Michael Copeland touches the nations through mobilization of students

Editor’s Note: The following article originally appeared in the fall 2025 issue of Southwestern News.

For 15 years, Michael Copeland served as an International Mission Board missionary to East Asia, fulfilling a call to missions that began in high school. But while serving as a church planter, sharing the Gospel, and hosting visiting teams of college students, Copeland recognized a desire for continued learning and research and to mobilize others into the mission field.

“As I lived overseas, I was always very interested in mobilization. I always wanted to mobilize,” Copeland recounts. “I always kind of wanted to disciple guys and just people in general, members of churches, to think about God’s global purposes, thinking about obedience to the Great Commission and how to go.”

While overseas he had his eyes opened to the vastness of churches growing in the field itself, a growth he refers to as “rapid,” appreciating the work he could see God doing abroad. However, while these churches were growing, he observed a common issue rising in the lives of those who started them.

“I noticed that that was very hard, in many hard places, for many missionaries to stay long term,” Copeland explains, saying that was true for missionaries coming from all over the world, not just the United States. “… But God had populations of evangelical believers continue to grow nearby.”

He began to consider ways to mobilize those populations of growing Christians to multiply among themselves long after the initial missionaries had left the area, as well as how missionaries in an area could reach minority groups that hadn’t heard their message despite the majority population of an area having heard it.

“I started to question, ‘How can the majority people be able to reach this minority, even though there’s a lot of conflict?’” Copeland says. “That was a question that made me start trying to find a place where I could study it from, and Southwestern at that exact time had the World Christian Studies program.

“I didn’t know that I was going to pursue PhD work, let alone anything further in graduate level theological studies,” Copeland continues. “… I just really wanted to get the bare minimum in order to get on the field. But as I continued to walk through and then listen to really good advice and experience life, theological education just kept on growing.”

His interest in mobilization methods would motivate Copeland’s work for the better part of the next decade with the desire to more effectively train, support, and mobilize missionaries abroad. It was the subject of his dissertation, as he completed his Doctor of Philosophy in World Christian Studies in 2018, and is also included in an upcoming academic publication in which he is involved.

Further opportunities for missions mobilization came in 2022, when Copeland and his family moved their area of missions work to Southwestern Seminary, taking a position where he could share his knowledge and experiences as an assistant professor of missions and mobilize and lead others into the missions field as associate director of the World Missions Center.

Now, three years later and subsequently accepting the role of the dean of students as well, Copeland continues to prove his dedication to missions every day through his continued work, teachings, and writing. Despite all his accomplishments, he remains humble, steadfastly focusing on the passion of his life that is evangelism, and crediting those who surround him for most of his success.

“I’m very impressed by my colleagues, which in one sense, makes me very humbled, and knowing how much I haven’t accomplished compared to them,” Copeland continues. “But then also, they’re all very encouraging. Through their example they propelled me to be even better.”

At Southwestern, Copeland has led a significant amount of work in conjunction with Southwestern’s World Missions Center, such as emphasizing the importance of prayer in the call to missions, participating in a panel discussion on the Great Commission for the Sending Church Summit, and leading a group of Southwesterners on a mission trip to Thailand in the spring of 2025.

Haylee Grace*, a student who attended the Thailand trip with Copeland recalled the leadership he showed, the team-building exercises he led, and the endless encouragement he gave while abroad.

“Thailand was really fun because we would do things together as the team and then he was like, ‘Alright, y’all go out and go find people to talk to’ and kind of set us free,” Grace recalls. “It was almost like he was not really over us, but one of us.”

After the trip, Copeland and his wife hosted the students who had gone with him for dinner in their home. While together they were given an opportunity to fellowship and reflect on their work done across the globe.

“He’s really excited about mobilizing students to go, especially to places that he loves and knows,” Grace said. “He told us a while ago that his dream was to take a group of students to Thailand, because he had spent several years there, and wanted to show us what it was like and help us love those people, too.”

Despite his role in the campus-wide enthusiasm for missions stemming from the Roy J. Fish School of Evangelism and Missions, and the regular activities and missions of the World Missions Center, once again Copeland refuses to take the credit upon himself, attributing it all to his own leaders and peers.

“With the leadership over the last two-and-a-half years, the World Missions Center has had greater opportunity to not be siloed off,” Copeland says. “I enjoy how much this campus is already globally engaged” – one of Southwestern’s core values.

Copeland points out that faculty and students outside of the Fish School have been involved with missions and other events around the world, showing the value of being globally engaged is institution wide. Copeland says President David S. Dockery and Provost Madison Grace play key roles in bringing about that key integration.

“We’ve had a more collaborative, interactive opportunity than I felt like we started with,” Copeland says. “We always wanted to be more collaborative. We always wanted to be more integrated. And I think we’re able to do that when we’re servant-hearted and are able to meet and to engage the Southwestern community.”

Hannah Elliot*, a Master of Divinity in Missions and Evangelism student who has studied under Copeland and worked alongside him, emphasizes his genuine passion for the students he works with and missions he leads.

“He genuinely tries to get to know us, what we are passionate about, and how he can help us succeed in what God is calling us to do,” Elliot says. “For those of us going into missions, he has helped calm our anxieties, encouraged our excitement, and guided our steps as we walked towards global engagement.”

Elliot also praises Copeland’s dedication to not just uphold the values expected of him as a leader in the Southwestern community, but to carry them out and live them in all of his pursuits.

“It has been a great honor to work with him as we serve the students at Southwestern,” Elliot says. “He exhibits the six core values of Southwestern daily in how he interacts with all of us somehow connected to Southwestern.”

Copeland’s current project is the publication of an e-book with co-editor Will Brooks, entitled Global Engagement in Missions and World Christianity: Asia Pacific, which addresses various theories used by missionaries in areas such as multi-cultural ministries, migration and diaspora engagement, ethnic tensions, and sufficiency of Scripture. The book will be released by Seminary Hill Press in 2026.

Copeland says he was seeking answers to his own questions in this project.

“Sometimes, you go through ministry, you go through life, and you think you find something to write about because you have an opinion about something,” Copeland said. “But really, the best writing starts with a really good question.”

When he’s not working or writing, Copeland enjoys his time outdoors and with his family. Copeland and his wife, Jeani, have three children. He enjoys running, hiking, kayaking, and playing pickleball with his middle child. While self-admittedly not a cinephile, he does occasionally enjoy a good comic book movie.

There is one time of day Copeland cherishes most of all. With two of his children in their teens and staying up later, he has found less time to spend alone with his wife later in the day. To work around this, he and his wife have a special ritual.

“Some of the sweetest times during a week is when my wife and I, we wake up 4 a.m. and have our coffee dates,” Copeland said. “We just sit there, … debate about who’s going to make the coffee, then make the coffee, and then sit and talk about everything.”

While the average person might find all that Copeland works on to be exhausting enough, he still seeks more, always looking forward to the next idea, the next project, the next “question” that needs an answer.

“If you’re an artist, you’re always thinking about what your next piece of art is going to be,” Copeland says of his desire to find further questions and issues in the realm of missions that he can help provide an answer for. “And it’s fun.”

He mentions areas of interest to him such as improved and streamlined communication between contacts in the mission field, ways to build rapport and trust between missionaries on the ground and with leadership overall, and how to properly distinguish between areas that might seem dangerous but are truly safe, and vice-versa.

While he may be humble about his work, Michael Copeland is nothing less than a productive servant of the Great Commission at Southwestern. His accomplishments see fruit, and, in his efforts, there is a clear, unwavering dedication to continue providing solutions to problems and answers to questions while also mobilizing those around him to share the Gospel in different contexts as well.

*Names changed to protect future mission work.