Rod MacIlvaine is founding senior pastor of Grace Community Church and chairman of Grace Missions International. He is a graduate of Southern Methodist University (BBA, 1978) and Dallas Theological Seminary (ThM, 1983).
Rod invested the first ten years of his ministry with the parachurch group Search Ministries. Search specializes in holding ongoing discussions with people who do not embrace faith in Christ. During those years, Rod was driven into an intense study of apologetics in an effort to formulate reasonable answers to skeptics. As Vice President of publications for Search, Rod co-authored the Search Ministries’ discipleship curriculum called Foundations and traveled extensively for Search teaching its flagship seminar. In 2005 Rod did post-master’s study at the University of Oxford, taking classes from John Lenox, Alister McGrath and Ravi Zacharias in conjunction with Wycliffe Hall.
In 2009 Rod graduated with a Doctor of Ministry degree from Dallas Theological Seminary. His research specialty focused on how contemporary churches successfully transition their ministries in a missional direction. In the process, he studied the psychology of culture-change within organizations and the elements of contextualizing the Christian faith without sacrificing biblical absolutes.
Rod is the co-founder and the U.S. Director of the Simiente Misionera, a church planter training school in central Cuba. Working with nationals, Rod and his team have helped launch over fifty churches throughout the island. His work was recently acknowledged by the Liga Evangelica de Cuba. Prior to his ministry in Cuba, he worked with Russian nationals to establish two churches near Samara in the cities of Zupchininovka and Novosemeykino.
A passionate believer in the concept of cultural flexibility with biblical fidelity, Rod seeks creative ways to express the historic Christian faith to those who approach life from a postmodern construct.
Rod is the author the Bosquejos de Ensenanzas Practices para Predicadores series, a set of tools designed to help Spanish speaking pastors prepare expository messages. He is also the author of several peer-reviewed journal articles on the history and praxis of missional churches.
Rod and his wife Cindy have four grown children and three grandchildren.
Dr. MacIlvaine can be reached by emailing .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
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