Assembly Study Groups and Thematic Panels

Since 1976 the BISAM network has been studying the interface between the bible and mission. The Study Group seeks to study collaboratively, in the true spirit of mission, various ways in which the bible is used today in mission, and the multifaceted questions which it raises among peoples of different race, gender, class, culture, creed, faith, and social location; as such BISAM operates on an inter-disciplinary basis.

John De Jong 
“I have nothing yet that I can venture to use”: Adoniram Judson’s rejection of James Chater’s Burmese Translation of Matthew

Siu Fung Wu
Suffering, powerlessness, injustice and mission in Romans

Sarita Gallagher
“When God Showed Up at the Well: Missional Revelation in the Narratives of Hagar the Egyptian (Genesis 16) and the Samaritan Woman (John 4)”

Tsung-I Hwang
Transcending vulnerability by embracing vulnerability: The transforming power of the Missio Dei in confucian-influenced societies

Solomon Kyei Kwasi
Unchanging mission principles for the changing world: Perspectives from Acts 13–15

Narry Santos 
Jesus’ mission to the vulnerable: The power of servanthood in the Gospel of Mark

Batara Sihombing
The sending out of the disciples (Matt. 10: 5-15) without payment and its relevance to the sending of HKI church servants in mission of church-planting projects in Indonesia

Christian Tauchner 
New grounding for mission and discipleship on the margins. Reading the Syrophoenician woman in Amazonian perspective

Osam Temple 
What time is it? Knowing times and seasons and preparing for missions in a wounded world

Amy West
Building community among “Followers of the Way” for vulnerable times

The IAMS study group Children, Youth and Mission was organised in the preparation of the 14^th IAMS Assembly to be held in Seoul in August 2016. Children, Youth and Mission study group’s work and research is defined by the work and research of different Christian organisations engaged in Christian mission with and along children and young people and in holistic Christian development of the young generation.

Jun Ban Kwang
Mission theology of praise for the wounded youth

Miriam Dlugosz
How young is too young to be married in Enga?

Jeyaraj Jesudason
Training parents and teachers: Mission for holisitic development of children and youths

Johannes Knoetze
Discipleship as comfort of Christ-connectedness in a globalised world with a FOMO (fear of missing out)

Valentin Kozhuharov
“European” globalisation, the shift in traditional values and its impact on families and children of Christian background in Europe

Jenny McGill
The Refugee crisis and foreign involvement: The case of CFCI in Costa Rica

Cara Pfeiffer
Neurological ‘marred identity’: Reversing the effects of poverty through relational protective factors

Sahaya Selvam
Pastoral supervision: Regulating power in the Christian mission context

Christian Tsekpoe
Contextual missiology and the generations in Africa: A Ghanaian Pentecostal perspective

Christian Communities and Mission study group understand local Christian communities as; a) the hermeneutic of the gospel and; b) meeting God’s future as it comes towards us in the shape of the reign of God within the particular time and place that each finds itself. This requires these communities to be in a constant level of change as they orient themselves towards God’s preferred and promised future for them in a rapidly changing world. We believe study and research in how local churches change to be increasingly faithful in their everyday apostolicity is urgently needed.

Hwang Byung-Bae
Missional insights and suggestions through a case study of cooperation in Korean churches: Centered on supporting programs of large churches to small churches

Rebecca De Jong
Negotiating power across cultures: A missionary’s experience

Fides Del Castillo
500 years of Christianity in the Philippines (1521 to 2021): A rearticulation of culture and faith of the Indios

Evelyn Hibbert
Developing leaders in marginalised minority groups: Issues and challenges

Thais Kgatla
Corruption hurts the poor, the have nots and the downtrodden the most: The challenge of the elephant in the room

Nelson Kiamu
Mission and the wounds of war: An exploration of mission trends during Liberia’s civil crisis and the Ebola epidemic

Kim Hyeong-Kyoon
The meaning of the sense of belonging in Korean migrant churches in Aotearoa New Zealand

Kim Yoon-Tae
Missional church next: Making an attractive missional church in a village

Pieter Labuschagne
When the wounded becomes the healer: mission in a wounded world

Nigel Pegram
Creating an adaptive and robust model of community chaplaincy

Byungohk Lee 
A Korean missional church as a public companion in the Korean civil society

Peter Lee
Co-creators of hybrid cultures: Asian missionaries in multicultural teams of “Western” mission organisations

Faith Lugazia
The mission of the Church in mitigating human trafficking: an East-African concern

Thinandavha Mashau
A church in the margins: Reimagining God’s missional agenda for globalized (South) African cities

Elisabeth Rauchholz
Someone’s daughter and someone’s big sister challenges in living with Korean hierarchy as a value

Nigel Rooms
Beholding: Recovering the apophatic as a stance for Christian communities engaging in mission

Tim Silberman
Networks to the nations: Christian communities, relational networks and mission

Song Hoon
Critical assessment of conservative churches’ mission policy for North Korean defectors: From an approach of Christian theology of memory, justice, and reconciliation

Sultan Pervaiz
Christian communities and mission: a case study of Christian villages and Christian Bastis in Pakistan

Sung-Hyuk Nam
The Encounter of analog and digital paradigm of the Online church

Tan AnWei
Small and healthy missional church in the pandemic era

Lynne Taylor
Pastoral care as mission: Church communities supporting wellbeing by offering connected, faithful, familiar and holistic pastoral care in a vulnerable, wounded world

Berdine Van den Toren-Lekkerkerker
Community as mission: “Failing towards God’s goal…”

Cameron West and Darren Cronshaw
Warrior Welcome Home: Christian communities responding to the powers, inequalities and vulnerabilities of military moral injury as mission in a wounded world

DABOH came into being in the earliest meetings of IAMS following its inception in 1972. Archives and the documentation of the mission of the church are about life and the future. As mission studies and missiology have matured as disciplines essential to a global and cross-cultural understanding of Christian faith, we remain committed to finding ways to “Rescue the memory of our peoples” and to ground critical and theological reflection on the mission of the church in the historical and cultural experiences of the people of God.

Alison Climenhaga
“I want to be a convinced and influential Catholic”: Catholic action, lay activism, and Church-society relations in Uganda, 1930-1990

Allison Kach
Dissenters and friends: The Doukhobor migration of 1898

Dong-won Kim
Path of faith and enlightenment: A study of Chu-gyo-yo-ji by Cheong Yak-jong Augustine

EunSoo Kim
Missional significance of Iksan independence movement

Shivraj Mahendra
Vulnerability to victory: Snapshots from the life, the mission, and the legacy of Ernest F. Ward (1853-1937), the pioneering free Methodist missionary to India

Abraham Murad
Religious conversion en masse: An ‘untouchable’ caste and missionary intervention in colonial Punjab 1870-1930

Blateiskhem Nongbri
Colonialism and indigenous vulnerabilities: Missionaries’ intervention in the context of the Khasis of North East India

Taunalyn Rutherford
The Changing dimensions of reception narratives from Bombay to Mumbai

Yesan Sellan
Indigenous Indian Mission Agencies among vulnerable people groups and the importance of documentation and archives for sustaining vernacular stories and languages

The aim of Gender and Mission study group is to bring together scholars who in different ways examine the role gender plays in the area of mission studies, mission history and world Christianity. Acknowledging how different contexts inform research and the different conceptualizations of gender we have, will attribute in creating both a safe and challenging arena for rethinking the gender implications of varied themes related to mission studies.

Mabel Ayisi
Social inclusion concepts – vital ingredients of 21st century mission

Songhee Chai
In God’s image and Asian feminist theology in the 1980s

Leanne Dzubinski
Moving towards equality: Understanding gender bias barriers against women missionaries

Lazar Gnanapragasam
Mission in a wounded world: The plight of migrant women today

Evelyn Hibbert
The Angelina Noble Centre: Prising open a space for women missions’ researchers

Eunha Kim
Toward ensuring an inclusive leadership in church and society

Eunjung Kim
Empowering the nameless: Impact of Christian naming of the early Korean Protestant women

Nweke Kizito
Gender narrative of mutual enrichment: gender dynamics among the Igbos

Mimi Lalruatsaki
God’s liberated women in a wounded world: Quest for gender justice with special reference to the Mizo women in India

Seonyi Lee
Statue of peace in a wounded world

Inha Paik
Constructing missional equality for empowering Korean women’s leadership

Susan Smith
A person of honour or a woman of shame

Shingange Themba
Mission as dismantling powers, inequalities and vulnerabilities: An African Pentecostal de-heteronormative mission praxis

Rosyeline Tinggi
WOMB: A theological reflection on embracing vulnerability for empowering women in the context of violence

The study group aims to foster research and study of Christianity in relation to other religious traditions, their practitioners, and their expressions in different cultural contexts. Both theological and religious studies are welcome. The topics may include theology of religions, historical and contemporary relations between religious traditions, comparative theology, comparative religion, interreligious dialogue, and interreligious pastoral practices. As an academic field, interfaith studies would examine the multiple dimensions of how individuals and groups interact with one another, along with the implications of these interactions for communities, civil society, and global politics.

Ronald Bartholomew
The church in troubled times

Roberto Catalano
The experience of interfaith dialogue: an answer to a wounded and vulnerable world

Ishak Ghatas
Engaging with Muslims through dialogue

Gangri Gobu
Lonely path on the Snow Mountain: A Practitioner’s reflection on ministering to the poor and vulnerable in a Sinicized Tibet 2005-2020

Hanna Hyun
The study on the Samaritans’ faith in the Messiah in the context of early Christians and its correlation with the Ebionites’ Christology and missional applications to Muslims (added 14.01.2022)

Rachel Iwamony
Being Christians in a multi-religious society: An Indonesian perspective

Alexander Jebadu
The urgency of interreligious cooperation in coping with ecological crisis

Ah Young Kim
Muslim refugee ministry in Korea from the perspective of the hospitality of the Cross

Jean Kim
Vulnerabilities in establishing Catholicism in Korea: Focusing on the pseudopriesthood system

Sam Kim
Discipleship seeking reconciliation and unity: The case of Muslim background believers among diaspora communities

Anthony Le Duc
The Church’s mission of dialogue in the digital age

Bright Lee Myeong-Seok
Societal impact of climate change and inequality on Christian mission in the late Chosôn Dynasty in Korea, and its implications for mission in the Covid-19 Era

Aaron M
The eye, jinn spirits, and the dynamics of the interpersonal realm: exploring a Biblical idiom in an African Muslim context

Marpaung Frans Best Soma
Dalihan Na Tolu and perichoresis: Religious tolerance and missions in Batak context

Henry Mbaya
Power, poverty and economic marginalisation: SAFCEI’s advocacy role towards state’s environmental policy in global economic perspectives

Patrick Mcinery
Trinitarian relations: Opening the way to receptivity?

Martin Munyao
What can the Evangelicals learn from Muslim migrants? The intersectionality between migration, inter-faith, and religious extremism

Jose Panadan
Christianity as The Way – An alternate model of evangelisation

Hyejin Park
Korean Protestant church’s constructive response to the culture war divisions

James Phillips
Jesus in Islam amongst contemporary Muslims writings to the American public: In what ways do their writings represent continuity and change in relation to classical Muslim understandings?

Raymundus Sudhiarsa
Migrants and their living faith. An Indonesia experience

Muthuraj Swamy
Christian mission as invitation

The IAMS study-group Pentecostal/Charismatic Expressions in Global Christianity is concerned with a wide variety of subjects that in different ways relate to the current ”charismatization” of Global Christianity.  Research on this phenomenon is booming, not least in anthropology and sociology. In theology the interest has been more moderate. However, it is the understanding of the study group that many of the relevant questions in Pentecostal/Charismatic Christianity cannot be understood unless theology – both in the strict sense of doctrine and in a wider sense of Christian faith – is taken into account. In this area the IAMS study-group seeks to be a relevant missiological forum to discuss the phenomenon and to contribute with theological perspectives.

Babatunde Adedibu
Religious networking and power dynamics between historic denominations and African Pentecostal churches in London

Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu
“Sowing into the anointing”: Charisma, money and vulnerability in contemporary African Pentecostalism

Francis Benyah
Healing the incurable? Prayer camps and the management of chronic ailments in Ghana

Martina Björkander
Worship as affective bodily practice

Samuel Fabunmi
The Redeemed Christian Church of God: Christian social responsibility on healthcare services to the poor and vulnerable and its implications for sustainable development in Nigeria

Viateur Habarurema
God, Wealth Provider and Healer: Experiences from Pentecostal Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa

Peter Laughlin
Missions motivation in post-premillennial Evangelicalism. A case study in the 21st century Christian and Missionary Alliance

Eunhee Wang
Holistic liberation of LGBTQ Christians and a wounded world: Beyond the ‘Band-Aid Identity’

Christian mission takes place in a world where there are increasing interreligious tensions, including violence and persecution. Politics, economics, religion, ethnicity and other factors play a role in these tensions. Christians too are involved in such conflicts, sometimes as those who are persecuted and sometimes as those participating in violence. The rationale for the study group is that much of religious persecution occurs in various different relationships to Christian mission, evangelism, witness, conversion, etc. In addition a rather large proportion of studies pertaining to religious persecution are undertaken within the discipline of missiology.

James Bultema
Free enough to grow and give: How the Turkish Protestant movement originated from and contributed to religious freedom

Michael Copeland
Crisis of freedom and mission: China’s religious regulation and Chinese Protestant repression and respite

Wolfgang Häde
Turkish Friday sermons in Germany – furthering or hindering religious freedom?

Vija Herefoss
“Hard pressed on every side, but not crushed”: Christian women negotiating their role in mission and church ministry in the context of persecution

Cornelis Hulsman
The effect of disputed population data on discussions on religious freedom, persecution and mission

Sun-Yi Lee
Considering mission through Joseon prisoners’ encounter with Catholicism during Japan’s Kirishitan Era (1949-1943)

Sebastian Michael
Power, inequalities and vulnerabilities: A case study of violence against Christians in India

Dennis Petri
Restrictions on mission in indigenous communities in Latin America: exploration of political-legal and missiological implications

Jayakumar Ramachandran
Power and power confronting in the transformation-journey in Christ Jesus in the South Asian context of religious freedom.

Kenneth Ross
Laku Alphonse Andrew, mission in a wounded country: South Sudan

Christoff Sauer
The feasibility of a Mission Hostility Index

Andrew Shepherd
Asocial media and asymmetrical power: Digital technology Behemoths and mission in surveillance societies

Anneta Vysotskaya
On the way to spiritual transformation: Discipleship of Muslim background female believers under pressure in Central Asia

Amy West
The Persecuted: Missional focus in adverse circumstances

Stephen Arulampalam

In search for a relevant missiology for persons with disabilities

Pavol Bargar

Empowering the powerless: Exploring resources for mission in vulnerability

Roberto Catalano

Mission in covid/post-covid times – Drawing inspiration from Pope Francis

Choi Hyung Keun

Missiological implications of René Girard’s theory of mimetic desire and scapegoat mechanism

Jonathan Cornford

Saved from Capitalism?

Klara Csiszar

Globalization of love. The existential impact of mission today

Dag-Håkon Eriksen

Organizing for equality in global partnerships

Jan Gorski

New language in interfaith dialog according Pope Francis

Garth Eichhorn

Australians at play: entertainment precincts as a case study for mission

Hongcheol Ahn

Vulnerability, Burnout and Resilience of Korean Missionaries: A Study on Mission Theology Using Grounded Theory

Hanna Hyun

The 21st servanthood leaderships in a changing theological learning environment: Based on a case study of a flipped classroom in a practical theology

Marinus Iwuchukwu

Inclusive religious pluralism as an imperative tool for redressing the inequalities, hate and marginalization created by Christian missionaries in different parts of the globe

Jacob Joseph

‘Patristic symbiosis’ – Beyond neo-patristic synthesis: A methodological inquiry of the Orthodox mission theology of margins

Lee Say Young

From hate to hospitality, from conflict to solidarity: Missional communication for the YouTube online public sphere

Akumla Longkumer

Interrogating vulnerabilities of India’s indigenous people: Towards a holistic missiological paradigm

Jean Baptiste Mbongo

Redefining panta ta ethne in the urban context in Africa for a missional leadership

Nelus Niemandt

The Trinity and incarnation – from vulnerability to resilience

Kizito Nweke

Christomatric: doctrine and dialogue in proclaiming Christ in an age of spiritualities

Andrew Opie

Witness Flows Through Weakness

Benjamin Powell

A Christ focused framework for the individual to address power imbalance across cultures in mission

Lerato Sandiswa Kobe

Desmond Tutu’s legacy of forgiveness: Some tentative notes from the new generation of activism

Oscar Siu

From healing to thriving: Towards a contextual theology of hospitality in time of crisis

Steve Taylor

Missions in digital culture: A transforming shift

David Tutty

Mission as decolonisation: The call to non-indigenous to act justly

Rafael Vallejo

Refugees and resistance: Enacting God’s mission in liminal spaces

Stéphan Van der Watt

Understanding the power of God within mission-minded pastoral theology and care: Combating power abuse by fostering a theology of Christian maturity

Melody Wachsmuth

Theologizing trauma in Roma Christian Communities as an orientation toward missional praxis