Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean
Associate Professor of Church History and Mission
Pathways for Tomorrow Grant Program Director

B.A., Gardner-Webb University, 1993
M.Div., Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, 2000
Ph.D., University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2010

Joined faculty in 2018

Barnes has over a decade of international experience, serving in South Africa and Mozambique with Global Ministries (DoC and UCC) and in South Africa, Lesotho and eSwatini (formerly Swaziland) with the Mennonite Central Committee.

In addition to teaching classes in mission and church history at LTS, Barnes has also taught at Christian Theological Seminary (IN), Brite Divinity School (TX), the University of Indianapolis (IN), and Recatla United Seminary (Mozambique).

He received a BA from Gardner-Webb University (1993), a MDiv from Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond (2000), and a PhD from the University of KwaZulu-Natal (2010) in South Africa. In addition to numerous journal articles, Barnes is the author of Power and Partnership: A History of the Protestant Mission Movement (Pickwick, 2013) and co-editor of Restoring Dignity, Nourishing Hope: Developing Mutuality in Mission (Pilgrim Press, 2016). More recently, he wrote “Mission and Ministry in the Age of Pandemics,” which appears in Threshold Dwellers in the Age of Global Pandemic (Pickwick, 2022) and is a guest editor for an issue of the Review & Expositor focusing on faith responses to imperial Christianity and Christian nationalism.