Search Phrase = Ecumenical
Keywords: Missions, ASM, Missiology, Ecumenical
An Ecumenical professional association for mission studies. We bring together more than 600 academicians, mission agency executives, and missionaries in a unique fellowship of scholarship and mission.
Who We Are
As the Ecumenical professional association for mission studies in North America, the American Society of Missiology includes more than 600 academicians, mission agency executives, and missionaries in a unique fellowship of scholarship and mission. It seeks to:
Promote the scholarly study of theological, historical, social, and practical questions relating to the missionary dimension of the Christian church.
Relate studies in Missiology to the other scholarly disciplines.
Promote fellowship and cooperation among individuals and institutions engaged in activities and studies related to Missiology.
Facilitate mutual assistance and exchange of information among those thus engaged.
Encourage research and publication in the study of Christian missions.
The ASM publishes the quarterly journal Missiology: An International Review, which has a worldwide print circulation of approximately 1,150 subscribers. The Editor of the journal is Leanne Dzubinski.
In cooperation with Orbis Books, the society publishes the ASM Series, in which more than 30 monographs have been published since 1980. Robert Hunt is chair of the editorial committee for the series.
The ASM Dissertation Series was begun in 1993, and in June 2006 the name was changed to the ASM Scholarly Monograph Series. James Krabill is chair of the editorial committee for that series.
In all of its publications, it is the concern of the ASM to incorporate the knowledge, understanding, skills, and techniques provided by the social and behavioral sciences, by regional area studies, by a wide range of professional experience (in fields such as agriculture, education, medicine, and public health), and by biblical, theological, and historical studies.
The ASM meets annually in June in tandem with the Association of Professors of Mission (APM).
Read The History of the American Society of Missiology, by Wilbert Shenk here.
You can read the Articles of Incorporation and the Bylaws of the ASM here.
I have been thinking and writing about refugees quite a bit recently. There's ample reason for it; today, seventy million people in our world have been forced from their homes as refugees or internally displaced persons.1
November 11, 2018 will mark the hundredth anniversary of the end of World War I. The end of that war brought peace to some, but the refugee crisis it spawned and the ensuing famine in Russia that affected millions made life a nightmare for years after the trench warfare ceased. I wrote an article about this that comes out in the International Bulletin of Mission Research in a couple of months. Specifically, I wrote about the European Student Relief - the first aid organization to be truly international and Ecumenical. It was organized by Christian students around the world to come to the aid of refugee students.
Our refugee crisis today was again brought to my attention a couple of weeks ago at the Oxford Institute for Methodist Theological Studies with a sermon given by Rev. Peter Storey, a Methodist pastor from South Africa. I met him several days earlier - spotting his name tag as I trickled into a lecture hall with 150 other attendees for the conference's first plenary lecture. I was surprised to see him. He is not the young man that he was when he bravely fought against the apartheid regime for decades beginning in the 1960s.
As part of his resistance to that regime he would sometimes hold a sign that read,
All who pass by remember with shame the many thousands of people who lived for generations in District Six and other parts of the city, and who were forced by law to leave their homes because of the colour of their skins. Father forgive us.
This so-called "Plaque of Shame" was erected on the outside wall of the local Methodist church in District 6 as well. I'm told it is still there. In his sermon this past Sunday, Rev. Storey also described another time in the history of that church - long after he had departed as its pastor - when the building provided a place of refuge for people fleeing the ruthless regime of Robert Mugabe in the neighboring state of Zimbabwe.
A few days ago, on the last day of the Oxford Institute, Peter preached on the story of four friends who dug a hole in the roof of a home where Jesus was teaching and asked (demanded?) that Jesus heal their paralyzed friend. The church, he said, has to be broken in order to actually be the church. By serving refugees from Zimbabwe, the church he loved - including the building itself - was literally broken down from the stress of housing dozens of people who lived, cooked, and slept in the sanctuary.
I am reminded of how rarely I have seen this kind of ministry happen in the churches that I have attended and served in for the past several decades. To be clear, I have been a part of churches - urban ones especially - that did prioritize ministry to their neighbors over keeping the church building in shape. I am grateful for their witness, but I have not seen this enough.
When Rev. Storey finished preaching I felt compelled to thank him for his sermon. It had moved me to tears. But I knew that kind words and a handshake wouldn't be enough. I wanted to hug this man - to feel the aging sinews in his back muscles that had fought against oppression. Peter Storey reminded me that morning that the Christian life is not primarily about finely nuanced talks or academic papers (valuable as they can be) but about ministering to people where they are at in their fullness as people truly created in God's image and who reflect that image even in the brokenness of their bodies. "Too often," he noted, "we are more concerned about being right than doing good!"
Rev. Storey paraphrased Mother Teresa in his closing words that Sunday morning in Oxford. I can't think of a better was to close this blog than to follow his example:
"May God break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in." Reflecting on this quotation with respect to the story of the paralytic and his four friends, Peter went on, "Only if the church gets broken open does the world get mended... Open up the Church so wide that the whole world falls in."
[1] See the United Nations High Commission on Refugees. http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/data.html. This number would be higher if an even broader definition of refugee and internally displaced person were utilized.
The global pandemic has shaken our standardized methods and practices of transmitting the faith of our Christian traditions, leading us to revalue the essence of the gospel. Christian mission today is searching for new directions to approach the postmodern, postcolonial, and Ecumenical paradigms. My new book, Towards a New Praxis-Oriented Missiology (Pickwick, 2020), argues that mission is not just a transmission of knowledge that keeps an established structure and culture alive (often justified and glorified by a specific ecclesiological model). Rather, mission seeks to embody the content and praxis of the gospel. Mission can be understood as an invitation to initiate a transformative process of faith, which leads to personal and social transformation.
This work brings into dialogue Stephan Bevans's notion of mission as prophetic dialogue and Paulo Freire's concept of conscientização. The aim is not to use Freire's conscientização as a method to do mission but to rescue the process that leads to a transformation in both concepts, allowing one to encounter the other where they are, while respecting the uniqueness of every person, culture, church, and society. Prophetic dialogue enriched by Freire's thought, and vice versa, can open new perspectives within missiology and provide a new approach to mission praxis. The concept of conscientização is shown to support the conscious dedication, preparation, dialogue, and commitment to incarnate the gospel in every culture. It sets up the interior attitude to read and interpret, as well as to intervene in specific realities. Besides revealing the riches that prophetic dialogue offers to mission praxis, my book explores questions and challenges in missiological discourse today, such as how to promote the gospel in a more experiential way.
My mission praxis is then analyzed through the experiential and transformative elements of the Verbum Dei charism applied to my ministry with the Latino immigrant population in California. Bevans's and Freire's work is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of prophetic dialogue and conscientização in the Verbum Dei Missionary Fraternity mission praxis.
"Towards a New Praxis-Oriented Missiology" will awaken in missiology scholars, ministers, and in people dedicating their lives to serve others, the desire to rescue and transmit the humble power and beauty of the Gospel taught by Jesus. It will provide tools to initiate a transformative process of faith, leading to a personal and social transformation; tools to help people relate the content of faith to the concrete reality (personal, familiar, social); and tools to make the content of faith relevant to the reality of the present era.