Welcome to the fall issue of Missiology: An International Review. This volume offers the reader an array of historical, theological, and empirical research from the field, along with a variety of book reviews, to help broaden and deepen the conversation around the discipline of missiology.
The issue begins with a study by Stephen Di Trolio in which he reviews the history of the Overseas Ministries Study Center from the mid-twentieth century, showing how the leaders worked to maintain a space where missionaries from across the theological spectrum could come together in unity around their shared faith despite external pressures for greater separation and fracturing. The lessons from the struggles of the 1960s, 70s and 80s are highly salient again today. In another consideration of what the church today can learn from history, Kyle Rice writes about ways Christians can draw on lessons from the church’s missional past to learn how to share the gospel with unhoused people living in Los Angeles’s neighborhood known as “Skid Row.” Moving to a more theological focus, Michael Mensah examines the work of the Catholic Church in Ghana, using Luke 10:1-12 with its focus on pairs of mission agents, households, and cities, as the analytical paradigm.
Next, David Lewis offers an analysis and critique of some recent writings on identifying and developing so-called catalyst leaders for church planting movements, warning of the dangers of hidden ethnocentrism and toxic leadership styles. His work offers a needed reminder of the importance of both good scholarship and good character in mission work. Next, Xiaoli Yang considers the work of present-day Chinese missionary women, using indigenous hymnology of the Canaan Hymns to portray their lived experience as witnesses. Her work shows the breadth and depth of ways to conceptualize witness in the present day. Finally, Mark Teasdale reports his findings from an analysis of evangelistic social media posts revolving around the solar eclipse of 2024. While social media can be considered a forum for witness, it can also shape how Christians talk about their faith in public spaces.
The twenty books reviewed in this issue consider mission practice as it intersects with questions of race, gender, economic systems, and the shifting contours of church, society, culture, and politics. Some reviews return to formative episodes and key figures in mission history; others draw on that historical awareness to address contemporary concerns around leadership, evangelism, and cross-cultural engagement. Running throughout are themes of justice and power, including critiques of racialized mission structures, imperial legacies, and systems of economic disparity. Several reviews also center voices that are frequently marginalized. Taken together, these books embody the depth and complexity of the challenges and opportunities that animate Christian mission in the twenty-first century.
Among this collection, John Amalraj Karunakaran commends Arjun Shankar’s Brown Saviors and Their Others: Race, Caste, Labor & The Global Politics of Help in India, describing it “an excellent resource to self-evaluate mission motives among Christian development organizations to avoid the pitfalls of white, brown, neocolonial, urban, and digital saviorism.” Tianji Ma highlights the cross-cultural significance of John R. Haddad’s Cultures Colliding: American Missionaries, Chinese Resistance, and the Rise of Modern Institutions in China, noting its attention to “cultural tensions and transformative exchanges between Western missionaries and their Chinese counterparts,” and applauding its worth as “a valuable resource for scholars and students of Chinese history, mission studies, and cross-cultural interactions.” In her review of The Indebted Woman: Kinship, Sexuality, and Capitalism, Katrina T. Greene affirms authors Isabelle Guérin, Santosh Kumar, and G. Venkatasubramanian for “provid[ing] insightful understandings to graduate students, scholars, and practitioners of mission, who are interested in exploring connections between gender, kinship, and economic survival.” Finally, Troy Neujahr, reviewing Ryan Fields’s Local and Universal: A Free Church Account of Ecclesial Catholicity, underscores its relevance for ecclesiology and mission, stating, “in an age where mission has at times been criticized for being ecclesiocentric, Fields’s book offers missiologists an opportunity to revisit the importance of the church’s catholic identity.”
We hope readers will find this issue informative and thought-provoking. It raises questions that missiologists have an opportunity to address today. The editors hope you will be prompted to think, converse, and write more on any of the topics addressed here. If you benefit from reading this issue, consider submitting your own work to the journal. Historical, theological, and empirical works are welcome. Members of underrepresented populations, internationals, women, and graduate students are especially encouraged to submit your work.
Leanne M. DzubinskiEditor in Chief
William R. GreenAssociate Editor
