The Rev. Dr. Parker to serve as new Coordinator

The Rev. Dr. Michael Parker

The Rev. Dr. Michael Parker will be the new Coordinator of International Evangelism and Frontier Areas, beginning May 27, 2008. He comes to us with a strong educational background and ten years of missionary experience.

Mike grew up in Southern California and is a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary, class of 1985.He received a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in American cultural and religious history in 1994. His dissertation was on the Student Volunteer Movement, a Protestant missionary recruiting organization that helped to launch the modern missionary movement. The dissertation was republished this year by the William Carey Library: The Kingdom of Character: The Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, 1886-1926.   

Between 1995 and 2006 he served as a PC(USA) mission co-worker in two countries, Sudan and Rwanda, where he taught church history. In Sudan he served at the Nile Theological College in Khartoum. During this time he also wrote a book on the experience of Sudanese Christians, Children of the Sun: Stories of the Christian Journey in Sudan.  In Rwanda he taught at the Faculté de Théologie Protestante de Butare, a non-denominational seminary where instruction is conducted in French. While there he completed a translation of the first volume of Jacques Blandenier’s three-volume history of missions, The Evangelization of the World. This should be published by the William Carey Library later this year.

Since September of 2006 he has served as the interim pastor of the United Parish of Bowie, a UCC and PC(USA) church in Maryland, not far from Washington, D.C.

Mike brings to the General Assembly Council a great wealth of knowledge and insight as well as a tremendous sense of call to evangelism and missions.