ASM Lifetime Achievement Award for Dan Shaw

It is a special privilege and honor on behalf of the American Society of Missiology to present Dan Shaw with the Lifetime Achievement Award for 2022. I first met Dan and his family in the Solomon Islands in 1977. He was a freshly minted PhD in anthropology and I was in the midst of my dissertation research. Our lives have intersected ever since, with our common interests in Melanesia, anthropology, and mission.

Dan Shaw is one of those “rare birds” I call them, who have combined their training as a professional anthropologist with a passion for understanding and contributing to God’s mission in the world. Although there are some recent encouraging signs to the contrary, anthropologists have often had disdain and antipathy for missionaries, and sometimes justifiably so. Anthropologists frequently identify themselves as peddlers of the exotic and champions of cultural diversity. Unfortunately, they have often created caricatures of missionaries as the destroyers of culture, rather than understanding that the gospel can transform culture. Dan Shaw’s anthropology and engagement with other cultures has deepened and broadened his faith, and his faith has given purpose to his anthropological study. I believe Dan Shaw belongs to that pantheon of outstanding missiological anthropologists like Paul Hiebert, Alan Tippett, Charles Kraft, Sherwood Lingenfelter, Robert Priest, Eugene Nida, Charles Taber, and Louis Luzbetak, who have helped us understand how the worlds of anthropology and mission can be complementary rather than antagonistic. Like this rare group of missiological anthropologists, Dan has been creative and far reaching in his anthropological and missiological interests.

So, why are we honoring Dan Shaw with the Lifetime Achievement Award?

Among other reasons, he has been a prolific writer, publishing eight books, including the most recent one Samo Songs, which is being released this week. In addition, he has co-authored five books and written scores of articles and chapters in books. There is also a private, less public side of Dan’s lifetime contributions, which we should mention but which often goes unheralded. That is the work of mentoring graduate students, and Dan has mentored around 200 of them.

I reached out to some of his students and here’s what I learned. One of them wrote, “Dan was a great mentor who was humble, available, creative, passionate, enthusiastic, jovial, and respectful.” One student said, “Dan guided me through the unchartered waters of my PhD, providing brilliant guidance, all the while allowing me space to think and work. His office was the site of many insights. I may not have recognized my most significant finding without Dan’s nudging. Beyond being a mentor, he’s been a friend.” Another student noted,

What I recall fondly about Dan, both in the classroom and outside, was his sincere faith and passion for the good news coupled together with his energetic commitment to anthropological excellence. He showed us clearly what it meant to be a “missiological anthropologist” of the highest quality. His missional and anthropological exuberance was contagious. His teaching and mentorship profoundly impacted me and still work out in my current research and teaching. I’ll always be grateful for Dan’s kindness and mentorship.

As a Wycliffe Bible Translator, Dan was committed to the mantra that everyone should receive God’s word in their own language. That’s an easy statement to make, but Dan knew how complex and difficult it was to do, and to do it right. If Bible translation wasn’t done right, then God’s Word would sit on the shelf and gather dust as too many Bible translations have done. His research interests in cognitive studies, schemas, social structure, translation, and hermeneutics prepared him academically, and his love of God and commitment to God’s mission in the world, along with a long and productive life, have enabled him to contribute much to the Kingdom of God and become the worthy recipient of the American Society of Missiology’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

So, how should I describe Dan? He is like a tall tree, planted by a flowing stream of water, whose branches hang over the fence. His deep anthropological roots combined with his passion for Bible translation have produce a lifetime of helping further our understanding and appreciation of the diversity of the kingdom of God.

I often reflect on the image that John gives us in Revelation 7:9 that around the throne of God is an enormous crowd—so many people in fact that they couldn’t be counted. And they were from every race, tribe, nation, and language praising God. This scene is surely an anthropologist’s paradise, and Dan Shaw will certainly be there, singing Samo Songs to the Glory of God.