Description:
This books looks at the launch of the church in Ephesus as it became a movement grounded in God's mission and led by those who multiplied generations of disciples.
Brief description: Michael T. Cooper currently serves as an executive for a missions agency, training national leaders in evangelism, discipleship, leadership development, and church planting. He is the former president and CEO of an international NGO. In 2010, he founded a Business as Mission initiative that focused on helping alleviate spiritual and economic poverty in the developing world. For a decade he equipped undergraduate and graduate students at Trinity International University with skills to engage culture. He has thirty years of ministry and missions experience, ten years as a pioneer church planter in Romania after the fall of communism. He holds a MA in Missions from Columbia International University and a PhD in Intercultural Studies from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Throughout his career, Michael has focused on creative ways to engage difficult-to-reach people with the gospel.
Review Quotes:
I am happy to endorse Ephesiology: The Study of a Movement, by Dr. Michael Cooper. Church-planting movements continue to grow and thrive around the world. As these movements grow, Cooper's work will provide a necessary theological and missiological foundation to ensure that these dynamic movements remain healthy into the future.
Dr. Dudley Brown
International Training Institute
Christ Community Church, Greeley, Colorado
Having worked as a missionary, an outreach pastor in the United States, and now heading an initiative for the Evangelical Free Church of America for the Unreached People Groups, I feel that the topic of this book is very timely. I am presently working alongside several CP movements in Africa and the leaders of these movements are beginning to struggle with the tension between movement and institution. The American church watches and marvels at these movements but remains asleep as to their own condition. This book has the potential to challenge and clarify the changes needed in America and offer warning and help to the global movements!
Rev. Rick Burke
associate director of Global Equipping, Unreached People Initiative
Reach Global, EFCA
Who better to dig into the model of Ephesus than a missionary church-planter, turned missiologist, turned mission leader? Michael Cooper brings helpful breadth and depth to this work. His extensive experience and ongoing exposure to the church and the need around the world give him a unique platform. After decades of pragmatic, programmatic models, the church needs an exegetically-driven path forward.
Rev. Kerry Doyal
district superintendent, Evangelical Free Church of America
Ephesiology is a uniquely grounded and helpful framework that will bless any person needing direction for church planting "the New Testament way." Drawing from biblical, theological, missiological, and practical experience and disciplines, Dr. Michael Cooper has created a tone that faithfully exposits the scriptural principles that guided one of the greatest churches of the New Testament era. As a seasoned church planter himself, complemented by solid academic grounding, Cooper's book is a must read for anyone who takes seriously and prayerfully the concept of church planting movements.
Dr. Gary Fujino
professor of Diaspora Studies, Missional University
Global Diaspora Network
I have personally been enlightened by Michael's insights in regards to what it takes to start a movement like the early church that spanned much of the known world with the Gospel. Though I have earned multiple theological degrees, this is the first time I have heard the insights Michael has given in this book. It has motivated me to the point that I am having him train my staff and board of elders and deacons-hoping to light the fire for evangelism in their hearts as well.
Rev. Steve Gibson
lead pastor, Wellspring Church, Hudsonville, Michigan