Mark Lau Branson

Mark Lau Branson, Ed.D., is the Homer L. Goddard Senior Professor of the Ministry of the Laity at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, where he teaches courses in congregational leadership and community engagement. He was ordained at San Francisco Christian Center, an African American Pentecostal church, and has served on the pastoral teams in United Methodist and Presbyterian churches. Branson has worked with several Christian agencies active in education, community development, university ministry, organizational consulting, and community organizing. He has graduate degrees from Claremont School of Theology and the University of San Francisco. With Juan Martinez he recently authored a revised edition of Churches, Cultures and Leadership, and coauthored (with Alan Roxburgh) Leadership, God's Agency, and Disruptions: Confronting Modernity's Wager. Other books include a 2nd edition of Memories, Hopes, and Conversations: Appreciative Inquiry, Missional Engagement, and Congregational Change, and Starting Missional Churches: Life with God in the Neighborhood (edited with Nicholas Warnes). Previous publications include Conflict & Context: Hermeneutics in the Americas (edited with Rene Padilla), and chapters in The Missional Church in Context (Craig Van Gelder, ed.), Leadership in Congregations (Richard Bass, ed.), The Three Tasks of Leadership (Eric Jacobsen, ed.), Religious Leadership: A Reference Handbook (Sharon Callahan, ed.), and the Encyclopedia of Christian Education. Several of Branson's articles have appeared in the Journal of Religious Leadership.