The first of the sixteen chapters in Africans in Diaspora and Diasporas in Africa published by Langham (2024) and edited by Bulus Galadima and Sam George, is a call by Prof. Jehu J. Hanciles, PhD for “new research tools and analysis” in this new African era of missions, especially in the face of global migrations.

In this lead article entitled “Beyond Empire: Global Migrations and New Approaches to Christian Mission,” the renowned professor of world Christianity addresses the issue of global migrations and the interconnection between missions and Christian witness.

“…global migrations point to the need for new research tools and analysis. Mission studies have long been dominated by anthropological study of a distant peoples in unfamiliar cultures, statistical evaluation of growth or success, or visiting missionary archives to wade through mountains of correspondence, policy papers, statistical accounts, and missionary reports.

“The missional significance of global migrations calls for tools of ethnographic study and sociological analysis – tools or methods, in other words, that are better designed to explore lived experience and investigate the largely unstructured, often clandestine, nature of missionary movement. In the old order, trained or self-identified Christian missionaries became migrants. In this new dispensation, Christian migrants (of all types) become unidentified missionaries.

“…Ultimately, we must never lose sight of the fact that it is God’s mission, and that the church is the participant. If nothing else, the link between migration and missions reminds us that the entirety of what God is doing in the world is more than we can measure; often less spectacular than we hope for but always somehow centered on acts of mobility.”

These prophetic words from the distinguished professor reaffirm the aim and objectives of the African Centre from Mission Mobilization and Research (ACMMR). The centre aims at a knowledge-based total mobilization of the most numerically Christian continent this century (Africa) for the mission of God.

Jehu J. Hanciles, PhD is the D.W. and Ruth Brooks professor of world Christianity and director of the world Christianity program at Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Georgia, USA. Originally from Sierra Leone, he has lived and worked in Sierra Leone, Scotland, Zimbabwe, and the US, and has been a visiting professor at schools around the world. Previously, he was an associate professor of the history of Christianity and globalization, and director of the Center for Missiological Research at Fuller Theological Seminary, California, USA. He is the author of Migration and Making of Globa Christianity (Eerdmans, 2021), Beyond Christendom (Orbis Books, 2009), and other books.

Reference

Galadima, Bulus and Sam George. 2024. Africans in Diaspora, Diasporas in Africa. Langham Global Library: Cambria, UK.