A Little Bit About Mark Trotter...

In March 1979, I married the “love” of my life, the former Miss Sherry Love. Two weeks later, we embarked on what would be an adventure in ministry that would allow us to be part of five different churches, now spanning into six different decades.

For almost 25 years, I served in the First Baptist Church of New Philadelphia, Ohio — serving five years as the Associate Pastor, and another 20 years as the Senior Pastor. In late 2007 I stepped out of the Senior Pastor role to become the Teaching Pastor of Northwest Bible Church in northwest Columbus, Ohio, so I could pursue my four passions in ministry: Ministers, Marriages, Men and Missions. By 2016, the Lord had allowed these passions to be directed toward an open door in Malawi, Africa that was too “great” and “effectual” (1 Cor. 16:9) not to walk through it. 

That year, Sherry and I relocated to the Atlanta area to serve as the base for what is now called WordStrong Ministries. Our base was through the One Baptist Church of Douglasville, Georgia, where I served as the church’s Associate/Teaching Pastor. Along with ministry through my local church, my time is given to training what has now become over 1000 pastors throughout Malawi. Several of the training resources the Lord has permitted me to develop in training the Malawi pastors have become three books that are now available in the U.S. — The 52 Weeks of Pursuit, Volume 1, The 52 Weeks of Pursuit, Volume 2, and The Keys of Bible Study.

Sherry and I have two grown children: my son, Justin and his wife, Morgan, and my daughter Jacie and her husband, Justin. The Lord has blessed us with six precious grandchildren.

A Little Bit About What He Did & Does... 

Missions has been my passion ever since God’s word has become my passion. I delineate that turn in my life and ministry in the first chapter of The Keys of Bible Study.

While I was serving as the Teaching Pastor in Columbus, Ohio, in 2010 I started leading teams of our people into what was at that time, the poorest nation in the world, Malawi, Africa. Our connection was through a ministry called the Passion Center for Children. In those days, we were simply seeking to be a support to local churches, while ministering to the fatherless and widows in a country that had been ravaged by HIV/AIDS.

While leading the teams in those early days, the director of the Passion Center for Children began to schedule me to speak in pastors conferences for pastors in the Zomba region of Malawi. That ministry has since expanded, so that today, we were ministering through what has become a three-year Bible training course for pastors in eight different regions, with over 1000 students.

The way the ministry operates is this: I write and produce materials from my base of ministry in Atlanta, and travel to the eight locations in Malawi to hold conferences with the pastors in February, June and October of each year. The pastors that I work with there, then travel to these locations bi-monthly, reinforcing the teaching from the conferences, as well as the materials from the weekly assignments.

Pictured here are over 200 of our most recent graduates from two of our Pastor Training locations.

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