Noteworthy

Died. Missions leader and surgeon Andrew Ng Kang Chin, 71, January 7, 2019, in Singapore. Ng and his wife, Belinda, were the first missionaries with SIM East Asia, when it was founded in 1980. After he completed medical school, the couple moved to Niger, where they worked twelve years at the SIM Galmi Hospital among the Hausa, Fulani, and Tamacheq. He served as SIM International’s deputy international director for Asia (2006–12) and finally as an advocate for extending SIM’s work in the region.

Died. Mission networker Paul E. McKaughan, 80, December 31, 2018. A California native, McKaughan and his wife, Joanne, started churches and a Bible school in Brazil, where they were missionaries for fourteen years. In 1975 they joined the Presbyterian Church in America, and he worked for a decade as coordinator of the denomination’s Atlanta-based Mission to the World agency before being appointed associate international director of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, Pasadena, California. In 1990 McKaughan was named executive director of the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association, later called the Evangelical Fellowship of Mission Agencies and since 2012 a part of MissioNexus. After retiring, he became a MissioNexus ambassador-at-large; in 2017 the association honored him with its Lifetime of Service Award. McKaughan is coauthor of Choosing a Future for US Missions (1998).

Died. Author and missionary Don Richardson, 83, December 23, 2018. In 1962 Richardson, a Canadian, and his wife, Carol, moved to (what is now called) Papua, Indonesia, with Regions Beyond Missionary Union (now World Team.) His “commitment to the cannibalistic Sawi tribe transcended the fierce opposition that living among them presented. During their fifteen years on the field, Don and Carol slowly found ways to contextualize the gospel,” reported Pioneers (https://pioneers.org/2018/12/24/remembering-don-richardson). He wrote about those experiences in Peace Child (1974), which sold almost half a million copies in twenty-seven languages and was a Reader’s Digest selection. They also translated the New Testament into Sawi and as a result saw many of the villagers commit their lives to Jesus Christ. A World Team minister-at-large until March 2018, Richardson also painted colorful scenes of tribal life in New Guinea (see www.peacechildlegacy.com/paintings) and was involved in developing and teaching the Perspectives on the World Christian Movement course.

Died. Missions leader, teacher, and editor Knud Jørgensen, 76, December 12, 2018. A native of Slagelse, Denmark, Jørgensen was director of Areopagos, a mission organization based in Oslo, Norway, that “works with religious dialogue and studies, Christian spirituality, and assistance.” He was also associate professor of missiology at MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion, and Society, Oslo. As Areopagos director from 1998 to 2010, Jørgensen is remembered especially for renovation of the Tao Fong Shan Christian Centre and for creating a master’s degree in diakonia and Christian social practice at Lutheran Theological Seminary, both in Hong Kong. Earlier in his career he was executive secretary of communication at the Lutheran World Federation, Geneva, and information manager of Norwegian Church Aid. Jørgensen, who also was affiliated with the Lausanne Movement, Regnum Books International, and the Egede Institute, coedited numerous books, including The Lausanne Movement: A Range of Perspectives (2014) and Bible in Mission (2013). In a review of Mission to the World: Communicating the Gospel in the Twenty-First Century: Essays in Honour of Knud Jørgensen (2009), David Greenlee noted, “His convictions and personality have enabled him to span the missiological gap between Lausanne and Geneva” (Missiology: An International Review 38 [July 2010]: 367).

Died. Manfred Müller, SVD, 85, Austrian priest, missionary, and former secretary-general of the Divine Word Missionaries, September 15, 2018, at the Austrian motherhouse of the SVD, St. Gabriel, near Vienna. He was first assigned to teach church history and missiology at the Divine Word Seminary in Tagaytay, Philippines, where he served for fourteen years, starting in 1964. In 1978 he was called to Rome, where he served in the leadership of the Divine Word Society until 1993, when he became the rector of the Pontifical College of St. Peter, the residence of more than 150 priests from Africa and Asia pursuing doctoral studies in Roman universities. He retired to St. Gabriel in 2006, where he was active as a pastoral associate in nearby parishes and transcribed some 12,000 handwritten letters and documents to and from the SVD Generalate and its rapidly expanding missions in Africa, Oceania, and Asia.

Appointed. Paul Chitwood as the thirteenth president of the Southern Baptist International Mission Board, Richmond, VA, on November 15. A pastor for eighteen years, Chitwood was chosen in 2011 as executive director of the Kentucky Baptist Convention. Chitwood, 48, succeeded Clyde Meador, a former missionary and the IMB interim president since pastor and author David Platt resigned the post in August 2014. According to published reports, Chitwood inherited a budget that has been balanced since 2017, but a career missionary force at its lowest levels in more than thirty years.

Between 1927 and 1951, millions of Christian posters entered the Chinese market. Printed on the cheapest paper, most were used in street preaching and teaching. The Center for Global Christianity and Mission, Boston University School of Theology, announced in November the Chinese Christian Posters Project (http://ccposters.com/). With leadership of associate director Daryl Ireland, a team of students and collaborators digitized, tagged, and translated 470 popular posters published in China. The posters are fully searchable in Chinese and English and provide insight into popular Chinese Christian theology, largely from the Nationalist period. Rather than representing the ideas of educated elites, the posters address the basics of Christian life and practices, ranging from the meaning of salvation to personal hygiene. The Chinese posters will be shown April 5 as part of a conference, World Christianity and the Arts, Boston Theological Institute’s 2019 Costas Consultation on Mission and Ecumenism, held at Boston College, Brighton, MA.

The American Society of Missiology will hold its 2019 annual meeting June 14–16 at St. Mary’s College, South Bend, IN, with the theme “Lifestyles of the Rich and Faithful: Stewardship, Simplicity, and Mission.” The speakers will include Ronald J. Sider, distinguished senior professor of theology, holistic ministry, and public policy, Palmer Theological Seminary, Wynnewood, Pennsylvania; and Al Tizon, executive minister of Serve Globally, the international ministries arm of the Evangelical Covenant Church, Chicago. For conference details, go online to www.asmweb.org/content/annual-meeting, or e-mail Tizon, the ASM president, al.tizon@covchurch.org. The Association of Professors of Mission will hold its 2019 annual meeting June 13–14 at the same location, with the theme “Reimagining Mission: Looking Back, Moving Forward—Teaching Mission in a Changing World.” For conference details, go online to www.asmweb.org/apm, or e-mail A. Sue Russell, professor of mission and contextual studies, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, KY, the APM president, at sue.russell@asburyseminary.edu. The Academy for Evangelism in Theological Education (https://aete.online) will meet concurrently with ASM at the same location.

The Transatlantic Roundtable on Religion and Race (TRRR, https://religionandrace.org) will hold its 2019 conference July 1–5 at Hekima Institute of Peace Studies and International Relations, Hekima University College, Nairobi, Kenya. The theme will be “Old Divisions–New Social Formations: Africa and the Diaspora.” J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, Trinity Theological Seminary, Accra, Ghana, an IBMR contributing editor, is a TRRR conference convener. For details, e-mail William Ackah, coeditor of Religion, Culture, and Spirituality in Africa and the African Diaspora (2017), w.ackah@bbk.ac.uk.

The Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians will hold its fifth Pan-African Conference July 2–5, 2019, at the University of Botswana, Gaborone, Botswana, with the theme “Mother Earth and Mother Africa in Theological/Religious/Cultural/Philosophical Imagination.” For details, go to www.a-asr.org/cfp-circle-of-concerned-african-women-theologians, or email Sidney Berman, sidneybrmn@yahoo.co.uk, or Malebogo Kgalemang, mkgaleman@gmail.com.

The African Association for the Study of Religions (AASR, www.a-asr.org) and the Journal of Africana Religions (www.psupress.org/Journals/jnls_JAR.html) an-nounced in November 2018 a partnership that “will advance the global study of Africana religions” with the formation of “pan-Atlantic research teams that will unite scholars from Africa, the Americas, and Europe for collaborative research and writing,” according to a press release. AASR will become a journal sponsor, and its members working in Africa will receive complimentary e-subscriptions. The journal will play a role at the ninth AASR conference in Dakar, Senegal, in 2020.

Read this additional Noteworthy obituary: Lamin Sanneh, Leading Expert on Christianity and Islam in Africa, Remembered for “a scholarly life of immense value and significance” (p. 122–25).