By (Dr.) Martin Conway, Oxford (UK)

This is now the sixth IAMS Conference in which I have shared since my first in Rome in 1988. At that time I had recently been appointed to the job of President of the Selly Oak Colleges in Birmingham, England, and as such as the latest successor to Paul Rowntree Clifford. He had been one of the founders of IAMS at the meeting held in Selly Oak in, I think, 1968, and had told me how strongly he hoped that I would be willing to succeed him in the post of Treasurer for IAMS (in which both Andrew Kirk and now Allan Anderson have in turn succeeded me from Selly Oak!)
It is now Wednesday, and I can say that this is proving to be one of the best of the six I have experienced. The hotel is almost as nice as the one we were in at Port Dickson, outside Kuala Lumpur in West Malaysia, in 2OO4, even if the temperature of the water at the beach was a fair bit warmer there!
And the community is this time even richer in the sheer variety of the people present. Let me mention first the three Orthodox present from Bulgaria and Romania. If the European members can succeed in holding their next all-European conference in an Orthodox centre, then it is to be hoped that we will have a much more significant group of both Eastern and Oriental Orthodox missiologists present at our next world-wide meeting.
The presence here for the first time of a group of doctoral and post-doctoral students from China is also a notable advance. For it is in China, perhaps more significantly than in any other single country, that Christian faith is in these years making a strong and totally unpredictable advance. This is potentially of the greatest significance for the entire future of not just the world-wide Church but indeed for the whole planet and its chance of surviving the present threats from climate change. Let those who doubt this look up (for instance of the Reader my colleague Noel Davies and I have recently published, (in the bookroom: World Christianity in the 2Oth Century – Reader) the text written by John R. Mott after his first visit to China in, I think, 1898 and they will see a prophecy which is becoming astonishingly true only 1OO years later.
It is too early today to know at all exactly what the conclusions of this conference will be, but as I write, I feel confident that we shall take with us as we leave Balatonfüred on Saturday a strong and hopeful conviction that IAMS is continuing to serve a vital promise for the future of both Church and world. Long may it continue to excite and stimulate research and friendships across all the barriers of nations, cultures and political or economic regimes, so that the promise God has shown us all in Jesus Christ can become even more real and living to all humankind. To God be the glory!