Meet Our Teachers
Our diverse teaching team consists of 26 men and women from over 13 nations.
Dejan Aždajić holds two master’s degrees in Christian and Islamic Theology and a PhD in the anthropology of Islam. He has been actively involved in church planting and Muslim-Christian dialogue for many years and currently works as a professor of Practical Theology at the Giessen school of theology, Germany. There he trains and equips young men and women of God for the work of the ministry and the spreading of the Kingdom of God. His most recent book is *The Shaping Shaikh: The Role of the Shaikh in Lived Islam among Sufis in Bosnia and Herzegovina* (Berlin De Gruyter 2020) He is happily married and has a young son.
Stephen Beck is a career church planting missionary with Greater Europe Mission. He was part of the Redeemer Church in New York City and uses the Redeemer approach to church multiplication. He is considered one of the "cutting edge" Greater Europe Missionaries in this regard. He is Professor of Practical Theology at Freie Theologische Hochschule in Giessen, Germany. He has also been guest lecturer at a number of institutions on the European continent. He is married to Susan and they have four children. In 2011 Stephen and Susan embarked on yet another journey: together with 25 college students they planted a multi-everything church for the Frankfurt metro region. Through the refugee wave that came over Germany, this church multiplied to 15 congregations in 6 years.
Hans Euser, M. Theology at VU in Amsterdam, since 2017 is the director of Intercultural Church Plants (ICP) in the Netherlands. Because of Jesus in his life, he learned to love the nations; the attitude from `racism’ has changed to `gracism’ and it has shaped his way of living. Together with his family they are pioneers. In 2010 they started the International Christians Fellowship, a multi-ethnic church in the city Veenendaal. After setting up the church, they moved to Rotterdam where they are starting BLEND, a way of setting up entrepreneurial church planting in the multicultural neighborhood where they live.
Hans has been married to Carolien since 2000 and together they have three children, Samuel, Roos and Rhodé. Hans is dedicated to inspiring, training and equipping others to build intercultural faith communities and churches.
Jochen Geiselhart, (*1967), married with Brigitte for 30 years, 4 children
B.A. in theology (Covenant College UK) und M.A. und PhD in Intercultural Studies (NCIU, USA). Main subjects are leadership development and intercultural mentoring (Ph.D. thesis). Formerly worked in larger companies as financial controller in the area of strategic planning, for 12 years the manager and CEO of a company which was running different nursing homes. Pastor of „Gemeinde in der Konkordia“ Bühl (Baden), since 1999,
Founder and president of the academy of biblical studies in cooperation with NCIU, Florida. National Leader of Foursquare Germany since 2015. Coach, consultant and instructor (Main subjects: strategy, structures and leadership development)
Thomas Gerlach - I was born 1961 into a Christian family close to Cologne, Germany. As a young man of 18 I faced my saviour Jesus Christ, who challenged me through a preaching about John 11 – from this moment I knew in my heart that following Christ is life itself.
While working in Israel as a craftsman at a building project of a house for seniors I was challenged by a Rabbi to study theology. I went back to school to get my degree that allowed me to go to theological school. First in Basel, Switzerland according to the German speaking system and then in Amsterdam, Netherlands at an American seminary I completed the Master of Divinity. After ministering in a Church and in working with long-term unemployed to teach them going back to a job I prepared myself for going to Africa to teach. In this process I completed my MA in Missiology.
However, God`s plans where different. 4 months before we wanted to go away from Germany my wife developed cancer. We needed to stay and after 4 and a half years she passed away. This brought my life to a halt and a break down as the ministry I was working in was falling apart as well. I struggled to survive being a father of a 11-year-old girl.
I went back to business and worked as a product manager. During this time I married again to go on now together through thick and thin.
After 7 years God brought me back to ministry as I was hired to work at a public school to teach juniors to pass their exams and helping them in their daily struggles. Here I was trained in didactics that is the science of how to teach. I used it for those who needed assistance in getting through their exams.
Later I was called to a Church in Hagen in the Ruhr area for another 7 years. Here I met people from many nations in 2015 as they came to Germany. Today I am serving them full time to help them to find a home in Germany, both spiritually and physically as they have to overcome many obstacles.
Simon Grunwald (b. 1992) is one of the teachers for New Testament in the MosaiX Academy. He is also a pastor of the Mosaik Church Frankfurt North in Frankfurt, Germany, and teaches New Testament studies at a German bible school. Simon loves preaching the Word of God to his international congregation and to his students. By teaching Scripture, he seeks to bring people from every tongue and nation together to witness the Lord transforming lives through His Word. His other passions include language and literature, chess, and supporting church plants in different locations. Simon's motto is: "When the Lord is your shepherd, you lack nothing".
Guenther ("Gene") Haas did his seminary training (M. Div, & Th. M.) at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A., and he has a doctorate in theology and ethics from Toronto School of Theology, University of Toronto. He spent 32 years teaching college and seminary courses, the last 28 of which were as Professor in Religion & Theology at Redeemer University, a Reformed Christian liberal arts and science university in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America.
Doug continues to serve with Greater Europe Mission (GEM) working with the spiritual formation of followers of Jesus Christ. He has spent 34 years in church planting and disciple-making efforts across Europe. He initiated and led the Alliance for Saturation Church Planting’s work in Poland. He served for 20 years in some capacity of leadership with GEM, implementing movement-model discipleship and church planting in many cities across Europe, including establishing the CityReach network in cooperation with others. He remains passionate and proficient in disciple-multiplication, expanding the Kingdom of God through new communities of Christ-Followers. He also developed the Spiritual Life Team in GEM, serving God’s Kingdom servants across Europe in growing their intimacy with our Triune Lord. He is a trained Spiritual Director and in cooperation with Leadership Transformations, Inc.’s (LTi) Selah-Europe program, trains spiritual directors. He serves on the senior faculty of Selah and as the associate director of Selah-Europe. He holds a DMin in Spiritual Formation for Ministry Leaders (GCTS), a Master of Theology (missions emphasis, DTS), and a Bachelor of Science in Petroleum Engineering (UT Austin).
Doug and his wife Lisa enjoy life as the parents of two adult children who were raised in Poland and now live in the US.
Evi Rodemann (Hamburg, Germany) is passionate about helping people in various spheres of life to discover their calling and implement their visions and dreams. As a theologian (M.A. in European Mission and Intercultural Christianity) and event manager, she has a particular interest in engaging with young people and developing young leaders within the European context and beyond), inspiring them to engage in God’s plan. Evi’s experience, after having lived abroad for a few years, includes hosting and managing major Jesus-focused events in Europe and participating in Lausanne’s Younger Leaders Generation Leadership Executive Team. She is also on the leadership team of the World Evangelical Alliance Mission Commission. She recently established the organisation LeadNow e.V. (https://leadnow.events), is pursuing a PhD part-time on the impact of mission events, and has a personal website here: https://evirodemann.com/. If you like to chat with her, it must be over a cup of Earl Grey tea.
Theo Visser (1970) has a passion to see the church of Jesus restored to its original vigour: missional, colourful, passionate for Christ, Spirit filled, grace oriented, holy, with strong theology and high Christology. His vision is to see people from all nations becoming disciples of Christ in such a way that they will disciple others. In this way he aims for a multiplying movement of Gods Spirit across Europe.
After his study of theology in Utrecht he worked with refugees for 5 years. After that he planted an intercultural church in Rotterdam (ICF Rotterdam). Later he launched the Dutch ICP network; in 10 years’ time he connected about 30 newly planted churches. In addition to this, Theo started a new church planting church in Rotterdam (LEEF!), where even today he still experiences the dynamics of an intercultural church. This is also the place where he himself is discipling others, because that is his greatest passion. In this learning process he gained much experience in planting intercultural churches. He used to write down and store all the lessons that he has learned in this specific intercultural field. Right now he spends most of his time serving the European network of intercultural churchplants, ICP Europe (www.icpnetwork.eu). The goal of this network is to help the nations of Europe establish their own national network of intercultural church planting.
Theo’s gifts as a pioneer are coaching, overseeing, training and inspiring others. In this way he helps people to reach their full potential in Christ for the cause of Kingdom among the nations.
Theo is married to Rieneke (1972) with 3 children: Samuel (1996), Shekinah (2000), and Joshua (2002).
Jenn Williamson, B.A., M.A., DMin., is a Jesus-centered Congregational planter, a conference speaker, and a mentor of emerging leaders. Ministering in France since 2010, she is the founder and president of Elan, an organization that builds cross-cultural collaboration between foreign workers and national partners. Through ongoing participation in local congregational planting efforts and engagement with international movements, Jenn strives to model, cultivate, and strengthen Christ-like leadership. She has been married to David (a pilot—yeah, he’s really cool!) for almost 30 years and she loves the friendship they have with their two adult sons. Jenn is a beginning knitter, an avid reader, a reluctant researcher, and she’s training to hike the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim in celebration of her 50th birthday. In the MosaiX Academy, she is teaching courses on Dynamic Christian Spirituality and Forming and Leading a Multi-Cultural Team.
Criteria for choosing teachers:
- A passionate love for Jesus Christ, for God’s Word, for the Spirit and his (sometimes unusual) work among nations and people groups, for the unsaved, for the Body of Christ and its role in God’s redemptive plan to save people from every tongue, tribe and nation.
- A dependency on the Holy Spirit as the catalyst of intercultural reconciliation, a commitment to the local fellowship as an expression of intercultural reconciliation and a community of diverse cultures and languages with a unity that can only be accomplished by the triune God.
- Evangelical in doctrine, with a Reformed theological leaning, yet gracious and winsome toward people with non-Reformed convictions.
- We value theological education and respect theological degrees but lay even more value on a track record of expertise and effectiveness in ministry. We would like students to learn from God’s servants who not only know how ministry should be done but who have effectively done it.
- On ethical and social issues in compliance with the stance of the European Evangelical Alliance
- High degree of sensitivity toward learners from completely different cultural backgrounds.
- What is important is that our students do not simply hear facts. They will be motivated and learn much from our stories, our experiences, our pain and struggles, how we handled challenging situations, how we applied biblical truths to everyday issues.