Forming Leaders for the Public Church is a fitting testimony to the illuminating and piercing work of Professor Gary Simpson. Like the book's dedicatee, the essays in this volume reflect a fierce love for the gospel, a deep concern for those on the margins, and a clarion summons for the church to help build a more just and fruitful world.

Michael J. Chan, Concordia College

Nothing honors the career and creativity of Dr. Gary Simpson better than this salute to a true visionary from his former students, colleagues and friends. A collection edited with great love and respect, Forming Leaders for the Public Church lights up the theological depth and the manifold dimensions of Gary’s passion to send forth the church into public life. But it’s the personal anecdotes scattered among the chapters that remind us that a mentor’s deep love, affection, and sacrifice is key to forming leaders for missional vocation.

Gregory P. Leffel, past-president, the American Society of Missiology, and author of Faith Seeking Action: Mission, Social Movements, and the Church in Motion

This excellent collection of essays by students and colleagues of Professor Gary Simpson carries forward his important teaching and scholarship on the theology and vocation of being a public church. The trinitarian theology that informs Simpson’s understanding of the public church as missional church is evident in these clear, well-written, and well researched accounts. Representing a variety of domestic, global, and cross-cultural congregational contexts and reflecting Simpson’s emphasis on the congregation as the center of the public church, the essays offer a variety of practical approaches to the church’s participation in civil society that are integral to the gospel centered worship life and witness of the congregation. Simpson’s gracious pastoral presence and love of the church, echoed throughout, has been infectious in the lives of these contributors and will shine through for readers as well. This is a treasure trove of insightful and innovative resources for leaders and leaders to be who aspire to the vocation of the public church.

James M. Childs, Jr., Trinity Lutheran Seminary at Capital University

What a gift this volume is! It is a gift to a wide variety of audiences: members and leaders of local churches, leaders of denominational systems that care about local churches, church leaders who want to learn how the Global South enriches the nature and mission of local churches, leaders of churches who draw upon the deep roots of Lutheran theology in communities no longer living in a European centered Christendom, and leaders of churches wrestling with the realities of the pandemic and racism. Most importantly it is a witness to the life’s work of a pastor, teacher, and scholar, Gary Simpson, whose dedication to the local church as a public moral companion provides a living metaphor for vital and thriving local churches.

Patrick Keifert, Luther Seminary