International Bulletin of Missionary Research Established 1950 by R
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Vol. 38, No. 3 July 2014 Cultural Disorientation and Understanding the Missional God o get lost is to learn the way.” Or as we might amplify ture of the Babylonians, and even renamed Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Tthis African proverb, “To get lost and realize it is to learn Meshach, and Abednego—surely “got lost” and, as a result of the way.” In my own experience, after four years of our family’s God’s mysterious dealings, gained understanding in “every aspect life and mission work in Japan, it began to dawn on me that, on a Continued next page level deeper than the oft-reported cuisine and constant bowing, I did not understand Japan. This jikaku, or emerging self-awareness, was humbling, to say the least. But that realization was at least On Page 115 Christian Mission in the Wake of the Arab Spring George F. Sabra 120 Missiology after “Mission”? John Roxborogh 126 Salvaging C. S. Lewis’s The Horse and His Boy for Mission and Cultural Awareness Sarah Hinlicky Wilson 130 The Geographic Imagination and the Expansion of Methodist Missions in Southeast Asia David W. Scott 135 Campbell N. Moody’s Reflections on the Christian Mission www.omsc.org/art-at-omsc/nalini/they-who-hear-slide.html Kazue Mino Nalini Jayasuriya, They Who Hear, Follow 140 My Pilgrimage in Mission a step toward understanding life in the complex, nuanced, and Mary Motte profoundly different Japanese world. Becoming culturally and 142 Noteworthy linguistically lost awakened me to my virtual blindness and A Biography of Apolo Kivebulaya deafness to what earlier had seemed relatively clear. 145 Emma Wild-Wood An astounding number of biblical characters grew in under- standing God, the world, and themselves through “getting lost” 150 Caroline Phebe Tenney Keith—Episcopal in the wilderness wanderings of cross-cultural experience. Pivotal Church Missionary and Letter Writer in figures such as Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, David, Shanghai Jeremiah, Joseph and Mary, Simon of Cyrene, Paul, Priscilla and Ian Welch Aquila, and Peter stand out as examples of cross-cultural displace- 154 Book Reviews ment, each encountering a new language and painful maturing. Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah—those strapping young 166 Dissertation Notices Israelites in exile, intensively instructed in the language and litera- 168 Book Notes of literature and wisdom” and, in Daniel’s case, “insight into en route to further clarity for living in the world embraced by all visions and dreams” (Dan. 1:17). Christian history is replete our missional God. with countless similar examples—take St. Thomas Aquinas’s The explicitly missionary studies of this issue also point to zigzags through the cultures of Italy, France, and Germany—of the pedagogical value of venturing through cultural dislocation. people who learned the way of following Jesus through cultural David Scott unveils how Methodist missionaries’ personal experi- displacement. Spiritual maturity often involves a deepened ence contributed to needed adjustments in their own and other understanding of deity and created reality, accompanied by an Westerners’ multifaceted assumptions about Southeast Asian unraveling of one’s subconsciously assumed cultural security. geography. The Scottish missionary Campbell Moody, as Kazue In this issue of the IBMR, George Sabra provides an enlight- Mino recounts, learned the way of Jesus and mission through ening analysis in his “Christian Mission in the Wake of the Arab sustained, discombobulating life and service in the unforeseen Spring.” In this article he appeals to the worldwide Christian twists and turns of Japanese-occupied Taiwan. Mary Motte’s community to assume an attitude of humble uncertainty about moving autobiographical account of her pilgrimage through expatriate missionary initiatives in today’s sociopolitically vola- unexpected transformations provides another photo album of tile Middle Eastern settings—and to “support Middle Eastern discipleship nurtured through disorientation. Emma Wild-Wood’s Christians and enable them to carry on their mission.” Adapting and Ian Welch’s biographical studies of Apolo Kivebulaya and the African proverb above with missiological language, we could Caroline Phebe Tenney Keith are further examples of divine- say that we etic folks looking in from the outside must listen to human interactions in the midst of life’s unpredictable messiness. emic voices like Sabra’s to learn the way of Middle East mission. This issue’s cover image, They Who Hear, Follow, by Sri Speaking to those of us who advocate the necessity of missiology Lankan artist Nalini Jayasuriya, helps to depict the insightful as an academic discipline, John Roxborogh prescribes a healthy dictum above that “to get lost is to learn the way.” Thankfully, sense of precarious lostness tied to the firm understanding that God’s Spirit is a faithful and proven Guide to those who listen the validity of missiology lies, not in the discipline’s intellectual amid the wilderness wanderings of cultural displacement. superiority or lack of dependence on other disciplines, but in “the The wide range of the IBMR’s gifted contributing editors validity of mission, in the importance of the questions [missiology] helps to guide this journal through the multiple byways of addresses, and in the intercultural perspectives it brings to the worldwide mission studies. We extend a special welcome to our issues of the day.” Sarah Hinlicky Wilson uncovers the cultural newest contributing editor, Dr. J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, longings underlying the imaginatively gripping writings of C. S. Baeta-Grau Professor of African Christianity and Pentecostal Lewis, leading to her conclusion that “the necessities and com- Theology and director of the Center for the Study of Christianity plicities of cultural translation are solved not by evasion but by in Africa at Trinity Theological Seminary, Accra, Ghana. confrontation.” Put differently, readers find life’s ways illumined —J. Nelson Jennings by profound authors through getting lost in literature’s webs of Cover image: Nalini Jayasuriya, They Who Hear, Follow, 2004, mixed media cultural intricacies—then somehow hacking through those webs on cloth, unstretched, 21.5" x 29". INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH Established 1950 by R. Pierce Beaver as Occasional Bulletin from the Missionary Research Library. Named Occasional Bulletin of Missionary Research in 1977. Renamed International Bulletin of Missionary Research in 1981. Published quarterly in January, April, July, and October by the Overseas Ministries Study Center, 490 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06511. (203) 624-6672 • Fax (203) 865-2857 • [email protected] • www.internationalbulletin.org • Join IBMR on Facebook Editor Contributing Editors J. Nelson Jennings Books for review and correspondence regarding editorial matters should be addressed to the Catalino G. Arévalo, S.J. Senior Associate Editor editors. Manuscripts should be submitted to the editor as e-mail attachments. Opinions expressed J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu Dwight P. Baker in the IBMR are those of the authors and not necessarily of the Overseas Ministries Study Center. Daniel H. Bays The articles in this journal are abstracted and indexed in Bibliografia Missionaria, Book Stephen B. Bevans, S.V.D. Assistant Editors Review Index, Christian Periodical Index, Guide to People in Periodical Literature, Guide to William R. Burrows Craig A. Noll Social Science and Religion in Periodical Literature, IBR (International Bibliography of Book Angelyn Dries, O.S.F. Rona Johnston Gordon Reviews), IBZ (International Bibliography of Periodical Literature), Missionalia, Religious Samuel Escobar Managing Editor and Theological Abstracts, and Religion Index One: Periodicals. John F. Gorski, M.M. Daniel J. Nicholas ONLINE E-JOURNAL: The IBMR is available in e-journal and print editions. To Darrell L. Guder Senior Contributing Editors subscribe—at no charge—to the full text IBMR e-journal (PDF and HTML), go to www Philip Jenkins Gerald H. Anderson .internationalbulletin.org/register. Index, abstracts, and full text of this journal are also available Daniel Jeyaraj Jonathan J. Bonk on databases provided by ATLAS, EBSCO, H. W. Wilson Company, The Gale Group, and Graham Kings Robert T. 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