Ryan K. Bolger

Ryan Bolger joined the Fuller faculty in 2002 and is associate professor of church in contemporary culture in the School of Mission and Theology. In addition to conducting research focusing on the church and contemporary culture, he teaches classes on missiology, technological culture, church and mission, church planting, and church renewal.

Most recently, he coauthored Techno-Sapiens in a Networked Era: Becoming Digital Neighbors (2020) with Fuller’s Associate Professor of Theology and Culture Kutter Callaway. Dr. Bolger is the editor of Gospel after Christendom: New Voices, New Cultures, New Expressions (2012), convening 28 authors throughout Western culture who initiated new churches within post-Christendom. With Fuller’s Senior Professor of Church Growth Eddie Gibbs, Bolger coauthored Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Communities in Postmodern Cultures (2005), based on research and interviews with church leaders throughout the United States and the United Kingdom. His publications also include chapters in Phyllis Tickle: Evangelist of the Future (2013), Mass Culture (2008), Worship That Changes Lives (2008), An Emergent Manifesto of Hope (2008), and Evangelical, Ecumenical, and Anabaptist Missiologies in Conversation: Essays in Honor of Wilbert R. Shenk (2006). In addition, he has published articles in Missiology and the ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science and is a frequent conference speaker on church and culture.

For his research on pastoral leadership in the emerging church, Bolger received an award from Duke Divinity School in 1999, and in 2005 he received an award from Yale for his teaching on American culture and the gospel.

Bolger mentors PhD, DMin, and DMiss doctoral students in the areas of contemporary culture and the church.

Download Bolger’s CV, which includes a list of his current publications, here.