Jeff Wright
Director of Strategic Projects
Jeff Wright has been a part of CAL since it was founded in 1987. In July 1992, he became CAL's first Executive Director, and remained in that position until January 2004, when he stepped down from day-to-day executive responsibilities at CAL to assume more of a role in writing, research, and mentoring in urban mission.
Jeff is active in a broad array of training, coaching, and consulting engagements. He holds adjunct faculty status at Hesston College, teaching extension coursesfor academic credit in Hesston's Pastoral Ministries program through CAL's School for Urban Mission. Jeff is also the principal church planting strategist at CAL, working with Sara Haldeman-Scarr in the Critical Foundations Network. Jeff serves as CAL's principal consultant outside the Anabaptist constituency through an arrangement as an Executive Leadership Consultant with Design for Ministry, an international consulting firm with additional offices in Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Tampa, and South Africa. Jeff is available for a variety of speaking or consulting engagements in the areas of strategic planning for mission, urban church planting, urban leadership development, and re-engineering middle-level judicatories for a missional bias.
As part of his portfolio of projects with CAL, Jeff also works with the Pacific Southwest Mennonite Conference as Conference Minister/Bishop for Southern California and Nevada, and as Director of the Conference Mission Team. He is also the part-time Preaching Minister and Pastoral Team Leader at the First Mennonite Church of Upland, California. Jeff serves in the Mennonite Church USA as an Urban Ministry Director for Southern California with Mennonite Mission Network. He is also a member of the MCUSA Constituency Leaders Council, and is appointed by the CLC to serve astheir member on the Board of Directors for Church Extension Services, Inc., the church building loan fund of Mennonite Church USA.
A native of Oklahoma, Jeff has lived and worked in California for over 20 years. He attended Tabor College, Hillsboro, KS, and completed a his undergraduate degree in Humanities. He has also attended Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, and Central Baptist Theological Seminary, Kansas City, KS. He graduated from Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary, Fresno, California(M.Div., 1986), and from the Graduate Theological Foundation, now located in South Bend, IN (M.B.A., 1995). Currently, Jeff is pursuing additional graduate studies in Urban Mission and Spirituality on a part-time basis in London at Spurgeon's College, the largest Baptist theological college in the United Kingdom.
Jeff is also active in several ecumenical organizations, participating as a member of the central leadership team and immigration action team for One-LA, a community organizing effort in Los Angeles County, collaborating with the Industrial Areas Foundation, and participating as a member of the Los Angeles Council of Religious Leaders, an ecumenical and interfaith gathering of regional and synodal leadership based in Los Angeles County.
He and his wife Debbie have two young adult children: Beth, a sophomore at Hesston College, majoring in youth ministries, and Jordan, a freshman majoring in business administration/marketing at Riverside Community College.
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