Meet Our Team
Matt Schmidt
CEO
Bob Meisel
COO
Trish Anderson
CFO
Greg Walker
Evangelism Director
Ken Wienecke
Director of Information Technology
Jordan Apodaca
Content Director
Joshua Erlien
Church Engagement Director
Greg West
Media Co-Director, Electronic Media
Ibrahim Inuwa
Media Co-Director, Audio Production
David Sorrell
Learning Management System Consultant
Mark McGee
Communications Consultant
Daniel Ippolito
Private and Homeschool Engagement Director
Dr. Richard Howe
Philosophy, Theology, and Cults/Occult Consultant
Christian Drake
Board Member
Tony Gurule
Evangelism and Islamic Outreach Consultant
Chris Van Allsburg
Content Contributor
Matt Schmidt
CEO
Matt is the CEO and a founder of Engage 360 Ministries. Matt was raised in Nebraska where he also did undergraduate studies. After a three-year process of wrestling through questions dealing with the existence of God, trustworthiness of the Bible, and what Christianity taught; he came to faith in Christ. This process has given him a passion to help others know their faith and to share their faith effectively.
Matt and his wife Erica decided to move to Charlotte, NC to pursue a Masters in Philosophy which he completed in the Spring of 2018. Matt and Erica have 3 children with a fourth on the way. Erica is a trained educator and they are homeschooling their children using a classical education model.
Matt was drawn to the need for Christians to be able to both share and defend their faith. However, he became convicted that the fruit from efforts of very talented men and women dedicated to speaking, teaching, writing, and creating materials to help Christians share and defend the faith has not measured up to the quality of their gifts and what they have produced.
After serving with Ratio Christi (a campus ministry) for 7 years at a private university in Charlotte and as a leader on the Ratio Christi National team, Matt teamed up with others to create Engage 360. The E360 Team seeks to help bridge the gap between everyday Christians and those in the communities around them. Matt has a passion to create a team that can faithfully serve Churches and Christian Organizations to help them grow in spiritual depth and effective evangelistic outreach. In his free time Matt enjoys spending time with his wife and children, reading, and fishing.
Bob Meisel
COO
Bob is the Chief Operating Office for Engage 360 Ministries. After graduating from high school, he entered New Tribes Bible Institute, where in addition to studying God’s Word he met Becky. They married after graduation and immediately entered into missionary training with New Tribes Mission (now Ethnos360). In 1979 they left for the Philippines with their young son and spent the next 24 years serving there as cross-cultural missionaries, first in tribal church planting and then in leadership and administration. Two more sons were born during their time in the Philippines.
In 2003, God changed their ministry direction and Bob accepted a position as Associate Pastor at Cornerstone Church in Hemet, CA, where he served for 13 years. It was a joy and honor to serve the Church Body that commissioned and sent them out as missionaries. Sensing another ministry change, Bob & Becky moved to Charlotte, NC. Their 3 sons and their wives have given them 8 grandchildren, and they love spending time together with them.
Bob holds a BA in Intercultural Ministries. His passion is to selflessly serve Jesus by serving the needs of others, encouraging believers to become fully devoted followers of Christ in every aspect of life.
Trish Anderson
CFO
Trish is the CFO and member of the training team for Engage 360 Ministries. Responding to God’s call to full time ministry, Trish resigned from twenty+ years in commercial and government accounting industries to work with adults, youth, and kids of all ages to equip them to know what they believe, share and defend those beliefs, and grow deeper in their faith so that they are impassioned to share the truth of the Gospel with others.
Trish is currently attending Southern Evangelical Seminary pursuing a Masters of Arts in Christian Apologetics with a Concentration in Philosophy. Her passion is to use this training to equip local churches to meet the unique challenges of today’s post Christian culture, help them find answers to the important questions in life, and transform their communities with the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Trish lives in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia with her husband Eric. They have two grown children, Marie and James. Trish enjoys spending time at the range with Eric, watching the New England Patriots and Boston Red Sox, time with friends, and reading, reading, reading.
Greg Walker
Evangelism Director
Greg Walker is the Evangelism Director for Engage 360 Ministries. He was raised in Southern Illinois and after high school enlisted to serve in the United States Army as an Army Airborne Ranger (1/75th). After combat deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq, Greg struggled with the effects of war. This led to him to temporarily move to Barcelona, Spain where he refined his artistic abilities. Once back in the U.S., he started showing his art in Laguna Beach, CA and Charlotte, NC.
Through the hopelessness of a life without Christ, Greg eventually encountered a fellow former Army Ranger who shared the Gospel of Jesus Christ with him. Greg responded by placing his faith and trust in Christ Jesus alone for salvation!
Since his conversion Greg has been the assistant director of Global Cross Ministries, an associate pastor, a campus minister at Appalachian State University, a keynote speaker, and an evangelist.
Greg holds a BA in Religious Studies, MA in Religion, and is currently completing an MDiv in Apologetics, all from Southern Evangelical Seminary.
Greg has cross-cultural missions and speaking experience in China, Honduras, Thailand, and throughout the U.S. He loves to learn from and to share Jesus with people from diverse cultural perspectives. Greg’s primary mission and passion is to lead, teach and train in the area of evangelism. Greg equips Christians to teach and train other Christians on how to be more effective at biblical evangelism.
Greg and his wife Lindsey have four children.
Ken Wienecke
Director of Information Technology
Ken began his role as Director of Information Technology in May 2019 to help scale up the training of Christians as spiritual conversationalists. His career background includes 33 years in Great Commission IT ministry across three organizations and two continents. He came to Christ as a high school junior in May 1972 during Billy Graham’s only visit to Birmingham, Alabama (where Ken grew up). Although his family had attended a mainline church until his high school years, Dr. Graham’s message included for the first time in Ken’s awareness all the essential elements of God’s good news. With understanding came desire, and Ken moved from death to life by responding to the invitation.
Ken graduated from Georgia Tech in Atlanta in 1979 as a budding Electrical Engineer, having crammed four years of study into six as a cooperative education student. Christian friendships and the ministry of a good church during that time were key to his growth beyond spiritual infancy.
After graduation, while working back in Birmingham as a telecommunications engineer in the electric utility industry, Ken innocently joined one of the most missions-minded churches in America. Hearing God speak through the church’s constant emphasis on the Great Commission had its effect on Ken: volunteer involvement with JAARS and three short-term trips with Wycliffe Associates (Peru, Australia and Kenya) led him in 1985 to join Wycliffe Bible Translators as a career missionary to provide engineering services…for the next 26 years. In 1989, while working at the Wycliffe facility in Dallas (Texas), Ken met and married Katy (who had joined Wycliffe at the orientation course just prior to his own).
In August 2012, Ken and Katy left Wycliffe to join the then-fledgling OneHundredFold ministry, which provides mobile technology to discretely deliver and house Christian content, especially to people living in politically restrictive regions. He worked primarily on software to support online theological education.
In January 2018, Ken joined the staff at United World Mission (UWM) as Technology Manager. Over the following year, he supported the home-office IT systems which enable UWM’s 45-country church planting, theological training and other ministries.
The Scriptures and its teaching consist of information, albeit housed in physical objects (printed material, electronic media, etc). Consequently, handling any kind of information in today’s world requires IT. Ken’s ministry over the years covered many domains of IT: telecom and large computer management, network engineering, computing/telecom support to field workers, database development, IT recruiting, client-side software development, server-side web development, online education development and IT strategy. The massive scope of just these IT these needs spawned in Ken a compelling drive to promote the Great Commission’s urgent need for laborers (beyond the obvious roles requiring seminary and Bible college graduates) to perform the critical roles upon which the whole enterprise physically depends in today’s world. IT is only one among many skillsets (like finance, management, marketing, engineering, tech writing/training, media, journalism, logistics, course design, administration, law, government relations, facilities maintenance, project management, aviation, childhood education, recruiting, research, etc, etc, etc) which are just as necessary to spreading the gospel as pastoring, evangelism or church planting. Contact Ken if this surprises you and/or you wonder how your background might just fit a Great Commission need.
Ken and his wife Katy live in Monroe, North Carolina with their daughter Charissa. Their son Christopher and wife Caroline live not far away in Charlotte with their toddler son William. Ken is a news addict who also enjoys classical music, traveling, choral singing, programming and promoting missions.
Jordan Apodaca
Content Director
Jordan is a Christian, the husband of Tarah, an evangelist-apologist with Ratio Christi at Sacramento State, a volunteer with Engage 360 and Reasonable Faith, and an aspiring philosopher studying at Southern Evangelical Seminary. His intellectual passions include the study of free will and the doctrine of heaven. His ministry passions are to share the love of the Gospel and to equip other Christians to do the same. Other interests include sports (especially Ultimate Frisbee), time management, veganism, peanut butter, and personality theories.
Joshua Erlien
Church Engagement Director
Joshua Erlien is a teacher, writer, community apologist, and a homeschool dad. He has served as the director for the UNC Charlotte Ratio Christi chapter since 2011. His experience with college students has clarified and focused his perspective on outreach and discipleship.
Joshua has worked with TEAM at Southern Evangelical Seminary speaking in a lecture tour in Italy, and conferences and panel Q & A forums locally. As a Community Apologist, Joshua speaks to churches, community groups, and families on apologetics issues with a focus on commending Jesus Christ through winsome conversation.
Joshua and his wife, Nita, have four children and reside in Charlotte. They are passionate about helping families and students thrive by passing on the faith to the next generation in an intellectually credible and compelling way.
Greg West
Media Co-Director, Electronic Media
Greg West is the Founder of The Poached Egg (TPE), named one of 2018’s top 100 blogs on Christianity, Jesus, and the Bible. Inspired by his personal studies in Christian Apologetics, Greg launched TPE in 2010 to provide an internet resource where others could find the information they needed to remain strong in their faith and know how to defend it and not become a statistic like he had once become.
Having grown up in a Christian home actively involved in his faith, Greg was quickly influenced by the culture and became agnostic once he left the “safety” of church and home. The Lord eventually drew Greg back to Christianity, but it was through the discovery of apologetics that Greg deepened his faith and learned how to defend it.
Almost 20 years later, TPE is bringing articles, Kindle deals, videos, and book reviews to the TPE Community on a daily basis with nearly 10,000 posts that have helped readers strengthen and defend their faith in a world that is increasingly hostile to Christianity and the Christian Worldview.
Greg is the Media Co-Director of Engage 360 committed to helping churches and Christian organizations defend and share their faith.
When not studying apologetics, or looking for great articles to share, Greg enjoys studying American History and spending time with his teenage son. Greg is a US Army veteran who served stateside in the 101st Airborne Division and in South Korea in the 2nd Infantry Division.
Greg’s passion is to raise awareness of the need for apologetics training in the Church and in the home.
Ibrahim Inuwa
Media Co-Director, Audio Production
Ibrahim Inuwa’s passion for discipleship and evangelism led him to join the team of Engage 360, in the summer of 2018, as a founding member and Co-Director of Media.
At Wheaton College, Ibrahim became acquainted with film editing, audio production, and radio broadcasting while completing his undergraduate Communications studies.
For several years, Ibrahim consumed web-based audio broadcasts and came to appreciate their utility at reaching extensive and culturally-diverse audiences. He has since developed his audio engineering aptitude, with the objective of contributing to collaborative ministry projects. One of which is a podcast for Engage 360. His personal mission is to help inform, equip, and to urge Christians to become fully engaged followers of Christ.
Ibrahim has been an Associate Minister, Interim Pastor, and has spoken at numerous venues (i.e., Southern Evangelical Seminary’s TEAM Ministry, along with the National Conference on Christian Apologetics).
Ibrahim earned a Bachelor’s degree in Communication, with minor emphasis in Biblical & Theological Studies, at Wheaton College. He is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Apologetics at Southern Evangelical Seminary.
Ibrahim and his wife Kim are passionate about reaching the next generation, for Christ and His Kingdom.
David Sorrell
Learning Management System Consultant
Mark McGee
Communications Consultant
Mark McGee has worked in journalism and communications since 1968. His experience includes radio, television, print and online journalism as an investigative reporter, news correspondent, anchor, executive producer, and news director, and as a communications director and consultant. Mark is the author of three paperback books and more than 200 Ebooks. Most topics are about evangelism, discipleship, and apologetics.
Mark was an atheist until he investigated theism and Christianity in 1971 from scientific, philosophical and historical evidence. He has worked with many churches and evangelistic and apologetics ministries since then including the Christian Apologetics Alliance and Ratio Christi. Mark currently works in student ministry at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). He trained in Bible and Theology at Luther Rice University and Apologetics at Biola University.
Mark has been active in martial arts and self-defense training since 1961 and has been teaching from a Christian perspective since 1971. He continues to teach public and private classes in the Huntsville, Alabama area and serves as Co-Founder of Grace Martial Arts with ministries in Florida and Alabama. Mark has been involved with Karate for Christ International since 1972.
Daniel Ippolito
Private and Homeschool Engagement Director
Dan was born in Central Georgia and raised in the northwest Atlanta area. He graduated from Marietta High School in 1996, after which he married his High School sweetheart, Kathy, and enlisted in the United States Air Force. Together, Dan and Kathy have five children and have been a homeschooling family since 2009. The Ippolito family retired from active duty in 2014, and Dan entered Gospel ministry shortly thereafter. He holds seminary degrees in Religious Education and Apologetics from Liberty University and Southern Evangelical Seminary, respectively. He is projected to complete his Doctor of Ministry in Apologetics in Fall of 2018.
In addition to his role as Private and Homeschool Engagement Director with Engage 360 Ministries, Dan serves as the Director of Veritas Classical Schools, Cumming, Georgia–alongside Kathy, who also serves as a teacher and Administrative Assistant. He also leads a Ratio Christi chapter at the University of North Georgia discipling and training college students. Dan is passionate about evangelism, apologetics, and classical education. It is both his calling and pleasure to equip the saints for the work of ministry and evangelism (Mt 9:37-38, 28:18-20; Jn 10:16; Acts 1:8; Rom 10:11-15; Eph 4:12; Phlm 6).
Dr. Richard Howe
Philosophy, Theology, and Cults/Occult Consultant
Dr. Richard G. Howe has taught courses in philosophy at the University of Mississippi (Graduate TA), Mississippi State University (Instructor), Marquette University (Graduate TA), the University of Arkansas (Graduate TA) and Luther Rice University (Assistant Professor).
He has a BA in Bible from Mississippi College, an MA in Philosophy from the University of Mississippi, and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Arkansas. Dr. Howe is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and Apologetics at Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, NC where he still teaches part-time and is the Past President of the International Society of Christian Apologetics.
He is an author of / contributor to several apologetic books including Religion of the Force: Exploring the Religious Philosophies of the Jedi Force in the Star Wars Saga (with Norman Geisler), The Popular Encyclopedia of Apologetics, Reasons for Faith, To Everyone an Answer, The Jesus Quest: The Danger from Within, and a festschrift in honor of Norman L. Geisler.
He has spoken and debated in churches and universities in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Africa on issues relating to the defense of the Christian faith. In their free time, Richard and his wife Rebekah enjoy international travel.
Dr. Howe will assist Engage 360 as a content contributor and consultant helping to develop materials within his areas of expertise.
Christian Drake
Board Member
Christian currently serves as Regional Director of Finance & Operation for KIPP Charlotte where he manages all regional finance activities, HR, and technology work and ensures that the organization is in compliance with financial and government regulations. Prior to joining the team at KIPP Charlotte, Christian served as Operations Controller for Canteen, a division of Compass Group North America where he was responsible for financial and operational oversight of multiple business lines in the group’s Mid-South division with annual revenues in excess of $175 million dollars. Prior to his role with Compass Group, from 2014-2016, Christian’s ministry work included serving at Southern Evangelical Seminary in various capacities, including Chief Operating Officer. More recently, in February 2017, Christian was appointed to the Board of Trustees at Southern Evangelical Seminary. Christian also previously served as Chief Financial Officer for Ratio Christi, an international campus alliance, from 2015-2018.
A veteran in the non-profit and for-profit arenas alike, Christian served as Chief Operating Officer of the National Children’s Oral Health Foundation from 2006-2014 where he was responsible for directing all aspects of daily operations, including finance, marketing, human resources, IT, and development. Before getting involved in non-profit management, Christian spent 15 years in the publishing industry where he managed a multi-state weekly publication in the financial sector.
Throughout his career, Christian has developed extensive management experience and has a significant track record of demonstrated successes in the areas of financial management, non-profit regulations, internal controls, and strategic planning. Mr. Drake has a passion for process improvement and looks forward to continuing to hone these skills through his various professional endeavors.
Tony Gurule
Evangelism and Islamic Outreach Consultant
Tony Gurule is the Vice President of Radical Truth, a full-time missionary, speaker and trainer. He is also the host of Colliding Worldviews on the Aramaic Broadcasting Network‘s Trinity Channel, and the host of Ratio Christi‘s Truth Matters television show. Last but not least, Tony is a Community Apologist who informs and equips both adults and youth, especially in the areas of evangelism, apologetics, and Islam.
Chris Van Allsburg
Content Contributor
Chris was born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan, playing baseball, riding bikes, and going to the beach on the shores of Lake Michigan. He was raised in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and always believed in God. However, Chris suffered childhood trauma at age 13 when his mother was in a head-on collision which left her bodily mangled, mentally damaged, and the other driver – a mother of four – gone. While he never stopped believing in God, he certainly lived a life of running away from the pain. He gave the Lord the middle finger and lived a party life for about a decade. At age 22, the Holy Spirit performed a radical work of grace in Chris through the preaching of Pastor Glenn Shelton at Lakeshore Lutheran Church in Grand Haven. God’s presence in Chris’s life was now all-too real, and it was a dramatic experience.
Not all was peaches and cream though. Chris soon found out that deep skepticism against Christian belief came from many fronts – especially on the college campus. This hostility to the Christian faith inspired in Chris the desire to know why Christianity is true, and what evidences for it were available. And this wasn’t just to make him more equipped at sharing his faith. He had his own questions as well. Big questions. This led Chris to study apologetics and eventually earn a Master of Divinity with biblical languages. Years later he earned a Master’s degree in Philosophy.
Today, Chris is a chapter director with Ratio Christi, a campus apologetics ministry. He also teaches ethics at the local community college where he lives. He also helps educate his three children at home in the classical method, teaching Latin, Logic, History, Writing, Rhetoric, and more. He has been to Ethiopia six times, teaching philosophy and theology there, and serving with a non-profit child sponsorship ministry which helps widows and orphans affected by HIV. Chris is just as interested in enabling personal well-being in others he is in apologetics, philosophy, etc.
He is an avid student of music theory for guitar and aspires to someday be a shred god on his Fender Stratocaster. His hobbies are mountain biking, hiking, shredding on his Strat, and reading. His favorite book is The Lord of the Rings. He lives in Hickory, NC with his wife Monica and three daughters. Someday, he hopes to have a “real job.”
Engage Your Church
We offer interactive, hands on training for churches culminating in putting the training to practice by taking trainees out into the local community for live conversations.
Engage Your City
We desire to see Christians united and mobilized to reach their city with the truth of the Gospel. Our geographically based online communities offer training, resources, and a forum to organize regular outreach.
Engage Your University
We are creating multi-day university evangelism events that include sidewalk conversations, formal talks, and coordinated follow-up plans for churches and campus ministries.
