Keynote Speaker, Reverend Stephen A. Wagner

Reverend Stephen A. Wagner is Executive Leader of the Pastoral Leadership Institute located in Dallas, Texas. PLI is a learning organization offering pastors and their wives leadership training and missional formation. In addition, PLI focuses on spiritual, personal, and family nurture and development.

Prior to his current position, he served for 28 years as Senior Pastor of Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Carrollton, Texas. A graduate of Concordia Seminary in Saint Louis, Missouri, (Master of Divinity, 1973), he has completed additional graduate work at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California.

In 1981, Pastor Wagner received the "Outstanding Church Growth Leader in America" award from the Institute for American Church Growth; in 1986, he was listed in the "Who's Who in Church Growth chapter of Tyndale Publishing House's Church Growth: The State of the Art.

Prince of Peace congregation was listed as a “courageous church” in Courageous Churches and as a “turn around church” in Turn Around Churches by George Barna. In 2001, Prince of Peace was recognized as one of three hundred “excellent protestant churches in America”.

Pastor Wagner is the author of Heart to Heart: Sharing Christ with a Friend and Great Commission Stewardship. He is a contributing author to Manual for Church Planters and Beyond Soccer.

He has taught The Church in Mission Through Small Groups and Lifestyle Evangelism in the Doctor of Ministry program at Concordia Seminary in Saint Louis.

In 1989, Pastor Wagner was selected as a United States delegate to the Lausanne II Congress on World Evangelization in Manila, Philippines.

He has served as a speaker and workshop leader at international Church Growth conferences for the Japan Church Growth Institute in Kyoto, Japan (1991), and Missions International in Moscow, Russia (1993-1995), Almaty, Kazakhstan (1996), Lima, Peru (1997-1999), and Buenos Aires, Argentina (1998-1999). He has also spoken in Canada at multiple conferences on evangelism and church growth.

Pastor Wagner serves as a chapel speaker for the Dallas Cowboys, Texas Rangers, and FC Dallas professional sports teams. From 1992-2005, he served as the chaplain for the Dallas Sidekicks of the Major Indoor Soccer League. He was selected as chaplain for the 2003, 2004, and 2006 Major Indoor Soccer League All Star games. He has spoken for the Zig Ziglar Corporation, Unites States Marine Corps MAG-41, and Ford Motor Company.

He and his wife, Rita, have two adult children: Leah and Lance, both of whom are active members at Prince of Peace.