Board of Directors
The Board of Directors serves the Ecclesia Network by keeping the network true to its mission, vision, values, and functions. The board is selected primarily from among pastors/church leaders within the network and those on the board agree to serve for a three-year rotation that is reaffirmed annually. In addition to representation from church leadership, the board may also have a minority representation from professors or business professionals that bring a unique and helpful perspective to the team.
Dr. Keith Matthews
Keith is Chair of the Ministry Department and Professor of Spiritual Formation and Contemporary Culture at Azusa Pacific University’s Graduate School of Theology. He is a long time pastoral practitioner in many differing contexts, serving churches from coast to coast. Keith has been a Church Planter, an Associate Pastor, Executive Pastor and Lead Pastor in small, medium and large church settings. Now serving as a teacher to pastors, Keith’s expertise is in Ministry Leadership and Spiritual Formation, along with Contemporary Culture/Emergent Ministry Issues. He is an Adjunct Professor at Fuller Theological Seminary teaching with Dr. Dallas Willard and Dr. Todd Hunter in Fuller’s Doctor of Ministry Program. He has written articles for Sojourners Magazine and Leadership Journal, as well as designed and co-authored Dallas Willard’s Study Guide to The Divine Conspiracy. He is an ordained pastor, church consultant, retreat speaker, and conference speaker for Renovare Inc. Keith is married to Christa and has three children, Cori, Kyle and Kate, and now resides in Southern California
Dr. Tim Levert
Tim has served as the lead pastor of Crossroads Church since 2003. Before coming to the Baltimore-Washington area he served several churches in Louisiana. He has over a decade of experience in student ministry, and earned his PhD in Christian Education in 2005. Tim is hopelessly in love with his wife, Tasha (who also has a PhD and is much smarter than he is), and their three daughters, Elle, Zoe, and Ashton. He is also a huge LSU fan. Huge! Really, it’s embarassing.
Dr. Chris Backert
Connecting churches and leaders together is something that Chris has always tried to do, so it makes sense that he would be instrumental in the founding of Ecclesia, and would also serve as Ecclesia’s Director & Organizational Architect. Chris also serves on the pastoral team of Imago Dei, and works with fellow board member Brian Hopper in trying to develop fresh expressions of church in Richmond, VA. In addition, Chris works with the Baptist General Association of Virginia as an Emerging Church Strategist and in his spare time is attempting to finish his doctoral program at Fuller Seminary in Missional Church Leadership and serves on the board of the Network of Giving. He is married to his high school sweetheart Rachel.
Bruce Hopler
Bruce is the founding pastor of Cornerstone Community Church of Columbia Maryland. Bruce planted an emergent church before the word emergent was known, even to him. He loves coaching church planters and hanging out with pre-Christians. He is working on his doctorate at Fuller Seminary in discipleship and leadership in an emerging context. He loves to read, go to the gym and smoke a fine cigar with a glass of red wine. He loves most of all though, his wife Terri and his two boys, Caleb and Levi.
J.R. Briggs
J.R. is the Lead Pastor and Cultural Cultivator of a church plant called The Renew Community, a faith community for skeptics and dreamers in Lansdale, PA in the Greater Philadelphia Area. He enjoys dreaming and implementing new kingdom initiatives and meeting with other church planters. He is currently completing his MA in Missional Theology from Biblical Theological Seminary (Hatfield, PA).
He has authored three books (When God Says Jump, Redefining Life for Men and The Message//Remix: Solo). He enjoys skiing, camping, reading, traveling, watching college football, bird watching, rooting for the Phillies and spending time with his family. He and his wife Megan have two sons: Carter (3 years old) and Bennett (3 months) and live in the heart of gritty Lansdale, PA. You can read his blog at www.jrbriggs.com
Dr. David Fitch
David Fitch holds the chair of Evangelical Theology at Northern Seminary in Chicago. He also serves as the founding pastor of Life on the Vine Christian Community–an emerging church in the Northwest Suburbs of Chicago. He is the co-founder of Up/Rooted, an emergent cohort that gathers leaders and thinkers to engage issues of the emerging church and the post-modern context. Up/rooted now has chapters all over the Chicago area. He has been a speaker and presenter at “emerging church” gatherings, the Ekklesia Project, as well as academic and denominational gatherings on the issues of church, postmodernity and culture.
He is the author of numerous articles on church , culture and theological ethics in journals as diverse as the Journal of the Academy for Evangelism in Theological Education, Discernment, Pastoral Psychology and the Journal of Christian Education.
He is the author of The Great Giveaway: Reclaiming the Mission of the Church from American Business, Para-Church Organizations, Psychotherapy, Consumer Capitalism and Other Modern Maladies (Baker Books, 2005) and holds a Ph.D with an emphasis in Theological Ethics, Church, and Society from Northwestern University. You can read David’s blog here: www.reclaimingthemission.com
Brian Hopper
Brian is a former Young Adults Pastor at Bay Area Community Church in Annapolis, Md. In his life prior to vocational ministry, he owned and ran a restaurant/catering business, worked in corporate sales for a foodservice company and national software firm. In 2000 he left his career to pursue full time ministry. For three years he served as a pastoral intern at BACC while attending and graduating from Bethel Seminary. In ’03 he was hired as the Young Adults Pastor at BACC. In ’06, with BACC’s vision to plant churches in the Mid Atlantic region, he responded to the call to plant a new church in Richmond, a city that has captured his heart. Brian is currently planting a church in Richmond with fellow board member Chris Backert. He has been married to Suzi for almost 20 years. They have two really hip and cool teenage daughters, Abby and Ellyn.
JR Woodward
JR is a person who helps individuals and communities awaken to their God given dreams and live them out. He is the founding pastor of [nlcf] at Virginia Tech and he and his current team are starting three new churches in the Los Angeles area – Hollywood, West LA and Downtown/USC. These multi-ethnic communities of faith are helping to bring the reality of the kingdom of God to the Los Angeles area, through building neighborhood churches that are committed to social justice, walking with God and pursing wholeness in the context of community as they immerse themselves in the narrative of God. JR is a church consultant, a conference speaker, a blogger (www.jrwoodward.net) a church planter assessor and coach and loves to awaken churches live out Missio Dei. He is currently pursuing a Masters of Art in Global Leadership at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena. He loves to surf, travel, have a glass of wine with old and new friends, watch films and engage in the art of photography. He resides in Hollywood, California.
Jim Pace
Jim has been immersed with one church, New Life Christian Fellowship, for the bulk of the time he has been a follower of Jesus. He has served [nlcf] for the past 13 years as a staff member and was ordained as one of their pastors seven years ago. He started with helping to lead a small group bible study and has developed into a conference speaker, church coach and church strategy nerd. He also has just finished writing his first book, “Should We Fire God?” that should be out early 2010. Having been involved at almost every level of leadership in the church he understands much of what it takes to lead at every level and likes to focus on seeing the church accomplish the goals they feel God has set for them as well as seeing those who work in the church fully access their God-driven dreams. He enjoys reading, lifting soup cans with his post-operative right shoulder, talking smack about country music and NASCAR and writing run-on sentences. He and his wife Tracy have been married for 13 years and have three kids that are just a little bit more amazing than yours. Read Jim’s Blog. Jim also happens to look EXACTLY like Scott Van Pelt.