Only 20 of the 3,700 Southern Baptist International Missions Board career missionaries are African Americans. At the end of 2020, according to an IMB spokesperson, the number of field personnel included 192 Asian Americans (5.2 percent), 20 African Americans (0.5 percent), and 58 Hispanic Americans (1.6 percent). Another 207 missionaries (5.6 percent) self-identify as being from other ethnic backgrounds. For the percentage of black missionaries to approach the percentage of black church members in the SBC overall (6 percent), nearly half of the 500 new missionaries IMB wants to recruit over the next five years would have to be African Americans, Christianity Today reported. To address those and other goals, IMB leaders asked the Barna Group to survey the perspectives of Christians related to the topic of missions.
The 114-page report, “The Future of Missions: 10 Questions about Global Ministry That the Church Must Answer with the Next Generation” (www.barna.com/future-of-missions-2/), looked at “how young Christians’ perspectives on missions are different from older believers’ and what those differences might mean for the next chapter of the Church’s global mission.”
The report found that “Black, Hispanic, and other young people of color are more likely than their white counterparts to be potential missionaries” (p. 78). Specifically, Barna found that 61 percent of Black, 54 percent of Hispanic, 57 percent of “all ethnic minorities,” and 48 percent of white young adults (ages 18–34) are potentially likely to become missionaries.
“Some experts say that less than 1 percent of American missionaries are black. In many missions organizations, that actually seems like an overestimate. . . . The reasons are varied. Many African Americans who are called to ministry have prioritized the needs in their own communities, focusing on preaching or justice locally. Global travel is a privilege and less accessible to racial minorities, Christianity Today reported in “The Coming African American Missions Movement” (www.christianitytoday.com/news/2021/february/coming-african-american-missionary-movement.html).
A total of 5,200 participants from forty-eight states and thirty countries connected with IMB leaders, missionaries, and a panel of experts on October 29, 2020, to address “the global, cultural, and spiritual realities that are impacting the future of missions,” according to an IMB press release. The two-hour simulcast was a continuation of public discussions resulting from the IMB-Barna report.
In an online workshop in August reported by Baptist Press (September 4, 2020), IMB president Paul Chitwood said, “We’re compelled to search for solutions to the challenges of a declining missionary candidate pipeline and a plateaued giving stream.” Barna president David Kinnaman told workshop participants that one in four students and young adults expressed reservations about how churches accomplished past mission work, citing “unethical mission practices in the past and the perceived association with colonialism.” Chitwood responded that these survey findings “help us understand our need to walk in humility and repentance.”
Fifty-five missiologists, mission leaders, and practitioners from two dozen countries met online February 23–25 for the 2021 general assembly of the Central and Eastern European Association for Mission Studies (CEEAMS, https://ceeams.org). The keynote speakers were Cristian S. Sonea, an Orthodox priest who is professor of Orthodox missiology at Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania; David Hosaflook, an American missionary church historian who is executive director of the Institute for Albanian and Protestant Studies, Tirana, Albania; and Gilija Žukauskienė, a Lithuanian Baptist Union missionary who is artistic director of the Portico for Dialogues mission project. Twenty papers were also presented on the conference theme “Mission Matters: Trends, Challenges, and New Perspectives in Christian Mission in Central and Eastern Europe.” CEEAMS counts 102 members, an increase from 13 at the start of the association in 2015. The association publishes the interdenominational Acta Missiologiae journal.
“China, Christianity, and the Dialogue of Civilizations” is the theme of the twenty-eighth conference of the US-China Catholic Association, August 6–8, 2021, at Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA. Cosponsored by the university’s Department of Sociology, the conference will feature keynote addresses by Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion after Mao (2017), and Lu Nan, a Beijing-born photographer whose books include On the Road: The Catholic Faith in China (2000, 2008, 2014) and Four Seasons: Everyday Life of Tibetan Peasants (2007, 2014). Rachel Xiaohong Zhu, associate professor and a founding member of the Religious Studies Department at Fudan University, Shanghai, and author of “The Division of the Roman Catholic Church in Mainland China: History and Challenges” (Religions 8, no. 3 [2017]: 39, doi.org/10.3390/rel8030039); and missiologist Kin Sheung Chiaretto Yan, author of Season for Relationships: Youth in China and the Mission of the Church (2018), will also address attendees. The March 2020 conference was postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. For details, go online to www.uscatholicchina.org/conference-2021.
The National African American Missions Conference announced November 4, 2020, that their annual conference will become a “year-round organizational resource” called the National African American Missions Council (NAAMC, www.thenaamc.org). The council, with chapters in all fifty states, invites Christians to “grow in your understanding of how to equip and mobilize the African American missionary and the African American Church.” NAAMC, which started in 2014 through the partnership of Great Commission Global Ministries and SIM USA, operates as the equipping and mobilizing arm of Boundless Ministries, its parent organization. “We’ve built a movement that strongly supports greater representation of African Americans within the missions community. . . . NAAMC is ready to answer the call of year round mobilization,” said NAAMC founder David Perrin, who chairs the SIM USA Board of Directors and is senior pastor of Christ Kingdom Church, District Heights, MD. For more information, contact NAAMC executive director Adrian Reeves (info@thenaamc.org).
Hartford Seminary (www.hartsem.edu) will offer a Master of Arts in Interreligious Studies, with a choice of interreligious, Islamic, or ministerial studies, beginning in September 2021. The interreligious studies degree “engages students in advanced academic study of the lived reality of religions in public multifaith contexts . . . [and] provides a strong grounding in the foundational concepts and methods of Interreligious studies, relations between religions, and the study of lived religious traditions,” according to the online announcement. Hartford Seminary is known for the Hartford Institute for Religion Research and the Duncan Black Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations.
Appointed. Nathalie Becquart, XMCJ, a Congregation of Xavières sister from Paris, as an undersecretary to the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, by Pope Francis on February 6, 2021. She is the first woman selected for the key synodal role and the first woman to have voting rights in the Roman Catholic Church, according to news reports. Becquart, 52, was appointed a synodal consultor in 2019. In that role, she audited the Fifteenth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, held in October 2018 with the theme “Young People, Faith, and Vocational Discernment.” She also coordinated pre-synod activities and wrote about it for the IBMR (“The Synod on Young People, a Laboratory of Synodality,” published online October 8, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1177/2396939320951566.) Becquart and Luis Marín de San Martín, OSA, of Madrid, also appointed an undersecretary, will help prepare the Vatican’s next synod, in October 2022, with the theme “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, and Mission.” From 2008 to 2018 she directed the National Service for the Evangelization of Young People and for Vocations, part of the Bishops’ Conference of France.
Appointed. Rebekah Naylor, missionary surgeon in India, as distinguished professor of missions at the Roy J. Fish School of Evangelism and Missions, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, TX. She is the first female to hold such a position at the seminary. After committing her life to Christian faith at age five, and then eight years later to medical missions, Naylor completed a bachelor’s degree in chemistry (1964) and a doctor of medicine degree (1968). In 1973 the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board (now International Mission Board) appointed her as a surgeon at Bangalore Baptist Hospital (1974–2002), Bangalore, India, where she later was named chief of medical staff, administrator, and medical superintendent. Naylor supervised the construction of the Rebekah Ann Naylor School of Nursing, Bangalore (1996), and became its first professor of anatomy and physiology.
Appointed. Dale T. Irvin, missiologist, professor, and author, as professor of World Christianity at the New School of Biblical Theology (NSBT, www.nsbt.org), an online-only graduate theological education initiative being developed “to respond to the overwhelming need of leaders who are biblically trained to influence culture.” A. R. Bernard, pastor of Christian Cultural Center, Brooklyn and Orlando, started the megachurch and the theological school; NSBT is based in Orlando. Currently Master of Arts in Global Leadership and Master of Arts in Christian Ministry degrees are offered, while NSBT seeks Association of Theological Schools accreditation. Irvin retired in June 2020 from New York Theological Seminary after thirty-one years as professor of World Christianity, which included thirteen years as president. His published works include the three-volume History of the World Christian Movement (Orbis Books), written with Scott W. Sunquist, president of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Irvin is also founding editor of the Journal of World Christianity, chair of the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network, and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, where he teaches in the Global Irish Studies program.
Died. Tony Maalouf, 65, a professor who focused on Christian-Muslim relations, August 26, 2020, in Fort Worth, TX. A native Lebanese born in Damascus, Syria, the son of Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic parents, Maalouf was senior professor of World Christianity and Middle Eastern studies in the Roy J. Fish School of Evangelism and Missions at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth. Maalouf grew up in Lebanon and studied medical microbiology before committing his life to Christian faith and ministry, moving to Texas, and completing master’s and PhD degrees at Dallas Theological Seminary. His dissertation was “Ishmael in Biblical History.” He served as a visiting professor at Arab Baptist Theological Seminary, Beirut; Jordan Evangelical Theological Seminary, Amman; and Dallas Theological Seminary before joining the Southwestern Seminary faculty in 2004, where he became a director of the seminary’s Islamic Studies Program. Maalouf was the founder and CEO of Magi Ministries International, Dallas, a ministry that develops church leaders in the Arab world.
Died. Brent S. Ray, 61, professor, pastor, and missionary, August 14, 2020. From 2019, Ray was director of the World Missions Center and associate professor of missions at the Roy J. Fish School of Evangelism and Missions, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (SWBTS), Fort Worth, TX. Previously, he was a pastor in Texas and a Southern Baptist International Mission Board missionary in South America (1976–2003). He earned master’s and DMin degrees from SWBTS and in 2012 was named associate director of the Center and director of Global Theological Innovation (renamed Global Leadership Development). He started a church planting ministry in northeastern Brazil and taught at Northeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. In 2003 Ray joined the Hope for the Heart and the Hope Center Foundation in Plano, TX, where he was president.
Died. Ann Gormly, SNDdeN, 96, mission leader and educator, January 8, 2021, in Cincinnati, Ohio. A sister of Notre Dame de Namur for seventy-five years, Gormly was associate director of the United States Catholic Mission Association from 1973 to 1987. After earning a bachelor’s degree in French and master’s and PhD degrees in Spanish, she taught languages in Philadelphia and, in 1951, joined the faculty of Trinity College (now Trinity Washington University), where she was also dean of students and, according to published sources, a “relentless advocate for social justice.” A native of Providence, RI, Gormley spent two years in SNDdeN administration before joining the staff of USCMA, for which she visited 176 countries. After leaving USCMA, she served five years as administrative director of a health-care agency that helps the homeless in Washington, DC.
Died. Andrew N. Porter, 75, historian, professor, and author, March 4, 2021 Shropshire, England. Porter was Rhodes Professor of Imperial History at King’s College, University of London (1993–2008). Previously he was editor (1979–90) of the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. Porter’s groundbreaking book Religion versus Empire? British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700–1914 (Manchester University Press, 2004) was awarded the Biennial Reese Memorial Prize in 2006 for a wide-ranging scholarly work in the field of imperial and commonwealth history. British historian Brian Stanley, an IBMR contributing editor and professor of World Christianity at New College, University of Edinburgh, called the book “the authoritative work on the subject” and said Porter “is one of the very few writers on the missionary movement who combines a secure grasp of the various dimensions of the imperial context with a recognition that the theological preoccupations of the missionaries and their supporters need to be taken seriously.” Porter also explored imperial themes as the author and editor of chapters in The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 3: The Nineteenth Century (Oxford University Press, 1999), and the Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. 8: World Christianities, c. 1815–c. 1914 (Cambridge University Press, 2006). Porter was actively involved in the Currents in World Christianity Project (formerly the North Atlantic Missiology Project). He also wrote “Evangelicalism, Islam, and Millennial Expectation in the Nineteenth Century,” IBMR 24, no. 3 (July 2000): 111–18.
Died. Gerald Kelly, MM, 85, missionary priest, mission educator-promoter, and advocate for the poor, on March 7, 2021, in Houston, TX. Kelly was director of Maryknoll’s Southern Regional Mission Center in Houston, where, since 2002, he accompanied volunteers on short-term immersion mission experiences and worked on behalf of low-income families along the US-Mexico border. “We proclaim the Kingdom of God. We look out across the Rio Grande River to see the fence that is erected to separate our countries. The U.S. Catholic Bishops have called for comprehensive immigration reform. We join with them in struggling to bring this about. We keep our torches lit. We maintain our hope that these fences will come down. That we will build bridges to live as neighbors once again,” he said in a Maryknoll Office of Global Concerns online publication in November 2017 (https://maryknollogc.org/resources/scripture/32nd-sunday-ordinary-time-2). He was a member of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston Mission Council. A native of Boston and a graduate of Boston College, Kelly was ordained a Maryknoll priest in 1967 and was sent to serve the Mapuche indigenous people in southern Chile. Later, he coordinated the Maryknoll mission in Latin America for seven years. In 2017 the United States Catholic Mission Association honored Kelly with its Pope Francis Mission Award.
