Dr. Payne is the Director of the Center for North American Missions and Church Planting.  He has served in pastoral and church planting ministries in churches both in Kentucky and Indiana. Prior to joining the Southern faculty, he was an Assistant Professor at Crossroads Bible College in Indianapolis, and an Adjunct Professor of Church Planting and Evangelism at Southern Seminary. He is also a national missionary with the North American Mission Board.

He has written numerous articles and reviews for various periodicals in the areas of missions, church planting, and evangelism.  He is the author of Missional House Churches: Reaching Our Communities with the Gospel (Paternoster), The Barnabas Factors: Eight Essential Practices of Church Planting Team Members (Missional Press), Discovering Church Planting: An Introduction to the Whats, Whys, and Hows of Global Church Planting (Paternoster), and Evangelism: A Biblical Response to Today’s Questions (Biblica).  He is also the author of the forthcoming works The Strangers Next Door: Global Migrations and the Great Commission Opportunity for You and Your Church (Biblica), Strategy Matters: Missionary Strategy and Global Disciplemaking (Baker Academic, co-authored with John Mark Terry), and Kingdom Expressions: Trends Influencing the Advancement of the Gospel (Thomas Nelson).

He has professional memberships in the Great Commission Research Network, the Evangelical Theological Society, and the Evangelical Missiological Society.

Dr. Payne is the founder of the the web-based resource www.northamericanmissions.org. He serves as the Executive Vice President for Administration for the Evangelical Missiological Society, as the book review editor for The Great Commission Research Journal, and on the editorial/advisory committee of the Evangelism and Missions Information Service at the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College