An interview with founder and president, Kevin Phillips

Kevin Phillips founded the For All Mankind Movement (FAMM) in 2009 to initiate, nurture, and facilitate disciple-making movements, which result in biblical church planting among the unreached. FAMM’s vision is to reach the unreached with the gospel, equip them in disciple-making and church-planting movements, and send them as missionaries to their people. Since its founding, FAMM has trained over 90,000 leaders in their reproducible disciple-making strategy. Those leaders have gone on to start 51,000 outreach Bible studies that have reached over 800,000 lost men and women with the gospel and seen nearly 75,000 of them baptized as new believers in Jesus Christ. FAMM teams have planted 5,047 churches with those believers in some of the most unreached places in the world.

Kevin spoke at First Baptist on January 30th, 2022, preaching a message in both morning services, speaking at college bible study, and leading an informal evangelism training that Sunday night at our church-wide winter study. Since then, I’ve been able to correspond with Kevin and learn about his personal story and ministry and a little more about FAMM’s founding. Kevin grew up in a pastor’s family of sorts. As a young boy, he lived with his grandfather, a pastor, but spent most of his formative years living with his mother. Kevin and his mother didn’t go to church in those years. He didn’t come to Christ until later in his life, at the age of 12. “God really did save me.”, Kevin says, “In my lostness, when I had nothing to offer Him, He found and saved me. But for about six years, it was like a roller coaster as I figured out what it meant to be a child of God and a follower of Jesus.” Kevin’s faith and calling blossomed when he was 18. He reflects on that time, “That was when I started living for Him in a real, dedicated manner. I started actively sharing my faith, got deeper into the Word, and started getting rid of some of the vices clouding my mind. That’s when I began sensing that God wanted to do something with me.” Kevin spent time fasting and praying as a senior in high school and began sharing the gospel with everyone he could. Soon, his call came into focus. “It just happened to be right after I led someone to the Lord for the first time.”, Kevin recalled, “Right there in my public high school, I felt the Lord tell me, “Kevin Phillips, I want you to preach.” And I didn’t hesitate. I said, “I’ll do it.” And I’ve been active in full-time ministry ever since that day.”

Kevin served as a traveling evangelist for several years, then transitioned to full-time ministry on church staff for nine years. A few years before FAMM was founded, Kevin was asked to lead a sermon series on discipleship at a church where he served as the Evangelism Pastor. This would prove to be a pivot point for him and his wife Brooke, explicitly challenging the way they viewed discipleship. Soon, Kevin began to seek out a new place and way to practice discipleship, “I knew I needed to be somewhere that reproducing discipleship could happen. We started looking around the world and found a city in the Middle East that was a hub for immigrant laborers from some of the most unreached places in the world.

In 2009, he and his family gave away everything they owned, planted their lives in that city, and started FAMM.

Now, Kevin continues to serve as the President of FAMM. Kevin oversees strategy and casts vision, equipping leaders and teams to start Kingdom Movements among the unreached. FAMM’s approach is straightforward but effective. They are located in a diverse middle-eastern city home to immigrant workers from all over the world, and their work there has afforded them a reputation of help and hope. By loving and serving this city, they create discipleship opportunities through which many become followers of Jesus. They then spend time and resources training these new believers in FAMM’s Disciple-to-Disciple training process, equipping them to go and make disciples themselves. Some of these individuals commit to being “Movement Makers.” These “Movement Makers” go back to their home countries to initiate, nurture, and facilitate a movement of disciple-making that results in biblical church planting. In this way, FAMM reaches the nations. When asked about his favorite aspect of working at FAMM, Kevin’s response reflected this process. He said, “My favorite aspect is leading our team in the US and our teams in the field into the purposes of Christ for their lives to the point that you can see them catch the vision, find their place in it, and implement it in their lives in pursuit of a Kingdom Movement.”

None of the work that FAMM does would be possible without people who are willing to be obedient to Jesus and multiply their lives. One of those faithful believers is a man named Kamal. Kevin met Kamal three days after he moved to the Middle East. He was an immigrant laborer from India, living far from his home and family, depressed and feeling like his life had hit a dead end. But the night they met, Kevin needed a translator, and Kamal volunteered to help. After that, he started volunteering with FAMM as a translator. For six nights a week, he would work with FAMM after spending all day working in the heat of the desert. Eventually, a vision to reach his people with the hope he found in Jesus rose up so strongly in him that we felt led to send him back. He started in his hometown but eventually built a network of trained leaders to reach his entire state. Since 2013, that network has trained 22,392 leaders and planted 1,886 churches in a state that is less than 1% Christian. Now Kamal has risen up to lead his nation as FAMM’s National Director for India. He represents just one of the 90,939 leaders FAMM has trained since 2009. Now, you may be wondering, “Well, I’m not in the middle-east or a translater...how could I possibly help?” 

Here are some specific ways you can help:

• Go on a short-term mission trip with FAMM.

• Give to support the work at www.gofamm.org/give.

• Pray for FAMM’s US Operations team and their teams in the field. 

• Follow FAMM on social media @gofamm, and sign up for their newsletter at www.gofamm.org to stay up to date with how God is working in their harvest fields.

I’ll leave you with Kevin’s challenge to our church from his message on January 30th. “Look for ways to multiply your life in the mission of Christ. I hope that’s a radical concept for you, that you would multiply your life for the mission of Christ. I hope that’s maybe something you’ve never heard before, that it’s a concept you never contemplated. But that from this moment on, you would say, that’s not a strange concept anymore. It’s the standard. It’s the expectation for every person putting their feet in the footsteps of the original sent one.”

Click here to watch Kevin Phillips share a story about Pakistani nationals putting the training they received from FAMM into practice!