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International
Bulletin January 2003
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From Imitation to Innovation: The Church in Asia
Something Happened
is the understated title of a 1933 account of the itine
David Barrett
offers the nineteenth in an unbroken succession of annual statistical
tables on global mission that made its first appearance in 1985. They
estimate the number of Christians in Asia to be some 327 million, of
which, according to Tony Lambert�s cautionary report, well over 20
million Protestants and another 10�12 million Catholics may be found in
China. Something happened, and�as Jean Paul Wiest�s report on the
Catholic Church there shows�continues to happen, in China.
Something has
been happening in Korea as well. As Steve Moon points out in his masterful
survey of what is arguably one of the most missionally dynamic movements
of the last decade, the number of Korean missionaries has increased from
1,645 in 1990 to 10,745 in 2002, a majority of whom serve in Asia.
Qualitatively, likewise, the 136 organizations represented by these
missionaries are progressing �from imitation to innovation.�
Behind such
numbers lie concealed countless men and women without whom there would be
nothing to count. Some of these are missionaries�people like James
Gilmour, �the missionary without a single convert�; John Schuette, the
first mission secretary of the S.V.D.; and Ralph Covell, who shares his
pilgrimage in this issue.
Even
less evident are the ideas that give rise to those orientations,
motivations, and initiatives that prescribe and proscribe Christian
mission and its varied modus operandi. As John Flett points out, it was
mission and its Gospel of hope, after all, that undergirded and impelled
Christian response to the wrenching human devastation issuing from the
Great War.
While the
numbers game in Asia is as fraught with its own kind of risks, as was
navigation by ancient mariners of the Strait of Messina between the twin
perils of Scylla and Charybdis, clearly, something has happened and
continues to happen in Asia. And in this issue, the IBMR
is pleased to highlight that fact.
January 2003
Catholics in China: The Bumpy
Road Toward Reconciliation
Jean-Paul Wiest
Counting
Christians in China: A Cautionary Report
Tony Lambert
The Recent Korean Missionary
Movement: A Record of Growth, and More Growth Needed
Steve
S. C. Moon
From Jerusalem to Oxford: Mission as the Foundation and Goal of
Ecumenical Social Thought
John Flett
Annual
Statistical Table on Global Mission: 2003
David B. Barrett
and Todd M. Johnson
My
Pilgrimage in Mission
Ralph
R. Covell
The
Legacy of John Schuette, S.V.D.
Heribert Bettscheider, S.V.D., translated by Louis J. Luzbetak, S.V.D.
The Legacy of James Gilmour
Kathleen L. Lodwick
Fifteen Outstanding Books
of 2002 for Mission Studies
In Coming Issues
The Missionary Awakening in
Latin American Catholicisim
Juan Gorski, S.J.
Gandhi
and Islam: His Living Christian Legacy in the Muslim World
Paul-Gordon
Chandler
�Blessed Reflex�: Mission as God�s Spiral for
Renewal
Kenneth R. Ross
Keeping
Faith with Culture: A Study of Zoroastrian Converts of the Nineteenth
Century
Farshid Namdaran
Pre-Revolution Russian Mission to Central Asia: A
Contextualized Legacy
David M. Johnstone
What
the Baila Believed About God: A Study in Cultural Clues to Evangelization
Dennis G. Fowler
In our Series on the Legacy of Outstanding Missionary Figures of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, articles about
Norman Anderson
Thomas Barclay
Rowland V. Bingham
George Bowen
H�l�ne de Chappotin
Robert Codrington
Fran�ois Daubanton
John Duncan
Hannah Kilham
Rudolf Lechler
George Leslie Mackay
Leslie E. Maxwell
Lesslie Newbigin
Vincent O'Donovan
M. D. Opara
Constance E. Padwick
Peter Parker
Julius Richter
Elizabeth Russell
Bakht Singh
James Stephen
Philip B. Sullivan
John V. Taylor
James M. Thoburn
M. M. Thomas
William Cameron Townsend
Johannes Verkuyl
William Vories