JR Woodward

JR Woodward, Ph.D. (University of Manchester UK) awakens people to join God in the renewal of all things. He has been passionately planting discipleship-fueled, movement-oriented, neighborhood-grounded churches seeking to be a foretaste of God's coming kingdom for over 25 years. He has helped start and multiply dozens of missional-incarnational communities from Blacksburg, VA, to Los Angeles, CA. He loves to experiment and take risks and would rather "fail" by living out God's calling than "succeed" by doing something else.

JR co-founded and currently serves on the board of the Missio Alliance; he is an active board member with Reliant Mission, which serves over 900 missionaries in North America and around the world. He also serves on the Fuller Global Mission Advisory Council, the Fuller Church Initiatives Board, Movement Leaders Collective Council, and the KINEO board.

He currently serves as the National Director for the V3 Church Planting Movement, helping to train church planters across North America and the world in a way that values a grounded spirituality, missions theology, and movement ecclesiology. He is the co-founder and co-director of the Praxis Gathering, an annual gathering for planters who want to grow in grounded missional practices.

JR is the author of "Creating a Missional Culture" (IVP, 2012) and "The Scandal of Leadership" (100Movements, 2023), as well as co-author of "The Church as Movement" (IVP, 2016). He contributes to both academic and popular level journals and blogs, including Religious Studies Review, Leadership Journal, The Other Journal, Gospel Centered Discipleship and the Verge Network. You can find him speaking at conferences and gatherings across the country and various parts of the world.

He graduated with a Master of Arts in Global Leadership from Fuller Theological Seminary and completed his Ph.D. at the University of Manchester (UK) on Missional Leadership, Mimetic Desire, and a Theology of the Powers.

He loves to surf, travel, read, skateboard and meet new people. He enjoys photography and film and attends the Sundance Film Festival whenever he can.