The Andrew Walls Centre for the Study of African and Asian Christianity, Liverpool Hope University, Liverpool, UK, will hold a conference “Christian Revival and Renewal Movements in the 20th and 21st Centuries,” June 28–30, 2020, immediately after the Yale-Edinburgh Group on the History of the Missionary Movement and World Christianity conference in Edinburgh. Presenters will explore aspects of national or regional, denominational or confessional revivals, renewals, and revitalization of Christianity, along with the responses of people of other faiths and traditions to these revivals. Revivals improve how Christians perceive their loyalty to Jesus Christ and their practices of spirituality and social engagement, and they reinvigorate Bible study, prayer, meditation, church attendance, and missionary witness, according to Daniel Jeyaraj, professor of World Christianity and the center’s director (jeyarad@hope.ac.uk). The co-conveners with Jeyaraj are Andrew F. Walls and Harvey Kwiyani. For details, go online to https://store.hope.ac.uk/conferences-and-events/school-of-humanities/andrew-walls-centre/the-andrew-walls-centre-annual-conference-2020.
The 2020 Missio Nexus Mission Leaders Conference will be held September 24–26 at the Rosen Centre, Orlando, Florida, with the theme “Focus 2020: The Great Commission; What Is Our Goal?” Participants will explore how theology and missiology “are being challenged and reshaped by the deconstruction brought on by post-modern thought and post-Christian philosophy [and ask] as these shifts occur, how do we understand the Great Commission and obey it?” Plenary speakers will include Kate Coleman, Next Leadership; Enoch Wan, Western Seminary; Jon Burns, Greater Europe Mission; Bob Blincoe, Frontiers; and Ted Esler, Missio Nexus. Sixty workshops are being planned in nine tracks: Executive Leadership, Globally Engaged Churches, Global Strategies, Human Resources, Member Health, Mobilization, Short-Term Missions, Training, and Mission Finance and Administration. For details, go to https://missionexus.org/focus-2020.
Appointed. Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, 62, as prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, which is responsible for Roman Catholic missionary work and related activities worldwide. Pope Francis announced Tagle’s appointment December 8, 2019. He succeeded Cardinal Fernando Filoni, who led the congregation from 2011 to 2019. A Filipino, Tagle is the second person from Asia to occupy this Vatican position, following Indian Cardinal Ivan Dias, who headed the congregation from 2006 to 2011. Tagle’s appointment as head of the Vatican’s evangelization efforts reportedly embodies Pope Francis’s appeals to “reach out toward the peripheries” and the developing world (Vatican News, December 8, 2019). Previously Tagle was archbishop of Manila (2011–19); he also was president of Caritas Internationalis, a federation of Catholic relief, development, and social service organizations, and of the Catholic Biblical Federation. “Every baptized person,” Tagle told the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano (December 11, 2019), “is sent on mission by Christ and the Church. Every baptized person who lives life in Christ, participating in his death and resurrection, is a missionary.”
Appointed. Hyunchol Hong as executive director of the Korea Research Institute for Mission (https://krim.org), Seoul, as of January 1, 2020. A graduate of Alliance Bible Seminary, Hong Kong, he taught hermeneutics to Chinese ministers while serving in China from 2005 to 2018 with HOPE (hope.or.kr). Hong succeeded Steve Sang-Cheol Moon, a contributing editor, who retired and is now president and CEO of Charis Institute for Intercultural Studies, a ministry he started to focus on empirical research for global missions and training mission researchers.
Died. Reinhard Bonnke, 79, evangelist, missionary, and author, December 7, 2019, at home in Florida. When he was just nine years old, Bonnke, the son of a pastor from Königsberg, East Prussia, Germany (now Kaliningrad, Russia), committed his life to Jesus Christ and soon thereafter announced his intention to be a preacher and missionary to Africa. After study at the Bible College of Wales, he became a pastor in Germany and then a missionary in Lesotho.
Fulfilling that childhood proclamation and later being inspired by evangelist Billy Graham, Bonnke became known for preaching Pentecostal gospel campaigns that attracted millions. In 2000 his ministry, Christ for All Nations, drew some 1.6 million people to a rally in Lagos, Nigeria, an event that, according to Christianity Today (November 1, 2000), “stands as one of the largest gospel gatherings recorded in modern times.” He conducted mass gatherings in forty-seven nations, including in thirty-four African countries, the majority being open-air campaigns. “I am interested in bringing Africa to the foot of the Cross,” he told the New York Times in 1984. He wrote forty books, including a 2009 autobiography, Living a Life of Fire.
Died. Pulidindi Solomon Raj, 98, artist, author, theologian, and pastor, December 28, 2019, in Vijayawada, Krishna District, Andhra Pradesh, India. Born in Neggipudi, Andhra Pradesh, Raj was the son of a mission schoolteacher and a Bible teacher for women. He taught Christian education in Luthergiri, Rajahmundry, served as a chaplain at Andhra Christian College, and taught intercultural communication at Selly Oak Colleges, Birmingham, UK. An internationally noted contributor to theological research and arts, especially for creating batik and woodcut images, he was also pastor of an Andhra Evangelical Lutheran church. Raj is the author of A Christian Folk-Religion in India: A Study of the Small Church Movement in Andhra Pradesh (1982) and The New Wine-Skins: The Story of the Indigenous Missions in Coastal Andhra Pradesh, India (2003). In his art, Raj “depicts Jesus amidst the refugees and suffering people. The artist’s favourite story is John 4, where he shows the liberative message of Jesus taking water from an untouchable woman, something which is still distant reality in South Indian villages, where the Dalits are not allowed to take water from the wells of others since they are considered ‘polluting’” (Oxford Handbook of Christianity in Asia [2014], 468).
Died. John Samuel Pobee, 82, African theologian, ecumenical executive, Anglican scholar, New Testament author, and seminary professor, January 22, 2020, in Accra, Ghana. Born and educated in Ghana, where he later taught and served as dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ghana, he completed his theological studies at Westcott House, Cambridge. He became academic dean at the Ecumenical Institute of the World Council of Churches at Bossey in Celigny, Switzerland, and coordinator for the Programme on Theological Education of the WCC in Geneva. Returning to Africa, he became canon of the Anglican Diocese of Accra, Cape Coast, and Sunyani-Tamale, and vicar general in the Diocese of Accra. Pobee served as consultant to Lambeth Conferences of bishops in 1978, 1988, and 1998. He was president of the International Association for Mission Studies (1988–92) and was later named an honorary life member. Pobee was a member of OMSC’s Research Enablement Program for the Advancement of Scholarship in Studies of Christian Mission and World Christianity. He is the author of Toward an African Theology (1979), The Worship of the Free Market and the Death of the Poor (1994), and Sense of Grace and Mission (2012). He was an editor of the Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement (1991, 2002) and the subject of a Festschrift, Trajectories of Religion in Africa: Essays in Honour of John S. Pobee (2014).
