Michael is an executive in a missions organization where he leads a team focused on training and empowering local believers and church leaders in evangelism, discipleship, leadership, and catalyzing church planting movements in the most difficult to reach places on the planet. After launching a “church planting movement” in Romania in the 1990s, Michael completed his graduate studies in missions and leadership at Columbia International University then moved to northern Illinois to work on a doctor of philosophy in Intercultural Studies with a special focus on patristics at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. In the midst of his research on religious movements, he accepted a faculty position at the college and graduate school where he helped prepare undergraduate and graduate students to engage culture with the gospel. During his tenure at Trinity, he helped pioneer systems for online synchronous and asynchronous learning. He is a member of the Evangelical Missiological Society and participates in a number of Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization issues groups including the Lausanne Orthodox Initiative. He is a member of the Business as Mission Global Think Tank and initiated BAM projects in the United States, Haiti, Uruguay, and Romania. He has equipped church planters and leaders in North America, Europe, South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Michael loves to combine missiological research with solid missiological practice in order innovate effective means to communicate the intersection of the story of God and the story of cultures in the anticipation that people from every tribe, nation, and language will one day worship their Creator. He is the author of many academic articles and several books including Ephesiology: The Study of the Ephesian Movement and co-host of the Ephesiology Podcast.
Imaginatively Missional
