The Fitzgerald Academy trains and supports new church pastors in the first year of their appointment to a new church start. It is a program of the Center for Evangelism Through New Congregational Development at the General Board of Discipleship and is funded through the Fitzgerald Institute Fund of The Foundation for Evangelism. Twenty new church starts will be in the program each year.

The goal is to develop leaders who will create new regional churches that will have the potential to grow beyond five hundred in worship. The churches will not be limited to a specific racial/ethnic group or geographic setting.

Participants will be guided through a process to develop a strategic plan that will unfold during the course of four sessions.