Abstract
WOW! What do I say to that? How do I begin to respond? Well, Winston Churchill used to say,
“I was born at a very young age.” I was too! A LIFETIME! WOW!
Seriously, I am humbled, surprised, and deeply honored to receive this award. Thank you so much, Steve, for your gracious and generous words. Your friendship and collegial partnership over the years have been such a joy. This award made me think of three things: (a) the history of the ASM, (b) people whom God used to influence my life story, and (c) our call to form leaders in mission.
ASM’s 50th anniversary
To be given this award in this particular year is especially meaningful to me. We are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the founding of the ASM (Shenk, 2014). Fifty years ago, I was in my last year of M.Div. studies at Fuller Theological Seminary, taking all my electives in what was then the School of World Mission/Institute of Church Growth. I remember hearing Ralph Winter, Arthur Glasser, and Chuck Kraft voicing their excitement about the proposed founding of the American Society of Missiology. Fuller’s School of World Mission (SWM) wanted to be able to grant a PhD in Missiology. For the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) to accredit such a degree, there had to be a professional society and a professional journal. So the folks at Fuller were delighted to see the creation of the ASM. I heard Ralph Winter and Art Glasser express their gratitude for Orlando Costas’ advocacy to get the ATS to recognize Missiology as a PhD-level scholarly discipline. Orlando was a member of our society. We are all deeply indebted to our friend and colleague, Gerald Anderson, for the tremendous time and work he devoted, along with a number of others, to the creation and flourishing of the ASM. In his History of the American Society of Missiology, 1973–2013, Wilbert Shenk (2014: 17) reported that, “More than ninety people attended the inaugural meeting of ASM held at Concordia Seminary, Saint Louis, Missouri, June 8–10, 1973. Membership was reported to have surpassed 450.”
Our tripartite structure (Roman Catholic, Conciliar, and Independent) and our membership that includes practitioners, teachers, and administrators of mission is a unique organization that has made a huge contribution to the mission of the Church in North America and in global missiology. My first attendance at Association of Professors of Mission (APM) and ASM was in June 1986. At that time, I was invited to serve as the Secretary-Treasurer of the APM, following Dana Robert, a privilege I enjoyed for the next eight years. What a joy that was! I met all these amazing people—women and men—whose books I had read and whom I had quoted in my writing. So many of you here tonight are my friends, colleagues, and partners in publication because of the APM and the ASM.
I started to make a list of all the people who became my friends because of APM and ASM. The list got so long I decided I could not include it in this response. For example, among so many others, I have personally known and had the profound joy of considering my friends almost all those whose names appear in the lists of ASM Presidents from 1973 to 2013 in Shenk, pp. 59–60 as well as those who have served as our Presidents since 1974. Many of them are here with us tonight, and I would like to ask each of them to stand up as I read the names of those present (Schenk, 2014: 59–60):
2004–2005—George R. Hunsberger 2005–2006—Stephen B. Bevans, SVD 2006–2007—Darrell L. Whiteman 2010–2011—Robert Gallagher 2013–2014—Robert Priest 2014–2015—Stanley H. Skreslet 2015–2016—Gregory Leffel 2016–2017—Paul Kollman 2018–2019—Al Tizon 2020–2021—Bonnie Sue Lewis 2022–2023—Roberta King
And our president for this coming year, Ben Hartley. Please join me in a round of applause and thanks. Together they have devoted and donated hundreds of hours in creating our programs, inviting our speakers, and organizing our meetings. Thank you so much, each of you.
WOW! What a blessing! You can see why this award is so deeply meaningful to me.
Others invested their lives in me
When I was informed about this award, I was motivated to glance back over my life. That is a humbling experience. At each major step in my life journey, the Holy Spirit used someone to direct my path and challenge me to the next step. I am here because of them. Let me give a couple of examples.
Foremost is my wife of 53 years, Jean. As I wrote in “My pilgrimage in mission” article, in IBMR, “I credit Jean’s profound faith and great patience for drawing me back during our college years to a commitment to Christ and a willingness to consider ministry and mission in the church” (Van Engen, 2017: 161).
In 1973 I completed my M.Div. at Fuller and Jean and I were invited to go to southern Mexico to establish a seminary for the National Presbyterian Church of Mexico.
A couple of years later, I saw Pablo Perez, a Mexican pastor and founder of a school of evangelism, who worked with the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES). When we were together in Yucatan, Mexico, he told me I should go study with Johannes Verkuyl in Amsterdam because his friend, Orlando Costas had found it very helpful to study there. When I began at the Free University in Amsterdam, I had no intention of doing a PhD. It was Verkuyl who essentially ordered me to write the dissertation and promote at the Free University. I defended in October 1981.
Soon after that, when Jean and I were in Michigan, I got a phone call from Art Glasser. He had read my dissertation. “Chuck,” he said, “each of us on the SWM faculty has been challenged to name someone who will take our place. I have named you.” I laughed! Nothing could be further from my mind at the time than teaching at Fuller. Jean and I were far too busy and committed to what we were doing in Mexico. But the Lord had other plans. In 1985 we left Chiapas, Mexico, and ended up in Michigan. God has worked in mysterious ways in my life.
Three years later, Art Glasser, Paul Pierson, and the School of World Mission faculty invited me to join them. At the time, I didn’t even know they were searching for someone in Biblical Theology of Mission. I was offered the position without having applied. God used our young daughters and leaders like Max De Pree and others to point us down a path we never expected to go. About that same time, in 1987, I saw Darrell Whiteman at an APM/ASM program planning committee meeting for the Pittsburgh ASM meeting. When we were smaller, the officers did that planning together. Darrell encouraged me at that time to accept the invitation to join the faculty of the School of World Mission at Fuller. My response was, “California! You’ve got to be kidding!”
During my 27 years at Fuller, I learned so much from the many women and men who allowed me to walk alongside them in their master’s and doctoral studies. A number of you are here tonight. Your friendship has changed my life. I have also been schooled by many of you here who have been willing to contribute chapters or write or edit books with me over the years.
It was a special joy for me to edit or help to edit six Festschrifts in honor of SWM faculty. 1 Though some book publishers are not enthusiastic about multi-author books, I have been a lover of Festschrifts as a way to provide a literary photograph of a moment in time of the person being honored and the many colleagues and friends associated with the honoree’s particular area of missiology.
This provides me the opportunity to thank Rob Gallagher and Paul Hertig (2017) and many of you here who contributed to Contemporary Mission Theology Engaging the Nations, done as a Festschrift in my honor. Thank you so very much for that labor of love.
In May of 1996, I was installed in the Arthur F. Glasser Chair of Biblical Theology of Mission. As far as I know, that is the only endowed chair of its kind in the world. My inaugural address was entitled, “Mission of, in, and on the Way” based on Luke 9. I remember that on the day the name of the chair was to be announced, Art Glasser came over to my office, pointed a finger at me, and said, “It must be the Glasser biblical Theology of Mission—mission flows from the Bible.” I have sought to honor that perspective over these many years.
Our call to form leaders in mission
Thank you, Steve, for mentioning LACM and PRODOLA in your presentation. On a spring morning in 1999, I sat in the office of Pablo Deiros on Fuller’s Pasadena campus. Pablo is Argentine, the premier Protestant historian of church and mission in Latin America. We got to talking about the scarcity of PhD-level Protestant theologians in Latin America. That concern and the Holy Spirit’s provision led Jean, Pablo, and me to create a non-profit corporation we called Latin American Christian Ministries. We convened a gathering in Miami of 36 Latin American Protestant scholars in March of 2001. A number of them joined us to help us create the Programa Doctoral en Teología: PRODOLA, a hybrid, multi-denominational distance-learning PhD program in all areas of Christian thought. We launched the program in 2004 with a core faculty of 16 Latin American scholars. The program is located all over Latin America, carried out by Latin Americans, for Latin Americans. Those who study in PRODOLA have remained in their contexts, in their countries, leading their seminaries, churches, and mission agencies while they do their doctoral research and dissertation writing. We partner with South Africa Theological Seminary and the Free University of Amsterdam in granting an accredited PhD in Theology. New accredited doctoral programs in theology in Paraguay, Costa Rica, and India have arisen as they have copied our program with our blessing. These past 20 years have been very full for Jean and me as we have led that program and have seen a new group of theologians and mission thinkers with PhDs lead their churches and mission agencies throughout Latin America.
Lately, I have been working on a small book about the in-ministry formation of leaders. The formation of leaders for God’s People is emphasized throughout the Bible. The Gospel writers stress the formation of mission leaders over and over again.
By way of example, when we talk about Jesus’ Commission in Matthew 28, many of us have tended to stress the main verb that calls us to invite women and men to become followers of Jesus Christ. But the imperative (maqhteuvsate) is surrounded by three participles: going (poreuqevnte~), baptizing, and teaching. Mission thinkers have emphasized the “going” exteriorization of our mission in and to the world. At times we have emphasized the second participle (baptviézonte~), incorporating the followers of Jesus into the faith communities of the Church locally and globally. Sometimes I think we have underemphasized the third participle (didavskonte~), “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” I have come to think that this third participle is in fact the basic element that undergirds the whole commission. The “teaching” seems to flow from and give concrete expression to the other two activities. The “teaching” involves the formation of leaders for God’s mission through Christ’s Church in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Another example. In the Book of Acts, the selection, formation, and commissioning of leaders who mobilize the church in mission is a major theme coursing its way through the book. Luke talks specifically about leadership issues in Acts 1 (the 12 apostles), Acts 6 to 8 (the seven Greek-speaking deacons), chapters 9 through 12 (Peter, Saul of Tarsus, and Barnabas), chapter 13 (the five who are set apart for the Gentile mission), chapter 18 (Apollos, Priscila, and Aquila), chapter 20 (a list of eight members of Paul’s missionary band), and Acts 21 (the elders of the church in Ephesus). The identification, formation, and commissioning of leaders is a foundational element in the birth, growth, and health of the church.
Thank you so much for this award!
As others did for me, my greatest joy has been to invest in the lives of women and men who will in turn invest their lives in others. (Van Engen, 2017: 169).
May our Lord Jesus bless you all.
Footnotes
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.