Vegas, one of which – Canyon Ridge Christian – had grown to 4,000 people on its own. Still, something was missing. "At the time, Central was known to be a church that was a mile wide and an inch deep," Mike explains. "We started looking at how do you turn an audience into an army? We took 5 values that Jesus modeled: grow, care, serve, worship, and reach." Gene and his staff began to aggressively teach these values, and they doubled the size of the church in the next 3 years. At that point, Gene took a leadership position with Willow Creek Community Church to work with his friend Bill Hybels.
At the time, Jud was serving as a teaching pastor at Crossroads Christian Church under Pastor Barry McMurtrie (Vision Vol. 3, Issue 3, Fall 2005) "Jud is one of the most gifted preachers I have ever known," Pastor Barry says. "Mix that with his desire to reach the lost, and you see why he is so successful." Pastor Barry was working on his succession plan when a friend told him about Jud. "When I met him I thought, "Here is my replacement at Crossroads Christian Church,'" he says. "He came on staff with that in mind, but God intervened. Jud followed one of the finest pastors I know. Gene had built a great church, and Jud has taken it further," he says.
Some might have thought it too big a risk to put such a large church in the hands of someone as young as Jud, who is in his early 30s. Yet, Central's elders had done it before – when they called Gene Appel. "They hired Gene when he was 25," Jud explains. "Back then, Central was a church of 4 or 500. 18 years ago, that was a large congregation. God had divinely brought back some of the same elders who were on the board when Gene was hired. They had the same mentality of, "Let's go find someone who hasn't done it and see if God would bring us the kind of person who would lead us into the future.'"
"I want to give tremendous credit to Gene Appel," Jud says. "This church has never known financial scandal or moral scandal in leadership. It's such a gift and a blessing to follow faithful leaders because you just don't have all the layers to work through. I felt like I stepped in and 17-18 years of chips got transferred to me that I didn't earn. It is unique for a church to take a risk on a young senior pastor."
Soon after Jud came to Central, he called a retreat for 30 core leaders in November, 2003. "We wiped the whiteboard clean and said, "Let's look at all of this from the ground up. Who is God calling us to be now with a new senior pastor?'" Jud explains. That meeting produced an even sharper focus for how to reach their city. "It's hard to get 30 people to agree on a color of carpet or paint in a room, right?" Mike says. "To a person, we left there sensing that God was trying to facilitate a movement here in Las Vegas that would be an outpouring of His grace in the least likely area of the world, that the city of lights would become a light to the entire world."
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