The Presenters

Dr. Gailyn Van Rheenen served as missionary to East Africa for 14 years, taught missions and evangelism at Abilene Christian University for 17 years, and is currently Director of Mission Alive.  Mission Alive works with churches to plant churches and equips talented, motivated Christian leaders as evangelists and church planters in urban North America.  (www.missionalive.org).  His books include  Missions:  Biblical Foundations and Contemporary Perspectives (Zondervan, 1996), Communicating Christ in Animistic Contexts (William Carey Library, 1991), The Status of Missions:  A Nationwide Survey of Churches of Christ (ACU Press, 2002).  His web site (www.Missiology.org) provides "resources for missions education" for local church leaders, field missionaries, and teachers of missions.  He holds a B.A. in Bible from Harding University, M.S. in Missions from Abilene Christian University, and DMiss. from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. His passion in life is to be used by God to teach unbelievers, nurture them to Christian maturity, and equip them as Christian leaders.  He views himself primarily as an evangelist and church planter and secondly as a scholar in missions equipping.

Becky Van Rheenen co-teaches the seminar along with her husband. After teaching elementary physical education at Abilene Christian Schools for several years and ministering as a Missionary Associate at Abilene Christian University, she now serves as Associate Director of Mission Alive. She has served as a missionary in Africa for 14 years and speaks two African languages, Kipsigis and Swahili. In addition to raising four children on the mission field, she also served as a teacher of the women and children among Kipsigis churches. She has a B.A. in Physical Education, a M.Ed. in Education and has also taken many missions courses in her preparation for mission work. She has the notoriety of proof-reading (even re-writing) everything that her husband writes.

Gailyn and Becky have four children: Jonathan, Rebecca, Deborah, and David and two grandchildren:  Eli and Anjali. 

Contact:

4207 Meadow Ridge Drive
Carrollton, TX.  75010

Home:  (972) 939-4337 

Mobile:  (972) 754-9693

E-Mail:
vanrheeneng@acu.edu

Arrangements:

Frequently one church sponsors the Becoming Redemptive seminar and invites area churches to participate. The seminar may begin on Friday evening after a pot-luck at the local church if only one church is involved or on Saturday morning if many congregations are invited to attend.  The workshop then runs until either 3:00 or 4:00 p.m. on Saturday.   The followed day is typically a Missions Sunday at the local hosting congregation. 

The cost of the seminar includes travel and an honorarium.  

Church leaders are encouraged to read a short book Mission Alive:  Revitalizing Missions Among the Churches of Christ before the Becoming Redemptive seminar.  This book can be purchased from ACU Press.  Contact Thom Lemmons at <lemmonst@acu.edu>.  Regular price currently is $4.95.  Typically a discount is given for purchase of multiple copies. 

Hertiage:

The Becoming Redemptive seminar was developed during the Spring semester of 1999, Gailyn Van Rheenen was on faculty leave to write a book guiding churches to become redemptive fellowships. Before beginning to write, he and his wife Becky did research by surveying a random sample of local churches (with Bob Waldron of the Missions Resource Network), interviewing leaders of 75 local churches, reading a wide array of literature in the areas of spiritual nurture and church development, and teaching seminars in eight congregations transitioning to become evangelistic, missionary churches. This book, authored along with Dr. Bob Waldron, is now at the press and will be Status of Missions in Churches of Christ (ACU Press, 2002).