Charles Fensham, Canada:

I will offer my report by reflecting on two experiences, identifying two themes issuing from these experiences which will then be followed by two observations that relate to the conference.

Two Experiences and Two Themes:

The first experience that strikes me as I think back over the conference is Bishop “Manu’s” (Rt. Revd. Munawar Kenneth Rumalshah) observations from Peshawar in Pakistan, that we too easily romanticise the pain of a Christian minority situation based on the Gospel stories of salt and light etc., and his observation that one has to “smell the sweat of your enemies - an experience only possible when you embrace them.”The theme that arises for me out of this experience is the theme of mission as vocation for community while employing critical tools. This theme became apparent in many different presentation during the conference. These include the presentations of Hauwerwas, Reppenhagen, Guder, Keifert, Ellison, Matthey, Mortenson, Drane and Engnell.

The second experience came to me when we had to respond to Prof. Guder’s presentation. The little group I shared with was made up of students from Aarhus University Faculty of Theology. They shared with me that one of their fellow students felt offended that Prof. Wagner prayed before his presentations in the morning. The theme that this experience highlights for me is the idea of mission as objectified science domesticated by the secular-enlightenment paradigm. I suppose my bias against this view of mission will be evident from the way I describe it! To some degree this theme and its importance in the European and Scandinavian context was demonstrated in Prof. Graf’s presentation with Arne Rasmussen’s humorous response about describing himself as a cucumber – a way to demonstrate the absurdity of individualist relativism. Even though I have my own doubts about such an approach I think the debate inherent in the tension between mission as vocation for community and mission as objectified science is a worth while one to engage.

Two Observations:

The two themes of which I did not hear enough at the conference are:

First, the seeming absence of considering our current destructive relationship with our biosphere as part of mission. To me it seems that as missiologists we need to seriously grapple with the first three chapters of the Hebrew Scriptures that describe our basic human vocation in terms of tending and caring for creation. We are to be in community with one another and creation. This theme deserves much greater emphasis.

Second, although the theme of migration did come up in a few places, it is also one that will be fundamental to mission thinking in the 21st century. A year ago, I attended the Annual Meeting of the South African Missiological Society. The theme was climate change and mission. There we heard that, because of the dramatic shrinkage of arable land all across Africa, they anticipate that in the next twenty years Africa will produce tens of millions of hunger refugees displaced simply because they can no longer subsist off the land.

These refugees will naturally move towards Europe and North America. This is not just a humanitarian and geo-political issue but also a fundamentally missiological one. After all, it is our green house gasses dumped in the air of Africa that is causing a large proportion of the problem. Was it not our Lord who said, “I was hungry and you gave me to eat”?