Vincent Donovan ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 1953 having become a member of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit. He did his undergraduate studies at Ferndale Seminary in Norwalk, Connecticut, before doing graduate work at Fordham University in New York and later Gregorian University in Rome. In 1956 he was assigned to the Kilimanjaro mission in East Africa where, after learning Swahili, he taught at various Catholic schools. While he was stationed at Loliondo in north Masailand he became interested in the writings of Roland Allen. Dissatisfied with the traditional approach to missions, he decided to abandon the educational method and simply present the Gospel to the Masai people and encourage them to make a decision after a year. The now famous story is contained in his book Christianity Rediscovered, which was first published in 1978. He returned to the United States in 1973, where he was assigned to several different ministry positions.

In 1989 he wrote The Church in the Midst of Creation, a critique of the church’s imposing Western standards on non-Western congregations.

Fr. Donovan died in 2000.

This lecture is also available on the Asbury Theological Seminary library website at this link: https://place.asburyseminary.edu/ecommonsatschapelservices/6779/