Roxburgh Missional Network

The Roxburgh Missional Network team is a diverse group of men and women with years of experience in pastoral leadership, teaching, consulting, psychology and publishing.  We are committed to  resourcing missional leaders with the best training, consulting and hands-on resources for innovating missional life in local congregations and communities of faith.

Alan Roxburgh

Alan Roxburgh is a pastor, teacher, writer and consultant with more than 30 years experience in church leadership, consulting and seminary education.  Alan has pastored congregations in a small town, the suburbs, the re-development of a downtown urban church and the planting of other congregations.  He has directed an urban training center and served as a seminary professor and the director of a center for mission and evangelism.  Alan teaches as an adjunct professor in seminaries in the USA, Australia and Europe.  His books include: Reaching a New Generation, Leadership, Liminality and the Missionary Congregation, Crossing the Bridge: Leadership in a Time of Change, The Sky is Falling – Leaders Lost in Transition, The Missional Leader (co-authored with Fred Romanuk), Introducing the Missional Church (Baker, Nov 09) and Missional Map Making (Jossey-Bass, Jan 2010).  He was also a member of the writing team that authored Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America.

Through the Roxburgh Missional Network, Alan leads conferences, seminars and consultations with denominations, congregations and seminaries across North America, Asia, Europe, Australia and the UK.  Alan consults with these groups in the areas of leadership for missional transformation and innovating missional change across denominational systems.  Along with the team at RMN, he provides practical tools and resources for leaders of church systems and local congregations.

Through Allelon Alan co-directs the Mission in Globalizing Culture(s) Project.  This is a multi-year project addressing questions of mission in Western culture(s) from the perspective of the local church and its context, and the implications for leadership development.

When not traveling or writing, Alan enjoys mountain biking, hiking, cooking and hanging out with Jane and their five grandchildren as well as drinking great coffee in the Pacific North West.

Scott Boren

Scott and his wife live in St Paul, MN and hail from Houston where Scott is the Community Pastor at Woodland Hills Church. With over ten years of experience in product development and publishing resources for church leaders, he takes great joy in the process of developing practical resources that pastors and leaders can actually use beyond beefing up their impressive libraries. In his spare time, he enjoys reading books from his library, hanging out at coffee houses, playing with his children and sharing life with his wife, Shawna.  Scott is directing Allelon's new Allelon/Baker partnership in publishing.  The first volume in this series will be Introducing the Missional Church which Scott co-authored with Al Roxburgh.

John McLaverty

John McLaverty is currently working as a Senior Partner for John McLaverty & Associates that specializes in consulting services to not-for-profit organizations.  He served for over 25 years as an ordained pastor in both Toronto and Vancouver.  He has also served as Adjunct Faculty at Tyndale Seminary for ten years teaching in the area of ‘Christianity and Culture’.

John was one of the original leaders of the Gospel and our Culture Canada group that sought to translate Lesslie Newbigin’s missiological mandate of a missionary engagement with late modern cultures into the Canadian context.  His local church was one of nine featured in the Gospel & Our Culture publication Treasure in Clay Jars: Patterns in Missional Faithfulness (Eerdmans, 2000).

Over the past several years John has been mentoring and coaching pastors in missional transformation for Allelon. John and Linda live in a blended family of six kids.  Over the last 10 years he has been hanging his faith community hat with the Anglicans at  Church of the Messiah and with the Baptists at Fallingbrook Heights in Toronto. John is a skilled mentor whose love is to coach leaders and work with congregations in processes of transformation.

Fred Romanuk

Fred brings over 25 years of organizational consulting experience to the Roxburgh Missional Network. He holds a doctorate in clinical and organizational psychology from York University, in Toronto, Canada. Fred studied at London Bible College in London, Ontario, and comes from an Anabaptist background. He has been involved in both Baptist and Mennonite Brethren Churches.

Fred has worked with large national and international organizations in the management of change. He built a consulting firm and directed the organization practice of a large international consulting firm for Canada, and for the eastern Region of the United States, working out of Baltimore, Maryland. He has led major strategic planning initiatives for Panasonic in New Jersey, Hoechst Cellanese in Montreal, British Electricity International in London, UK, the Canadian Gas Association in Toronto, the United Way in Ottawa, and many other organizations in Canada and the United States. He has also consulted with churches and denominations in the US and Australia in missional change.  He is the co-author of The Missional Leader.

As a Psychologist, Fred has worked with senior executives in assessing and developing the capabilities of people in leadership roles.

Sara Jane R. Walker

Sara Jane holds a MCS in Theology from Regent College, Vancouver, BC and an undergraduate degree in English Literature. Her background includes leadership development with inner-city youth, web design and financial planning.  She continues to provide oversight to Allelon's work in research and training as well as being the Management and Communications Director for RMN.

Sara Jane has three children and lives with her husband, Matthew, in West Vancouver, BC where she also sings with the Vancouver Bach Choir, shuttles children and enjoys the beautiful West Coast.

Mark Lau Branson

Rev. Mark Lau Branson, Ed.D., is the Homer L. Goddard Associate Professor of the Ministry of the Laity at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, where he teaches courses in practical theology, 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. He is president of the Institute for Urban Initiatives and vice-president of OneCommunity, both based in Pasadena, CA. He is also on the board of the Ekklesia Project and active in the Academy of Religious Leadership. Branson has served with several Christian agencies active in education, community development, and community organizing, and works frequently as a consultant.

Branson has graduate degrees from Claremont School of Theology (theology) and the University of San Francisco (multicultural education). His most recent book is Memories, Hopes, and Conversations: Appreciative Inquiry and Congregational Change (Alban). He contributed chapters to The Missional Church in Context (Craig Van Gelder, ed.), Leadership in Congregations (Richard Bass, ed.), and The Three Tasks of Leadership (Eric Jacobsen, ed.).

Mark, Nina, and sons Noah and Nathan are members of First Presbyterian Church, Altadena, California.