Speakers

Lois Barrett is director of the Great Plains Extension Office for Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, which is located in North Newton, Kan. She is also associate professor of theology and Anabaptist studies for the seminary. The nature of the church has been a long-standing interest for her. It was the encompassing frame for her work as executive secretary of the Commission on Home Ministries for the former General Conference Mennonite Church for almost 10 years, her service as a pastor of an urban congregation, her research and writing about house churches and about missional ecclesiology, and her doctoral dissertation on early Anabaptist religious and cultural history.

After 12 years as a board member of the Great Plains Seminary Education Program, she became director when that program became an extension site of AMBS in 2002. Serving as administrator and instructor in the program calls out the best of Barrett’s gifts of teaching, administration and empowering people to serve the church.

Barrett’s scholarship includes:

• Treasure in Clay Jars: Patterns in Missional Faithfulness (Eerdmans, 2004), co-author
• Mission-Centered Congregations (Herald, 2002), editor
• “Rethinking Anabaptist Apocalypticism” in Apocalypticism and Millennialism: Shaping a Believers Church Eschatology for the Twenty-First Century (Pandora, 2000)
• “Marks of the Faithful Church-Marks of the Successful Church: A Response to Natural Church Development from a Missiological and Ecclesiological Perspective,” Anabaptist Evangelism Council (February 1999)
• Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (Eerdmans, 1998), co-author
• Building the House Church (Herald, 1986)

Gilberto Flores is associate conference minister for Western District Conference and is based in Dallas, Texas. He has a ministry journey that includes 23 years of varying roles in the Mennonite church in Latin America and more than 15 years experience in serving in the United States. While in Latin America, Gilberto and his wife, Rosa, served as pastors, church planters and missionaries in different countries.

Flores was academic dean of SEMILLA, a Mennonite seminary serving all Central American Mennonite denominations; director of CONCAD, an ecumenical organization focused on human and community development; and director of Fraternidad de Iglesias Evangélicas de Guatemala, an ecumenical organization focused on social development, pastoral leadership and peace-justice advocacy.

Flores and his family moved to the United States in 1993 to serve as church planters in San Antonio, Texas. Since then, Gilberto has worked as a director with the former General Conference Commission on Home Ministries, the Anabaptist Biblical Institute (IBA), Mennonite Mission Network and Mennonite Church USA Executive Leadership where he served as director of Denominational Ministry and Missional Church.

Gilberto has two master’s degrees, one in theological studies with a focus in pastoral theology and another in sociology with a focus in religion studies. He has published multiple essays on a variety of topics.

Jim Schrag is executive director of Mennonite Church USA. Schrag’s professional career began in 1966 after he graduated from Bethel College in North Newton, Kan., and married Judy Nickel the same year. He spent one year as a social studies teacher in Clay Center, Kan., before he and Judy took on a three-year term as teachers in Kenya through Mennonite Central Committee’s Teachers Abroad Program. Upon returning to the United States, the couple moved to Elkhart, Ind., where Schrag attended Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary.

Shortly after receiving his master’s of divinity degree in 1973, Schrag pursued what would become a 23-year calling to pastoral ministry. Beginning that year, Schrag spent 12 years as pastor of Tabor Mennonite Church in Newton, Kan. Then, in 1985, he began an 11-year stint as pastor at Oak Grove Mennonite Church in Smithville, Ohio.

Craig Van Gelder serves as tenured professor of congregational mission at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minn., having taken this position in 1998 following 10 years as professor of domestic missiology at Calvin Theological Seminary. This field of study focuses on trends in U.S. society, changing contexts in which congregations serve, factors contributing to church health and decline, and the dynamics of organizational change and development. He received a Ph.D. in missions from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1982, and a Ph.D. in administration in urban affairs from the University of Texas at Arlington in 1985.

Ordained as a minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in 1984 and the Christian Reformed Church in 1990, Van Gelder combines a practical and academic interest in helping congregations engage in mission. Much of his practical interest stems from working as a consultant now for over three decades in assisting congregations in missional planning and processes of organizational change. He continues to engage in some consulting work in addition to his teaching responsibilities.

He is author or co-author of A Field Guide for the Missional Congregation: Embarking on a Journey of Transformation (2008); editor of The Missional Church and Denominations: Helping Congregations Develop a Missional Identity (2008) and The Missional Church in Context: Helping Congregations Develop Contextual Ministry (2007); author of The Ministry of the Missional Church: A Community Led by the Spirit (2007) and The Essence of the Church: A Community Created by the Spirit (2000), is editor of Confident Witness-Changing World: Rediscovering the Gospel in North America (1999), is a contributing author of Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (1988), and is co-editor with George Hunsberger of The Church Between Gospel and Culture: The Emerging Mission in North America (1996).