International Bulletin of Mission Research

John Flett’s major work on apostolicity rejects any understanding that privileges cultivation over communication, and that understands the church as a culture to which Christians must acculturate. Rather, building on Johannes Hoekendijk’s ecclesiology in dialogue with insights from World Christianity, apostolicity needs to be understood as the church’s constant moving across boundaries, faithful to Christ, the only ground of apostleship.

The missionary movement in Korea is growing steadily in terms of the number of missionaries. At the end of December 2016, a total of 21,075 Korean missionaries (1.95 percent more than a year previously) were working under 156 mission agencies in 153 countries. For the most part, Korean missionaries lack significant knowledge of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, but the missionaries who are familiar with it typically understand that its impact on missionary service will be profound. For some, it is an opportunity; for others, a threat—which one, depending on how well missionaries and Christian workers are prepared for it.

An account of an academic symposium held at Maryknoll, NY, on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the China Educators and Formators Project, sponsored by Maryknoll Society. This project brings to the United States young leaders of the Catholic Church in China, chiefly women religious and priests, for graduate studies in US colleges and universities. Selected by their local bishops and superiors, they are to equip themselves with requisite skills and capacities that, upon their return to China, resource the life of dioceses, parishes, communities, and ecclesial programs for the flourishing of the faith of the people and upbuilding of the church.

Pearl Sydenstricker Buck’s fame as a novelist (best known for her beloved book The Good Earth) often overshadowed her original vocation as a Presbyterian missionary and her later role as a social activist. Her Christian values, however, provided an important foundation for humanitarian works. This article underscores her identity as a missionary and a humanitarian who formed a bridge between the East and the West. To understand her theology and worldviews, one must situate her within the rise of Protestant liberalism and emerging ecumenical Christianity. The first half of the article delineates her life, and the second half expounds on her missiology in close conjunction with her peer William E. Hocking.

Cyril (ca. 826–69) is remembered in Christian and mission history for the celebrated Slavic mission. What is less emphasized, however, and the focus of this article, is Cyril’s prior mission work among Arab Muslims in Samarra (modern Iraq) and among the Khazars (in present-day southern Russia), which included both Jews and Muslims. In this article, I analyze how Cyril the philosopher presented the Gospel, Christ, and the Trinity and responded to the queries of these medieval Muslim and Jewish thinkers. What characterized Cyril’s approach to mission? Finally, what principles might be recovered for presenting historic Christian doctrine in mission today, particularly in Muslim contexts?

Kenneth E. Bailey (1930–2016) was an internationally acclaimed New Testament scholar who grew up in Egypt and devoted his life to the church of the Middle East. He also was an ambassador of Arab culture to the West, explaining through his many books on the New Testament how the context of the Middle East shapes the world of the New Testament. He wed cultural anthropology to biblical exegesis and shaped the way scholars view the Gospels today.

Charles Van Engen summarizes his pilgrimage in mission: “I have lived a life invested in forming people as leaders, paying forward what others did for me.” Born of missionary parents, Chuck was raised in southern Mexico. From 1973 to 1985 Chuck and his wife, Jean, served in Chiapas, Mexico, in leadership formation. In 1981 Chuck received a Ph.D. in missiology under Johannes Verkuyl at the Free University of Amsterdam, followed by teaching mission theology in Michigan and, for twenty-seven years, at Fuller Theological Seminary. The Van Engens lead a ministry that provides PhD-level theological education to Latin American leaders.

Given the mass human movement from Central America to the United States, the church needs to rethink its mission strategy for its humanitarian involvement with these immigrants seeking asylum. Looking through the hermeneutical lens of practical theology and its attention to contextualized praxis, the article situates the argument in conversation with qualitative research that emerged from a pastoral care ministry inside an immigrant family detention facility. The voices of these Central American women and children seeking asylum serve to contextualize, localize, humanize, and testify to the unjust reality of mass migration. The proposal endorses a missional hermeneutic that prioritizes allyship with asylum seekers as the church’s witness to the justness of God.