January 2023
This issue of Missiology is devoted to the theme of the 2022 Annual Meeting, The Conversion of the Missionary. The call for papers that went out stated:
We know that conversion is central to the Gospels. Ongoing conversion is the lifelong process that takes place in the lives of those who live in a dynamic relationship with Christ and can affect the way the missionaries see themselves in carrying forward the coming of the kingdom of God. It is this relationship with the Lord that brings the kind of wisdom that has the potential to inspire transformative mission praxis.
This issue presents the plenary addresses from the conference, along with some additional papers related to the conference theme. The first section is dedicated to the conference papers. In addition to its primary theme, each of these four papers also draws out the value of accompaniment as taught by Pope Francis: the need for the missionary to walk with the local community in humility and a listening spirit, learning with and from them in living out the Christian faith.
First are the notes from Madge Karecki, SSJ-TOSF, who was the ASM society president for 2021–2022. Sadly, Sr. Madge became ill and was unable to attend the conference, and passed away shortly afterwards. However, she had sketched out some preliminary thoughts regarding the conference theme, which are included here.
Next is the address from Bishop Frank J. Caggiano called “The Conversion of the Missionary: A Journey of the Heart.” Bishop Caggiano encourages Christians to be fully characterized by authentic surrender to Christ, humility, and joy. Those qualities enable missionaries to be “agents of joyful transformation in Jesus Christ” for those we accompany on life’s journey.
Darrell Whiteman’s address is called “The Conversion of a Missionary: A Missiological Study of Acts 10.” In it, he reflects on Peter’s journey from ethnocentrism to an acceptance of Gentiles as co-heirs in Christ. All Christians need such a journey, argues Whiteman, and this conversion is repeated and ongoing throughout church history.
Last in the plenary addresses is Susan Bigelow Reynolds’s “Solidarity as Slow Conversion.” Recounting two stories of attempts to develop “parish-based interracial solidarity in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston during the 1960s,” Reynolds argues that a “slow” process, initiated from below rather than imposed from above, was more effective in creating church–neighborhood solidarity.
This section closes with the presentation of the Lifetime Achievement Award to Dan Shaw of Fuller Seminary, including the award text from Darrell Whiteman and the acceptance text from Shaw.
The second group of articles in this issue consists of papers not from the annual gathering, but nevertheless loosely related to the theme of conversion. Brendan Carmody reflects on his own experiences of adjustment and changes of thinking about what constitutes religious education based on his years of mission work in Zambia. Ian David Dicks discusses holistic mission as characterized by “the building of relationships through growing participation. Growing participation is intentionally engaging in ‘shared-life’ with people in a community.” Though using different words, his concept of growing participation resonates with Pope Francis’s teachings on accompaniment that were discussed in the annual meetings. Finally, Kirk Franklin’s article discusses—though he does not use these exact words—the ongoing conversion in a Western mission agency as it learned to collaborate with national partners in decolonizing mission.
As usual, this issue also offers a number of book reviews for the readers’ consideration. The editors are grateful for the continued high-quality submissions of articles and book reviews and hope this issue will both challenge and edify.
Leanne M. DzubinskiEditor-in-Chief
