Often I’m asked what I’m thinking and writing about, but much of it is research notes and sketches developed for longer term projects (and not yet published anywhere) or articles published outside my professional mainstream and sometimes hard to find. Here’s my way of opening up my work before it reaches print as well as collecting in one place a few things that already have. Feel free to poke around. I hope something grabs you and helps you on your way.

By profession, I’m a missiologist — a theological specialist working at the intersection of faith and public life — and past president of the American Society of Missiology. I hold a Ph.D. in intercultural studies and authored the book Faith Seeking Action: Mission, Social Movements and the Church in Action (from which this blog gets its name); and co-authored (with Bill Mefford) The Not on Our Watch Christian Companion: Biblical Reflections on the Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond, a handbook on social mobilization published by the Center for American Progress.

My work integrates missiology and public life, and scholarship and public practice, in service of renewing effective citizenship and healthy public modes of life. Social movements and collective action are central concerns as well as cultural and social analysis, ethics, and theo-political consciousness in a post-postmodern world that I (and others) call ‘metamodern.’

The blog posts you’ll find here are loosely organized in several categories:

Metamodernism–analysis of our unfolding moment in time.

Public Missiology–creating a new direction within my missiological profession.

Tools of the Trade–useful discussion of social theoretical methods and conceptual thinking.

openDemocracy.net–a collection of articles published on oD’s global online magazine.

Once in a while, some thoughts on Architecture and Design.