Bruce Webster has had a passion for expanding the kingdom for around sixty years. Initially, he though mass media (radio and TV) was the best way to do that. He chose what’s now Cincinnati Christian University for college because they were adding radio studios and a control room. He had graduate work at the University of Illinois in radio and TV and at Michigan State University in the communication department. At MSU he learned that mass media was not very effective at changing core beliefs, especially if you controlled only a small portion of the media.

While at MSU he learned of the research of Dr. Richard A. Yers on what determines the size of a church. Dr. Myers’ finding fit very well with what Bruce was learning in his graduate studies. Also, Bruce’s graduate level training in social science research demonstrated the high quality of the research. Bruce consider it to be, perhaps, the best research ever done on churches. Unfortunately, Dr Myers’ research is not well known.

Using Dr. Myers research, Bruce began doing church growth consulting and was recognized by others as an expert on growing a local church. Also, while at MSU he had a small connection to a regional church planting organization and attended the first National New Church Conference which years later became Exponential.

After moving to Indianapolis in 1972, Bruce had a volunteer leadership roles in different regional church planting organization and the church planting ministry of East 91st Street Christian Church. Since 1985 - 2015 the church has planted or had a major role in planting nearly 70 churches. Bruce was also the associate consultant to Double Vision, and effort begun in the mid 1980’s to double the number of independent Christian churches by the year 2000.

Bruce has published articles on church growth and church planting in Christian Standard. These and other materials can be seen at Effectiveevangelism.org