News
The church and migration is the focus of the latest issue of the International Review of Mission (IRM). The biannual journal is sponsored by the World Council of Churches and focuses on the ecumenical practice of mission while giving voice to other theological perspectives, such as those of Pentecostal and Evangelical missiologists.
“Migration brings new opportunities for mission and ministries of the church. The development of multicultural ministries is one of the significant missional responses to this global phenomenon” says the editor, Rev. Dr Jooseop Keum, secretary of the Commission of World Mission and Evangelism (CWME).
“Xenophobia, tribalism and the racial and ethnic backgrounds of many of the migrants now cause significant stress on the church, particularly the church in the global North,” Keum points out in the introduction to the IRM issue published under the title “Multicultural Ministry”, and adds that currently “very little attention is paid to the stress on the ‘sending’ communities”.
The issue presents a mixture of “academic” and “practical” papers, developed around four specific areas: Migration, Multiculturalism, Mission and Communitas (the church as community).
In 2011, IRM enters its 100th year of uninterrupted publication. A special anniversary issue will be published in fall, in time for the centenary of its existence in terms of calendar years, i.e. 2012. The journal had indeed been first published in January of 1912, as one of the fruits of the seminal Edinburgh World Mission Conference.
List of authors and articles in the “Multicultural Ministry” issue
