The future of the discipline of Missiology: Framing current realities and future possibilities

Abstract

This article was delivered as the Presidential Address at the annual 2013 American Society of Missiology (ASM) meeting. It utilizes the framework of adaptive change in contrast to technical change to name and frame the critical challenges facing the discipline of missiology at the beginning of the 21st century. Three adaptive challenges are discussed: (1) ASM’s constituency and their basic ministry assumptions appear to be increasingly out of fit with global church shifts and the rise of the majority church in the South; (2) much of the North American (NA) mission enterprise is being marginalized globally from its historical hegemony and lacks sufficient critical distance to address this shift either abroad or at home; and (3) ASM’s failure to attend to the development of a missiological ecclesiology for congregations in context, especially in NA, continues to limit the contribution of missiology to theological education. Suggestions are offered for how these adaptive challenges might be taken up as part of the ongoing work of ASM.