Our Team
Senior Fellow
Alana Ackerson
D.Min., San Francisco Theological Seminary
M.A., Graduate Theological Union
B.A., Stanford University
Alana is a Senior Fellow for Newbigin House with a focus on spiritual formation. In this role she provides pastoral support for fellows and cohort leaders in the Newbigin Fellowship. An alumna of the Newbigin Fellows Program, she earned a Diploma in the Art of Spiritual Direction from San Francisco Theological Seminary, where she is currently a doctoral candidate.
Most recently, Alana served as CEO of The Thiel Foundation, where she led the organization’s efforts to support the next-generation of entrepreneurs and to promote radical scientific and technological innovations. She was responsible for setting strategic priorities; overseeing grant-making; operating internal programs focused on education and technological innovation; facilitating relationships with key partners; and developing more effective approaches to venture philanthropy.
Alana is currently Managing Partner and President of Signum Investments. Previously, she served as President and Partner of Cabezon Investment Group, VP of Social Engagement for SoFi, and Director of Clarium Capital. Alana is a member of the Board of Governors for Opportunity International, sits on the Board for the Association of Women in Alternative Investing and serves on the Leadership Council for the Classy Awards.
Director of Academic Programs
Peter Choi
Ph.D., University of Notre Dame
M.A., Calvin Theological Seminary
B.A., Pomona College
Peter Choi is Director of Academic Programs at Newbigin House of Studies and a pastor at City Church San Francisco. He has taught history of Christianity courses at Calvin Theological Seminary and the University of Notre Dame. Prior to that, he served for seven years as a campus minister and church planter in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
A historian of eighteenth century North America, Peter’s areas of specialization include transatlantic revival religion, early evangelicalism, and world Christianity. His research has been funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Huntington Library, and the Library Company of Philadelphia.
Selected Publications
• George Whitefield: Evangelist for God and Empire (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2018).
• “The City’s Grace,” in Urban Ministry Reconsidered: Contexts and Considerations (Westminster John Knox Press, 2018).
• “Whitefield, Georgia, and the Quest for Bethesda College,” in George Whitefield: Life, Context, and Legacy (Oxford University Press, 2016).
• “Revival Preacher, Pop Idol, and Revolutionary, Too?” Books & Culture 21.1 (January/February 2014): 17.
Senior Fellow
Chuck DeGroat
Chuck is professor of pastoral care and counseling at Western Theological Seminary (Holland, MI). He is committed to spiritual and emotional formation for the sake of mission. His experience is represented in a fluid combination of pastoral ministry and seminary training for 20 years. He has served several church plants as a teaching pastor and has started two church-based clinical counseling centers.
His academic specialization is in the intersection of psychology and the Bible, represented best in his book Leaving Egypt: Finding God in the Wilderness Places (Square Inch) – a narrative biblical paradigm for understanding counseling, care, mission, and formation. His next book, The Toughest People to Love (Eerdmans), focuses on caring for the most difficult people leaders encounter. His third book, Wholeheartedness (Eerdmans), was released in February 2016. He is an ordained minister in the Reformed Church in America, a member of City Classis (the RCA’s urban, missional classis), and he holds a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology.
Director of Operations
Nic Hughes
Nic is director of operations at Newbigin House. He lives in Portland, OR.
Director, Newbigin Fellowship
Daniel Kirk
Ph.D., Duke University
Daniel is director of the Newbigin Fellows program. He is a New Testament scholar whose work takes place at the intersection of history, biblical interpretation, and real life.
Daniel’s most recent book, A Man Attested by God: The Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels, was awarded “Best Book Related to the New Testament” in the 2017 Biblical Archaeology Society book awards.
His other works include Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul? and before that, Unlocking Romans: Resurrection and the Justification of God.
Senior Fellow
Liz Lin
Ph.D., Fuller Theological Seminary
B.A., University of Michigan
Liz is a Senior Fellow at Newbigin House of Studies and a writer and speaker on the topics of race and culture. She has a PhD in clinical psychology, as well as master’s degrees in psychology and theology, from Fuller Theological Seminary. Previously, she taught in Fuller’s Graduate School of Psychology and worked in high school ministry. She is also the co-founder of Progressive Asian American Christians, an online community of 5,000 people with local meetups in 17 cities, a podcast, an annual conference, and a 9-month fellowship program.
Executive Director
Scot Sherman
Ph.D., University of Wales
Th.M., Princeton Theological Seminary
M.Div., Westminster Theological Seminary
Scot Sherman is the Executive Director of the Newbigin House of Studies, a center for graduate theological education and spiritual formation based in San Francisco. He oversees the Newbigin Fellowship, a nine-month intensive training program that seeks to provide a framework for wise integration of faith, work, and life, and hosts the speaker series Conversations For the Common Good.
Scot’s doctoral dissertation focused on the early ecumenical influence of the British missionary-theologian Lesslie Newbigin, a pioneer in thinking through the challenges facing churches in the contemporary West. He is currently working on his first book, an exploration of the ideas of the French philosopher and social theorist René Girard.
Scot lives with his wife, Catherine, and they have four sons. He loves opera, detective fiction, playing the piano, and goes wine tasting as often as possible.
Senior Fellow
Paul Weston
Ph.D., Kings College London
Paul teaches mission studies at Ridley Hall, Cambridge and in the Cambridge Federation, and is the Director of the Newbigin Centre for Gospel and Western Culture in Cambridge, England.
As a teacher he aims to excite students with the breath-taking wonder of God’s good news and to explore how this can be understood and communicated in today’s world. Along the way he looks to uncover the unexamined assumptions of our contemporary (increasingly secularised) culture in the West, exploring how they came to be, and how they might be addressed in the light of the good news. Over the years Paul has taught a number of courses in this area (both here and abroad), and he enjoys the way in which it brings together a number of disciplines, including theology, history, philosophy, sociology and cultural studies.
As Director of the Newbigin Centre for Gospel and Western Culture, Paul oversees research students working for Masters and Doctoral degrees in association with the Centre, and in partnership with the Newbigin House of Studies in San Francisco, hosts the annual ‘Lesslie Newbigin Summer Institute’ at Trinity Hall Cambridge, with attendees from the States, Europe, and Asia.
About Us
Newbigin House of Studies, named for missionary-theologian Lesslie Newbigin (1909-1998), seeks the good of the city by developing leaders through theological education.1 Emerging from City Church San Francisco and partnering with churches and institutions across the U.S. and the U.K., our faculty of pastor-scholars have rich experience in church planting and revitalization, social justice ministry, vocational discipleship, counseling and pastoral care. We provide resources for spiritual growth through our Fellows program for lay people and through conferences and special events. We offer graduate level courses that apply toward advanced standing with credit in Master of Arts (M.A.) and Master of Divinity (M.Div.) degree programs.
The great missionary, pastor and theologian Lesslie Newbigin taught that “the church is mission.” It “exists by mission as a flame exists by burning.” The contemporary church is in desperate need of leaders who are capable of planting new churches or revitalizing churches in decline. According to Newbigin, spiritual renewal will only happen when “local congregations renounce an introverted concern for their own life, and recognize that they exist for the sake of those who are not members, as sign, instrument and foretaste of God’s redeeming grace for the whole life of society.” Newbigin House seeks to redevelop a vision for mission within our churches by training and mentoring a new generation of missional leaders, in partnership with the church and the seminary.
[1] Jeremiah 29:7; Lesslie Newbigin, Truth to Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth.
Who Was Lesslie Newbigin?
A newly married Lesslie Newbigin set off for India in 1936 as a missionary of the Church of Scotland. No one knew that in the coming years he’d not only impact a remote region, but the entire world.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Lesslie and his wife Helen moved to India in 1936 in order to serve the Madras Mission. He soon realized that, particularly in mission, the church needed to be unified. In 1947, the young missionary became Bishop Newbigin, a strange thing for a Presbyterian, but essential for the unity of the Church of South India, an ecumenical church formed in mission. The church and its unity would become Newbigin’s mission.
Newbigin soon found himself in Geneva, working for the unity of the church within the World Council of Churches. He would become the Associate General Secretary before returning to India as Bishop of Madras in 1965. He’d serve there until 1974, when he and Helen returned to their beloved UK. But Lesslie was not done yet.
Newbigin had left the West as a missionary, but he returned as a missionary, as well. He was not merely a minister, but a philosopher, of sorts…a rare scholar-practitioner who studied Michael Polanyi and Alasdair MacIntyre, who was troubled by the Enlightenment and its influence on the West, and who embodied his missionary sensibilities in the secular West. Newbigin believed that the UK needed the Gospel as much as India did. And so did the United States. Thus, Newbigin began a second career of sorts – Newbigin, missionary to the West.
Lesslie Newbigin died in 1998, as both father and husband, but also as a father of a movement. With the blessing of his children, Newbigin House of Studies continues to champion his vision of a missionary movement to the West. Emerging from City Church San Francisco and partnering with churches and institutions in urban centers across the U.S. and the U.K., Newbigin House seeks to embody the spirit of Lesslie Newbigin in our 21st century context.
You can find many of Newbigin’s writings and lectures at www.newbiginresources.org.
Our Logo
We have chosen an ancient symbol as the “face” of Newbigin House, the Celtic cross. Celtic crosses were originally carved on ancient Rune stones, ancient sculptures that dated back to Druid times. For these newly converted Christians, it was a conscious testimony to the gospel’s power to change people and places that were originally deeply hostile to Christ. The Celtic cross reminds us of the great missionary movement in the British isles dating back to the 5th century, on through the spiritual renewal of the Protestant Reformation, then on through the great missionary movement to plant churches in the new world. It reminds us of our calling to continue being a missional church, true to this great heritage.
