Following Jesus with Young Children

Dr. Mimi Larson is the Executive Director for the Center at Faith and Children and Assistant Professor of Educational Studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Prior to joining the TEDS faculty, she served for over 25 years in practical church ministry and was Visiting Assistant Professor of Christian Formation & Ministry at Wheaton College. Her research is in the area of children’s faith formation with a particular interest in how faith is formed in early childhood.

She serves on the board for the Society of Children’s Spirituality: Christian Perspectives, and her latest book is Bridging Theory and Practice in Children’s Spirituality: New Directions for Education, Ministry and Discipleship (edited with Robert Keeley, Zondervan, 2020). Dr. Larson regularly consults with churches regarding their ministry with children and families and has developed curriculum for children’s ministry in the local church. As a recipient of Calvin’s Institute of Christian Worship’s teacher-scholar grant as well as a worshipping communities grant, her current research focus is how ministry leaders thoughtfully engage children in worship.

Carson serves as the Executive Director of Uncommon Pursuit.

During his undergraduate degree at Rhodes College (Memphis, TN), Carson studied philosophy. As part of his degree program, he studied at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, for two terms. During his time at Oxford, he sought out an atheist lecturer to identify the greatest intellectual challenges against Christianity. He subsequently took a tutorial on the question of how we can know God and, in another tutorial, wrestled with the problem of suffering and evil.

After graduation, he served for ten years in campus ministry. He had the joy of investing in the spiritual growth of students at Emory University, Rhodes College, LeMoyne-Owen College, Harvard University, and Boston College Law School. From 2006-2010, Carson completed an M.Div. degree at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

In 2013, Carson started to work at RZIM. In 2016, he was commissioned to start and build an online community called RZIM Connect. In 2020, over 375,000 people visited the community and viewed 1.8 million pages. He resigned from the ministry in January 2021 to advocate for survivors and protest the ministry’s toxic defense of Ravi.

In the fall of 2021, momentum developed to start what became Uncommon Pursuit. Carson is enrolled in the D.Min program at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He serves as an elder at Fellowship Bible Church and as Chair of the Board for Creating Jobs. He has authored or contributed to many books, including co-editing the anthology True Reason, and writing 12 Steps to God and Together. His family lives in the Atlanta area.

In his free time, Carson enjoys photography, chess, and entertaining his children with dad jokes.