About Us
I am former pastor and Navy chaplain. I was excited to come across your website—as I have always been disturbed by the “Grow Your Church Now” flyers that I received while pastoring. They never applied—and always lead to a “mile-wide inch-deep” faith in the persons in the pews. —Reuel S.
NTRF is a teaching fellowship of bi-vocational, small church leaders. We help other pastors thrive as they lead their small churches to recapture the intimacy, simplicity, and dynamic of first-century church life. Click here to begin your journey (20-minute audio overview).
For over thirty years, we have provided church leaders in the Americas, Asia, Europe, Africa and Oceania with resources and training in how the early church met together in community. Our favorite statement of faith is the First London Baptist Confession of 1646.
Biographies
Stephen E. Atkerson
Hear Stephen’s Talks on Church Life Here
Stephen E. Atkerson (M.Div., Mid-America Baptist Seminary) helps church leaders discover simple growth strategies given by Jesus to the early church. For over 30 years, he has worked with evangelists, missionaries, church planters, and pastors in Asia, the Americas, Europe and Africa. He also is bi-vocational leader in the Baptist church he planted in 1991.
Stephen David
Find Stephen David’s Teachings Here
Once a worshiper of the Hindu deity Shirdi Sai Baba and on the way to becoming a criminal, Stephen now serves the Lord Jesus as a leader of a church he planted in Hyderabad, India. He is also active in training area church leaders, and with the 9 Marks ministry in India. He has done his Bachelor of Theology, Master of Arts in Biblical Counseling, and Doctorate in Theology. He is author of several books, including Signs of Salvation: Understanding Counterfeit and Authentic Conversion.
Muralee Kanagalingam
A former Hindu, Muralee planted and leads a church in Trimcomalee, Sri Lanka that holds to both early church practice and the First London Baptist Confession (1644). He also travels widely throughout the island evangelizing, planting churches, training leaders, and assisting existing congregations. A graduate of the Lanka Bible College and Seminary, he recently completed his D.Min degree in India.
Dan Trotter
Dan is a graduate of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Recently returned from over twenty years of bi-vocational ministry in China, he is now active in a small Baptist church, and has a YouTube teaching ministry. Before moving to the China, Dan planted and served as bi-vo pastor of a small church in South Carolina that closely followed New Testament church practices. He has traveled widely teaching on the benefits of early church practice.
Gerald Scarbrough
Gerald Scarbrough—Gerald studied at Southwestern Baptist Seminary, afterwards serving for over 14 years in leadership at Baptist churches in Tennessee and Georgia. He then shifted his ministry focus to more relationship-oriented churches that see the importance of living out early church practice. With the help of the Georgia Baptist Convention, he was also involved with a church planting effort in McDonough, Georgia. Gerald now serves as a bi-vocational pastor of a Baptist Church in the Atlanta area.
