Vol. 20, No.4 nternatlona• October 1996 etln• Another World Mission Conference: What Impact? his issue, which marks the completion of twenty years of publication of papers and reports. This issue of the INTERNATIONAL Tpublication of the INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN, comes off the BULLETIN will helpus appreciate the heritageof 150yearsof world press on the eve of a major world conference on mission and mission conferences and whet our appetites for the outcome of evangelism. "Called to One Hope: The Gospel in Diverse Cul­ Salvador 1996. tures," sponsored by the World Council of Churches, will meet in Salvador, Brazil, November 24-December 3, 1996. It is the eleventh in a series of world missionary conferences that began with Edinburgh 1910. The preparations for this conference echo On Page Edinburgh in that many study groups around the world have 146 World Mission Conferences: What Impact Do been involved for two years or more in examining local issues of They Have? the Gospel and culture, and in drafting materials for illuminating Norman E. Thomas the conference theme at Salvador. We join the conference coordi­ 149 A Prayer nators in praying that through the conference God's people will WCC Conference on WorldMission and "be strengthened in their cultural identity, renewed in their Evangelism Christian life, and equipped for authentic witness in each con­ text" (see "Prayer," p. 149). 155 Response to Norman Thomas On the eve of Salvador, the INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN offers a Charles W. Forman majorreview andevaluationby NormanE.Thomasof theimpact 157 Latin America's Fifth Wave of Protestant of world mission conferences. Charles W. Forman follows with Churches a response to Thomas, adding important detail regarding the Clayton L. Berg, Jr., and Paul E. Pretiz ongoing contributions of selected mission conferences. Some 160 From the Evangelical Alliance to the World readers may find it hard to believe that, as Thomas states, no less Evangelical Fellowship: 150 Years of Unity than eleven mission consultations and prayer conferences, in ten with a Mission countries, were held in 1993 alone. Even more startling is the W. Harold Fuller statistic cited by Forman: there were about 600 ecumenical consultations held between 1948 and 1982-almost twenty per 162 Noteworthy year! 163 The Legacy of Charles Henry Brent What impact have conferences such as these had on the Mark D. Norbeck world Christian mission? Out of his review of nearly a century and a half of Protestant world mission conferences, Thomas 167 Reader's Response identifies eight categories of impact, both immediate and ongo­ 170 My Pilgrimage in Mission ing. He acknowledges what we might well expect, that not all Eugene Heideman impacts of all conferences were positive-as, for example, in the 174 Book Reviews case of the call for a moratorium on missionaries (Bangkok 1973). Both Thomas and Forman lament the decrease in recent years of 182 Index 1993-1996 preconference preparationand studypapersand postconference 192 Book Notes of issionaryResearch World Mission Conferences: What Impact Do They Have? Norman E. Thomas n May 15, 1806, William Carey, the pioneer Baptist conferences and envisioned for the first time a "Church of Christ O missionary to India, wrote from Calcutta to Andrew in India." The series of still-larger "decennial conferences" for all Fuller, secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society: workers in India began in 1872; these were the first to include Indian pastors as participants. Parallel developments took place The Cape of Good Hope is now in the hands of the English; should among missionaries in other countries and continents. These it continue so, would it not be possible to have a general associa­ conferences resulted in "a greatly heightened sense of Christian tion of all denominations of Christians, from the four quarters of unity," agreements to plan cooperatively in mission (e.g., comity the world, kept there once in about ten years? I earnestly recom­ agreements for the allocation of mission fields within a country), mend this plan, let the first meeting be in the Year 1810, or 1812 at and joint endeavors in medicine, education, Bible translation, furthest. I have no doubt but it would be attended with very important effects; we could understand one another better, and production of Christian literature, and so forth." more entirely enter into one another's views by two hours conver­ Two missionary conferences at the turn of the century were sation than by two or three years epistolary correspondence.1 Edinburgh prototypes. The Madras Missionary Conference (for all India) in 1900 was innovative in both representation and Carey's vision was remarkable, for it took the world church procedure. Instead of a large missionary convention, each mis­ and the ecumenical movementanotherhundred years to achieve sionary society elected or appointed official delegates to repre­ Carey's bold proposal at the World Missionary Conference in sent them. No papers were read. Instead, delegates worked in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1910.2 nine committees wrestling with problems, drafting resolutions, What has been the impact of world mission conferences? and submitting them to the entire conference for discussion and Now, 190 years after what Carey called his "pleasing dream," action. The 1907 Shanghai Conference, in contrast, blended fea­ and almost 90 years after Edinburgh, it is time to take stock. This tures of both convention and conference models. Although 3,445 overview will be limited to selected Protestant world mission Protestant missionaries in China attended this great Centenary conferences. The first part provides a brief historical overview. Conference of Chinese Missions (almost one-third of the Protes­ The typology of impacts in the second part has been developed tant missionaries in China), only 509 were voting delegates, inductively from the reports of planners and participants in the representing 63 mission societies." conferences themselves. A second stream took place in Europe and North America in the form of large missionary conventions to awaken public support Four Streams to Edinburgh for missions. Embryonic beginnings (New York and London 1854) were followed by successively larger Anglo-American In 1854 the British and American branches of the Evangelical consultations in Liverpool (1860) and London (1878). Two years Alliance sponsored the Union Missionary Convention in New of planning preceded the next convention held in London in 1888 York with Alexander Duff, the well-known missionary from and billed as the Centenary Conference on the Protestant Mis­ India,as keynote speaker. With "theevangelizationof the world" sions of the World. Intentionally international in participation, as its central concern, the convention demonstrated "that Chris­ the 1,579 delegates from 139 different denominations and mis­ tians of every shade of denominational opinion can here find a sion societies represented ten countries of North America and commonground of ChristianPhilanthropy, and for Christian co­ western Europe, although more than 80 percent were from Great operation and effort." In a great public service in the Broadway Britain and the British colonies. Although A. T. Pierson, editor of Tabernacle, with "some hundreds" turned away for lack of the prestigious Missionary Reviewof the World, extolled it as "the space, Duff challenged the convention to "prove that we are one grandestecumenical council ever assembled since the first coun­ in Christian enterprise-one in burning desire and self-sacrific­ cil in Jerusalem," Gustav Warneck, Germany's pioneer ing effort of this world's evangelization." This was the prototype missiologist, lamented that no resolutions touching mission of 150 years of world mission conferences to follow.' issues were allowed. Warneck proposed that henceforth in each W. Richey Hogg delineated four streams of nineteenth­ decade a "General Missionary Conference be held composed of century missionary cooperation that flowed together in 1910 to official delegates from all Protestant missionary societies," with make possible the famed Edinburgh Conference.' The first of a "Standing Central Committee" with power to act between these is missionary-convened conferences held overseas on local, meetings-a vision not realized until Edinburgh 1910. In con­ regional, or national levels to explore issues of mission theory, trast to the 1888 London assembly with its disappointing public practice, and organization. As nineteenth-century missionaries response, theNewYork "EcumenicalMissionaryConference" of met together in India, China, Japan, and the countries of Africa 1900 was by far the largest missionary conference of the century, and Latin America, they experienced a oneness in Christ across with daily crowds overflowing Carnegie Hall and an estimated mission society and denominational lines. By the 1830s those in 170,000-200,000 persons in total attendance, although only 2,500 India met interdenominationally in Bombay, Calcutta, and Ma­ were official delegates from 162 mission boards. During ten days dras. In the 1860s they formed North and South India missionary of meetings 500 platform speakers (but just 8 from younger churches) addressed every conceivable mission topic; inspiring Norman E. Thomas is the Vera B. Blinn Professor of World Christianityat worship and fervent prayer motivated attendees to support United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio. Book Editor of Missiology missionaryeffortsgenerously. "Suchconferences," wroteRobert since 1986,