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The issue “aims at presenting what all of this has contributed to the development of world mission and evangelism in the world in the 20th century and the first two decades of the 21st century,” writes editor Rev. Dr Risto Jukko in the editorial that opens the issue.
The decision to form the IMC was taken in 1920 after the First World War hindered mission cooperation and the fostering of unity, and the following year 61 representatives of churches, mission societies, and other bodies gathered at Lake Mohonk, in upstate New York, for the council’s founding meeting.
In 1961, at the WCC 3rd Assembly, the IMC was integrated into the WCC and transformed into the WCC’s Commission on World Mission and Evangelism (CWME).
The issue includes voices from Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, as well as case studies from Korea, France, and China.
Prof. Brian Stanley, the author of a major work on the 1910 World Missionary Conference, offers a centennial retrospect and reflection on the IMC from its founding in 1921 to its integration with the WCC in 1961.
Rev. Dr Michael Biehl offers an account of the regional study process organized by CWME to mark the centenary of the founding of IMC when the COVID-19 pandemic made impossible the holding of a commemorative event planned for Lake Mohonk in 1921.
The commemoration was transformed into a three-day hybrid videoconference at which the study groups presented the work they had done so far. The conference can be viewed online.
This issue of IRM is the final issue to be edited by Risto Jukko as CWME director, who concludes his term with the WCC in December 2022. Future issues will be edited by the new CWME director, Rev. Dr Peter Cruchley, until now the mission secretary for mission development with the Council for World Mission.
In a tribute, the WCC’s acting general secretary, Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca, said: “I would like to thank Rev. Dr Risto Jukko for his contribution to the life of the World Council of Churches as director of CWME and as editor of International Review of Mission.”
International Review of Mission is published by Wiley on behalf of the WCC.
Table of Contents of the latest issue of International Review of Mission
