The Oxford Centre for Mission Studies: A Tradition of Inquiry in Holistic Transformative Mission Scholarship

This article will consider the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies as ‘a tradition of inquiry and a coherent ‘movement of thought’. MacIntyre's word ‘movement’ is appropriate in that a tradition of inquiry is neither static nor fixed and those who join in its inquiry and methods are as important as the ideas produced themselves. The activity they perform they come to embody. And to that degree the purpose of this article is to bring to light the ways OCMS has become an agent of Wholistic Transformation ² both in terms of the life of the mind and the renewal of earth in Christ's image. Hence, we will follow OCMS's movement of thought over the past forty years in the development of OCMS as an academic institution and how this was shaped in the life and work of its various members both past and present. It is based upon personal experience as well as on interviews with founders, academic officers, faculty, alumni, and current students: primarily in the OCMS PhD programme, but not exclusively. In sum, it is a living tale of OCMS of the ongoing embodiment of mission study as Wholistic Transformation.

A Radical Bildung: Enabling Majority World Scholarship and Leadership

Bildung in German is often translated in English as ‘culture’ or ‘education’, but it is a far richer term than its English equivalents. Bildung shapes, corrects, and extends a certain point of view or attitude towards life and living. ³ Bildung, as such, is dynamic and takes shape as we construct experience and meaning through dispositions formed, skills gained, excellences and virtues nurtured, and traditions extended and reformed through time. As such Bildung encompasses the way people think, act, speak, experience, and even research in academic institutions.

Thus, Bildung is about formation: individual and collective and this formation is both physical and external in terms of an academic programme or its teaching and Library facilities, yet is also an inner process of cultivation, manners and demeanour of those who inhabit and learn within this Bildung and are formed by it. Both the internal and external aspects of Bildung work together to form a sort of people in the world whose character individually and corporately distinguishes them.

This article will consider OCMS offering a radical Bildung given its origins, history, and its ongoing practices, excellences, research, and output and the way it has challenged and revolutionised much of how mission and missiology have been understood in the late 20th and early twenty-first century.

The Origins of OCMS Research

OCMS was borne out of the late twentieth century recognition by mission scholars and theologians that mission studies did not reflect the great demographic, missional, and theological shifts in Christianity beyond the Global North and West: as Andrew Walls noted:

The theological map of the world has been transformed through demographic changes in the Church brought about by the recession from Christian faith in the West and the huge accession to it in other parts of the world … All point to an urgent need for the development of Christian scholarship in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and for increasing African, Asian and Latin American leadership in theological education. ⁴

Meeting that urgent need, however, would require a redefinition of mission. Leaders of evangelical mission movements of the 19th and twentieth century had largely defined mission as evangelism, discipleship, and church planting. ⁵ Increasingly, however, many Asian, African and Latin American theologians argued that this definition of mission was insufficient. According to Vinay Samuel, one of the founders of OCMS …

Mission is individuals coming to Christ, challenging corrupt and sinful systems, structures and cultures, and enabling individuals and communities to experience God's Transforming Power. Transformation is to enable God's vision of society to be actualised in all relationships, social, economic, and spiritual, so that God's Will may be reflected in human society and his love be experienced by all communities, especially the poor . ⁶

This drive for a new understanding and engagement in mission was led by Christian scholars such as René Padilla, Samuel Escobar, and Alberto Costas from Latin America, Melba Maggay and David Lim from the Philippines, Hwa Yung of Malaysia, Vinay Samuel from India and Kwame Bediako and David Gitari from Africa, and Peter Kuzmic of Croatia, Chris Sugden from the United Kingdom, and Ron Sider from the United States. This led to the founding of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Mission Theologians (INFEMIT), today known as International Fellowship for Mission as Transformation. Their aim was to transform theology, mission and embodied engagement from the perspective of the Global South. Further, they wanted this engagement to be done by Christian thinkers and leaders beyond Western Europe and North America. In turn, this led to the founding in 1983 of the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies. OCMS was to bring in church and mission leaders living and working in the Global South who could effectively address questions from the perspective of the Majority World. This was to include research on evangelism, redemption, social justice, liberation, economic development, and biblical studies. ⁷ What was called for was a fresh perspective in research that didn’t simply import theology and missiology from the West but could construct theology based on ‘a profound contextualization of the local culture’ in the Global South and East. As René Padilla argued:

It must be admitted that the total panorama of the Church in the Third World continues to be that of a church without theology … there is no hope that this situation will change as long as the missions’ theological responsibility is conceived of as the exportation of theologies elaborated in the West. Especially in the fields of theological education … And as long as the Gospel does not attain a profound contextualization in the local culture, in the eyes of people in that culture it will continue to be a 'foreign religion'. ⁸

As such, simply steering students from the Global South into western universities wouldn’t do. Rather, what was needed was a research centre that would refashion scholarship to empower Wholistic Transformation that integrates proclamation, evangelism, church planting and social transformation in a seamless whole. ⁹ What was proposed was a radically different and distinct academic Bildung in pursuit of mission as transformation in a theological idiom at home in the Global South. This impetus has been the deep structure academically and intellectually of OCMS as a tradition of inquiry and a coherent movement of thought.

Why Oxford?

Given this impetus for non-Western perspectives, the placing of OCMS in Oxford appears paradoxical given that the University of Oxford is the oldest university in the English speaking World. Nonetheless, the selection of Oxford was pragmatic. The founders priority was not in reproducing a Western academic institution though they were aware of what Oxford had to offer. Attempts to establish OCMS as a permanent private hall of the university were not carried forward because of the university's expectations to endow 5 chairs of theology, so from its founding OCMS was never part of Oxford University as the University expected. What Oxford provided was a central hub where international students could gather at a time when student visas in the UK were not difficult to obtain. More importantly, being in Oxford allowed students access to the Bodleian Library and those Oxford Faculty willing to work with OCMS students. In Oxford, OCMS was able to purchase St Philips St James Church on Woodstock Road that was adjacent to several Oxford University Colleges.

Setting up shop in the United Kingdom at this time made sense given the opportunity for new academic ventures to join as validated partners with existing universities in the UK. University validations in the UK at this time were to encourage innovation and provide new revenue streams for universities to reduce their reliance on the government purse. For financial reasons, universities were keen to establish validations with new institutions. This led to a validation event at OCMS where different university partnership officers came and shared how they might be able to facilitate OCMS students. Eventually, OCMS would enter into validation relationships with Leeds University and Open University. Nonetheless, the onus on the validating universities was that students at newly minted institutions like OCMS would receive the validating university degree. An OCMS student in the validated programme with Leeds or Open University would receive a Leeds or Open University PhD upon completion. Thus, due diligence and careful monitoring were required to protect the reputation of the universities.

Early Teething Problems with Validations

The challenge with the early validation partners was that OCMS could be seen more as a recruiter rather than a serious centre of innovative research. Validation was a way of drawing international students into their own programmes and their own departments. Once ensconced in university departments of theology and under departmental professors as supervisors, the culture and brand of the university department ultimately held sway. This gave little breathing room for non-standard, controversial, and often cross-disciplinary research topics of OCMS students who felt pressure to trim or restructure their research to fit into the very academic formation OCMS sought to avoid. This was especially true in departments sceptical of research approached through faith and reason and thus at odds with the OCMS commitment to misión integral. ¹⁰

OCMS students needed to have written up a viable proposal before registration with the validating university. Given the diverse cultural, linguistic, academic, and experiential backgrounds of OCMS candidates, many arrived in Oxford without the training or experience to move from their mission passion and interest to a viable PhD proposal that a supervisor would be willing to guide. Thus, many OCMS students languished in the pre-registration stage that could last up to three years. Further, given the kaleidoscope of opinions offered by academics, practitioners, and fellow students, this often left some students confused, disoriented, and frustrated.

For students arriving from outside the UK and without extensive financial resources, the cost of study was daunting. Significant resources were needed to obtain a visa, pay student fees, secure housing, and pay for food, travel, and books. Even for those able to secure the resources needed to research and study in the UK, the challenges didn’t end. A part-time UK PhD can take up to eight years or more to complete and mission issues that were front and centre upon arrival often, over time, lose clarity and perspective. Thus, rather than agents of indigenous mission research with fresh perspectives from the Global South, the temptation is to embrace and extend Western orientations to mission study.

Validating OCMS Research

Given the above: It is not surprising that OCMS as a doctoral programme struggled in its early years. Though the passion for Wholistic Transformation remained fervent, withdrawal rates proved unacceptably high. ¹¹

To address these challenges, the first step was to put in place a validation agreement that would transform the relationship of OCMS to the validating university. That began when OCMS was able to extricate itself from problematic university validations and develop its validation with the University of Wales (UW). The validation worked out with UW granted OCMS freedom to own, oversee, design, and develop the OCMS degree programme with minimal interference. This allowed OCMS to inaugurate a truly bespoke OCMS academic programme that nurtured the OCMS culture of research (Bildung). No longer would OCMS research be limited under the auspices of a single academic department within a university that required their own faculty to supervise. Instead, OCMS reported to the UW partnership office and UW appointed a Moderator sympathetic to OCMS's vision for research and not directly involved in OCMS student supervisions. UW would monitor and approve the jointly governed programme, but the overall design and management were now firmly in the hands of the OCMS team.

A Broader Horizon of Research

The new Validation agreement provided a wide berth for OCMS students engaged in an ever-widening range of research topics well beyond the limits of traditional academic departments. It allowed students as well to select from a spectrum of methodologies that suited their research proposal. More importantly, no longer constrained to name a supervisor from within a department, OCMS was now free to identify and appoint supervisors who were neither employees of OCMS nor UW so long as the supervisors met university requirements. Thus, OCMS identified and approached supervisors internationally based on their expertise and experience to best support an ever-widening array of research topics and methodologies. Though OCMS could only afford a token annual honorarium for their services, most of those identified and approached agreed to supervise OCMS students given the unique research topics proposed and the national, cultural, and ethnic diversity of OCMS students. This released the OCMS potential to tackle the kind of research diversity OCMS had originally envisioned.

The new validation arrangement allowed OCMS the programmatic versatility to begin to address the withdrawal rates that had threatened the viability of the doctoral degree programme. As noted, inadequate preparation for doctoral research had haunted OCMS from its inception. Initially, a three-day induction event was held at Oxford composed largely of lectures on bible and mission with little attention to research skill training and development. OCMS replaced this in 2000 with a bespoke ten-day induction with courses in developing research proposals, working with research supervisors, introduction to critical research skills, sound citation methodology, and field base research amongst other topics. Incoming OCMS students were trained in the use of libraries and inducted into the Bodleian and Social Science Libraries. Over time, the two-week induction programme was extended to its current five-week induction programme.

At induction, students are assigned an OCMS Mentor from the OCMS faculty whose first duty is literally to ‘shut up and listen’. Mentors are not to steer the student into a topic the Mentor feels competent in, but rather to allow the OCMS student to articulate and develop their passion into a working proposal. Given the diversity of OCMS research, this is not easy especially in areas beyond the Mentor's expertise. Once the research proposal is drafted, the Mentor identifies two potential supervisors willing to work with the student with the necessary expertise, experience, and willingness to work with the student. Given the cross-disciplinary nature of a large portion of OCMS research proposals, students often have two supervisors in disparate fields. Nonetheless, given that the preliminary literature review shows that the research will produce new knowledge and the proposal is in place ensures that the research and writing will largely be driven by the student's research interest and not serve as proxies for the supervisor's research interest, which is all too common in traditional research departments. ¹² In turn, this helps to nurture relevant and engaged research informed by the national, ethnic, and cultural distinctives of the student.

This then feeds into the overall goals of OCMS. First, as we have noted, is to develop research proposals that derive from and inform theology and mission studies from the perspective of students in non-Western settings. The second goal is to develop mature mission researchers who have gained research excellence. Along with the Research Excellence Framework of the United Kingdom ¹³ in recent years some elements of the Beirut Benchmarks 2010 International Council of Evangelical Theological Education (ICETE) ¹⁴ have been incorporated into the OCMS Research Development Planner (RDP). The RDP includes areas such as research subject knowledge, core knowledge concepts, issues & history of thought, research methods, familiarity with alternative research paradigms, core Biblical/Missional scholarship, the ability to articulate research relevance to Christian missions as they develop their identity as a Christian scholar. OCMS works with their students to develop RDP throughout the entire PhD journey. It is submitted and reviewed by supervisors and faculty at OCMS student progression panels.

Part time registration enables scholars to stay in their ministry and reduces the time they are away from their context. It also provides some relief from finding funds to support lengthy stays in Oxford. Currently, nearly all OCMS students are registered as part-time students. Though granting tier 4 status for full-time study and residency has been an option until 2020, OCMS has generally discouraged students from applying for full time study. Annual residency of six weeks in Oxford in part-time study ¹⁵ ensures that the bulk of research by OCMS students is within their own context and culture. Research informed by and done in their own country nurtures contextual research perspective and impact. As well, it nurtures personal, vocational, and cultural continuity for the researcher when they graduate. Part-time study also discourages immigration to the UK in that annual short residencies do not provide a pathway to British citizenship, thus encouraging OCMS scholars to remain in their ministry and mission work upon graduation. In turn, part-time residencies have enhanced the to and fro movement of OCMS where researchers bring insight and concerns from their ministry context to the heart of OCMS that then radiates internationally through their fellow researchers internationally.

Thus, with the new validation in place, the realisation of OCMS mission studies gained ground. Candidates entering OCMS could now pursue research that suited their missional culture and context. In weekly student seminars they were introduced to the widening array of research topics, methodologies and diverse fields of study, The growing array of supervisors with diverse expertise allowed OCMS students’ research horizons to broaden. As the former Executive Director of OCMS Wonsuk Ma periodically reminded OCMS scholars and applicants, in joining OCMS they were no longer parochial scholars, but truly global scholars. This reminder was not to suggest that their research and contribution would in any way be homogenised into a more universal or Western enlightenment perspective. Indeed, just the opposite; it was through the relevance of their research for contextual ministry and mission that could now be shared internationally in their shared interest in Wholistic Transformation.

Outcomes of the OCMS Bildung

With the adjustments to the programme that the new validation afforded, OCMS withdrawal rates dropped precipitously. In the year 2000, 38 percent of all students either dropped out or were timed out of the degree programme. By 2005 that percentage had dropped to 0 students dropped or timed out. ¹⁶ Currently, well over eighty percent of students who register with the university complete their research and receive the PhD degree. ¹⁷ From 1983 to 1993 one student successfully completed the PhD, from 1993 to 2003 thirty-four successfully completed the PhD, from 2003–2013 fifty-nine completed the PhD, and from 2013–2023 there were eighty-four successful completion of the PhD. If current projections hold, it is likely that by 2025 OCMS will have seen over the life of its PhD programme over two hundred completed doctoral theses by students from fifty-six nations. ¹⁸

Yet, numbers do not capture how OCMS scholars have begun to address Rene Padilla's caution regarding exporting ‘foreign religion’ and to no longer consign ‘the Church in the Third World … to be that of a church without theology, especially in theological education.’ ¹⁹

As can be seen in the research titles at OCMS below, that engagement in theology and mission from Non-Western perspectives has been at the forefront of OCMS research:

‘The place of forgiveness in the reintegration of former child soldiers in Sierra Leone.’

Research done alongside artisanal miners in Kenyan mines, how rites of forgiveness in Sierra Leone bring healing to villages arising from civil war, ethnographic insight into leadership in a Bangkok slum are theological reflections that percolate from the ground in non-Western contexts. OCMS research on issues is often difficult to broach even in prestigious universities with numerous faculty in their varied academic departments. The trend within large Western universities over the past two centuries has been toward ever greater specialisation and ever narrowing disciplines of study. Though such specialisation is merited and has produced remarkable advances, it is research that tends to reinforce insular foci and too often prizes precision and universality over relevance and contextuality.

This was particularly true of the study of mission in the 19th and twentieth century. In large measure, Mission studies were viewed not just as a late-comer and also a bit of an outlier to seminary training. The core of Protestant theological training was in Biblical Studies, Theological Studies, Ecclesiology, Liturgy/Music, Homiletics, and Counselling. This makes sense, given that Protestant seminaries were primarily in the business of training pastors to serve in churches in a majoritarian Christian context. Fitting mission studies into this core has required ever greater definition to spell out and delimit the distinctive nature of mission studies in mission departments. This project has never been easy, as Kerstin Kim has noted, arriving at a concise definition of mission studies is difficult given missiology's devilish plasticity over the past half century. ²¹ But coming to a definition is required if mission studies and missiology are to abide in seminaries, bible colleges, and universities as an identifiable field of study. Thus Kim notes:

Without a clear delineation of the nature of missiology, successive PhD students—many of whom arrived without backgrounds in the field—were left to work it out for themselves from a bewildering variety of books. Decisions about who could be appointed to the missiology faculty were also difficult without a clear description of the field. ²²

The reason for defining a focus for mission studies is to enable students in the field to know which texts constitute the field and the conceptual departmental framework by which to determine who could and should be appointed to the ‘missiology faculty’. In turn, those appointed as tenure track professors cut their theological teeth teaching introductory courses of the discipline and are granted tenure based on research and writing in the defined discipline of missiology. Nonetheless, given this entrapment within an academic discipline defined largely by faculty within Western institutions, this institutionalisation of mission studies and mission theology produces the very theology that Padilla decried as ‘foreign theology’ not at home in the Global South and East.

Rather than ever refining and defining mission studies and missiology so as to keep mission studies within defined disciplinary boundaries, OCMS research transgresses these boundaries ever outward thus expanding the research horizon to developing issues in the Global South. Certainly, such trespass does not imply ignorance of current Western missiological research within current definitional boundaries given the nature of literature reviews and research questions, but even here much of the mining of Western research is done with a critical and deconstructive eye. Researching beyond departmental definitional blinders has enhanced the ability of OCMS students and faculty to rethink, revise, and discover alternatives to Western theologies that have proved inadequate or might be better understood through non-Western perspectives.

OCMS Bildung Rests on an Implied Missiology Resting on the Doctrine of Creation

Much of missiological research and writing has assumed that the biblical wellspring in mission flows from the Great Commission of Matthew 28. This is evidenced in Kirsteen Kim's title ‘The Future of Mission Studies: Commissiology?’.

If mission studies or missiology starts with questions about what can be called the commission—not just the Matthean version but also Mark, and Luke, and John's renderings. Perhaps it would be better named commission-ology or commissiology to clarify this point? ²³

Accordingly, this definition of mission and missiology radiates out of a response to the call of Christ to ‘disciple the nations’ and centred on evangelism and church planting and later expanded into the Social Sciences and in particular Cultural Anthropology. ²⁴ Certainly, this was the missiological ground of the founding of the Fuller School of World Mission and Fuller School of Intercultural Studies. ²⁵ Missiology was research on how the church was to respond and fulfil the Great Commission using the tools research and modern social sciences offered.

Nonetheless, as we have noted, OCMS from its inception embraced mission as transformation that tied redemption in Christ with ‘challenging corrupt and sinful systems and structures’ and oriented toward understanding mission terms of the Kingdom of God and all that entails. Though this doesn’t ignore The Great Commission of Christ, missiologically that commission only makes sense in light of the unfolding Missio Dei revealed in the covenants with Adam, Abraham, Israel, and the New Covenant in Christ. Thus, rather than radiating from the Great Commission outward, the work of human salvation and vocation are informed by the covenant of creation and its fulfilment in Christ.

By looking at mission and mission studies through the lens of a creational mandate, this opens up missiology to a range of research that can redemptively engage all aspects of life. In turn, the missional work of redemption and transformation includes witness, evangelism, and church planting, but it doesn’t stop there in its embrace of informed advocacy, research, and practical engagement. Indeed, the breadth of OCMS research reflects the diverse cultures, languages, idioms, and insights of its faculty and students who find their unity in Christ and in the pursuit of his kingdom. Some have argued against such a broad understanding. They argue that ‘if mission is everything then mission is nothing’, but once creation, redemption, and Wholistic Transformation hold sway then the response is that ‘if mission is everything, then everything is mission’. This is the consequence of approaching redemption as relevant to ‘all relationships social, economic, and spiritual’ according to God's will and in light of his love for humankind and creation. ²⁶ This understanding of Mission resting in the covenant of creation provides insight as to why OCMS occasionally selects supervision teams or thesis examiners who are not confessing Christians. Given that the areas of engagement touch upon all aspects of life, it is not unusual for OCMS students to engage with scholars in economic development, microfinance, effective HIV intervention, mining engineering, and even modern sanitation. When one moves beyond Western societies, engagement with the practical challenges of life are seen to have spiritual, physical, and missiological significance.

Holistic Transformation and Publishing

The engaged and diverse scholarship of OCMS has shaped mission publishing. As D.P. Davies noted in his impact assessment of OCMS research, that more than a third of its theses have been published. ²⁷ Connections that have been established through OCMS supervisory relationships internationally have allowed OCMS to tap scholars to present at the Montagu Barker Lecture (MBL) series and to enter into dialogue as to how their research touches upon areas of mission previously not addressed. Over the years scholars invited to deliver the lectures from all over the world have covered a wide range of topics, thus enlarging the field of studies in mission and transforming it. This has served as a catalyst both within and beyond OCMS. Certainly, these subject areas are not confined to OCMS, but the wide spectrum of OCMS research facilitates a wide range of engagement in key issues in mission from diverse perspectives beyond Western missiological frameworks. A program which helps to transcend the framework is the Guided Research Program (GRP) which offers mission practitioners the opportunity to deepen their understanding and to research topics on an academic basis but outside of the formal setting that comes with university studies. In turn, a number of the MBL series have been published in the peer reviewed OCMS Transformation Journal that is recognised as one of the leading mission research journals internationally. ²⁸ The same can be said for OCMS's Regnum Publishing that has been able to tap the work of OCMS and other mission scholars. OCMS also had a formative role in the inauguration and development of Lausanne Global Analysis (LGA), an electronic mission periodical of the Lausanne Movement. ²⁹ One feature of LGA has been its ability to get input from OCMS alumni whose diverse research interests and international locations allow for on the ground analysis and insight.

The OCMS Bildung

This article has set out an account of OCMS as a tradition of inquiry. That tradition of inquiry is a living academic culture whose goals, practices, design, excellences, and virtues find their root in the pursuit of mission as transformation. As an embodied community it draws on Christian scholars internationally to carry its inquiries forward. The various twists, turns, and challenges OCMS have faced has in turn served to produce its unique design and practices that afford a wide array of research interests to be pursued and completed. This is reflected in the diversity of research methods and approaches that has allowed its students to consider mission research from ever new angles of engagement. As we have noted, what has helped to foster this research is its location outside the typical constraints within departmental approaches to research, yet paradoxically has served to bring useful conversation between research disciplines. The common thread that runs through this eclectic mix of research whether on artisanal mining in Kenya, the place of Vastu Shastra in Indian church architecture, or understanding a biblical theology of the land in Israel/Palestine has been and will be mission as transformation.