Bio

The 2024-25 academic year is my twentieth year as a university and/or seminary faculty member. It is also my first year at Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri! I grew up in a small town in Minnesota a six hour drive north of St. Louis. It is good to be a bit closer to family in the Midwest! 

Prior to moving to St. Louis, I served at Seattle Pacific University where I taught both undergraduates and seminary students. I was there between 2021 and 2024. Before that, I worked George Fox University (2016-2020) where I was a Fellow in the William Penn Honors Program teaching “great books” classes in Medieval Studies and Twentieth Century Literature and Thought.

My work at Eden most closely resembles, however, the delightful eleven years (2005-2016) I spent teaching at Palmer Theological Seminary, The Seminary of Eastern University near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. So moving to Eden, in some ways, represents a “return” to where I started. (I am thinking of a beautiful line from T. S. Eliot. Returning to a place to know it for the first time.)

There are also new things to learn here! I am heading up Eden’s Contextual Education (sometimes also called Theological Field Education) internship program in addition to teaching more familiar classes in the areas of history, mission studies, and Methodist Studies. My title is a tad long here to express my several “hats” here at Eden, but it will work just fine. I am the Professor of Contextual Education, Mission, and United Methodist Studies.

I continue to do research and writing for a new biography of John R. Mott, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate from 1946 and a famous organizer of the world Christian missionary movement in the early twentieth century. I’m grateful for a new grant from the American Philosophical Society that will fund several more research trips to Yale, Columbia University, and elsewhere. I’m interested in writing a new biography of Mott for several reasons.  One of those reasons is that John Mott and I grew up in small farming communities along the Iowa / Minnesota border just 40 miles apart from one another (but separated by a century). In addition to the American Philosophical Society, I am grateful for the Project Grant for Researchers program at the Louisville Institute, the Rockefeller Archive Center, and the Elmer Andersen Research Scholars Program for their generous financial support of this project.

During the 2023-2024 academic year it was my honor to serve as President of the American Society of Missiology. The theme for our annual meeting at St. Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana was “Mission with Children, Youth, and Young Adults.” A video of my presidential address, “John R. Mott amidst the Students,” may be viewed below. My articles and book chapters can be read on this academia.edu website.

I remain a member (ordained deacon) of the Pacific Northwest Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church but hope to transfer my ordination credentials to the Missouri Annual Conference in the near future.