RICHMOND — JR Woodward, a missiologist with more than 20 years of experience as a church planter and pastor, has been named first full-time coordinator of V3 Tribe, a missional church planting movement with ties to Virginia Baptists.
Woodward, who will be based in Washington, assumed his new role this month. V3 refers to the movement’s three components: voice (proclaiming the Word), viral (spreading the Word) and volume (churches planting churches).
JR Woodward
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Woodward was a founder of New Life Community Church in Blacksburg, Va., and a co-founder of Kairos Los Angeles, a network of neighborhood churches in the California city. He also helped organize Ecclesia, which equips and multiplies missional churches, and is associated with Missio Alliance, an evangelical coalition formed last year.
As V3’s coordinator, Woodward is assessing the organization’s strengths before moving forward.
“I want to understand what’s transpired and, based on that, I’ll be able to discern what happens next,” he said. “A huge part of the next season is meeting with people and getting a sense of what happening and create synergy around our common goals.”
V3 emerged in 2010 out of the Virginia Church Multiplication Initiative and describes itself as “a multiplication movement that focuses on planting healthy churches and multiplying them, all with the mission of making disciples of Jesus Christ.”
It is administered — and partly funded — by the Virginia Baptist Mission Board’s courageous churches team through a 14-member board of directors, but has a national scope and partners with a variety of church networks. It has had a hand in initiating several churches, including The District Church in Washington, Rhythm Church in Miami, Genesis Community Church in Roanoke, Catoctin Valley Church in Purcellville, Va., and Hope Hill Church in Woodbridge, Va.
Woodward will maintain a base at The District Church.
“We have to learn to find and develop the church planters already in our midst,” Woodward said in describing a strategy for the future. “God has a mission to accomplish and wants the church to do it. If that’s the case, there must already be planters in every church. We want to help them discern that calling and groom them to live out that calling.”
The son of a U.S. Navy officer, Woodward grew up in cities around the country — including the Hampton Roads area — and the world. He holds degrees from Radford (Va.) University and Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., and is currently pursuing a doctor of philosophy degree at the University of Manchester in Great Britain, focusing on a missional view of power and authority structures.
He is the author of Creating a Missional Culture: Equipping the Church for the Sake of the World, published by IVP Books.
Robert Dilday ([email protected]) is managing editor of the Religious Herald.