A New President Has Been Chosen by the International Association of Mission Studies

A New President Has Been Chosen by the International Association of Mission Studies

The General Meeting of the International Association for Mission Studies (IAMS) chose Jonathan J. Bonk as its new president on 20 August at Balatonfüred, Hungary. The Canadian church history professor and missiologist is currently the Director of the Overseas Mission Study Centre (OMSC) in New Haven, USA, and publisher of an important missiology journal, The International Bulletin of Missionary Research. Since 2OO4, Bonk has served as the vice-president of IAMS. Bonk is a Mennonite. The Mennonite religion is a radical expression of the 16th century Reform tradition.

Bonk spent his childhood and youth in Ethiopia, where his father, a missionary, built more than two hundred centres which ministered to those afflicted by leprosy. Bonk’s childhood in Ethiopia means that today he is still deeply involved in researching and writing about Christian mission in Africa One of his most important contributions to the story of Christian mission in Africa is his Encyclopedia of Missions and Missionaries series which contains the biographies of many of the most important Christian personalities of the continent from the first century up until today. This significant database is appearing in four languages: English, French, Portuguese and Kiswahili. Because of its ecumenical character, it is already enjoying a wide readership:

As a president of the International Association for Mission Studies Bonk hopes that missiologists in the future devote more attention to globalization, to the social consequences of climate change, and to the dangers that lie in the export of a western consumer mentality throughout the world. He is convinced that this would endanger the Earth’s well being.

Other contemporary issues which merit the attention of missiologists include, the spreading of Christian faith, and the implication of the migration of millions of people. In the last five centuries Europeans have migrated all over the world at immense cost to the indigenous peoples where they settled.

Today we are experiencing a new migration which involves multitudes arriving in the Western world and bringing their traditional lifestyle and religion. Many of them are Christians, but their religious practice is very different from that of Western Christians’. “We face several twenty first century-problems as missiologists, and the research of these is our urgent task,” claims Bonk.

There are two hundred and seventy missiologists and missionaries from forty eight countries participating in the Association’s 12th congress, which concludes on Friday, 22 August.

For more information, see the IAMS webpage: www.missionstudies.org