Lectures and Colloquia

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Hope Stephenson

There Is a God Behind Football:
Five Weeks in Nairobi

When the world turned its eyes to South Africa last summer for the FIFA World Cup, Hope Stephenson, who graduated in 2010 from Yale Divinity School with a Master of Arts in Religion with a World Christianity concentration, traveled to Nairobi, Kenya, to explore Christianity in the heart of Africa. While based at Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology, she visited churches, clinics, slums, microfinance projects, schools, and outreach ministries, as well as the majority-Muslim city of Mombasa. Her encounters with graduate students, professors, ministers, missionaries, and laypersons from around the world “yielded profound insight into African Christianity and its future in Kenya,” says Stephenson.

The lecture begins at 7:30 p.m.

Friday, October 1, 2010

Rt. Rev. Ian Douglas

Missiological and Ecclesiological Challenges Before
the Anglican Communion Today

Ian T. Douglas was ordained the fifteenth diocesan bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut in April 2010. He is responsible for over 170 congregations and parishes. Previously he was professor of mission and world Christianity at Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Douglas serves on the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) and on the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion from the ACC. A member of the design group for the 2008 Lambeth Conference of worldwide Anglican bishops, he is author of “Equipping for God’s Mission: The Missiological Vision of the 2008 Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops” (International Bulletin of Missionary Research, January 2009) and coauthor of Understanding the Windsor Report: Two Leaders in the American Church Speak Across the Divide (2005). Douglas is a founder of the Anglican Contextual Theologians Network and past convenor of the Seminary Consultation on Mission.

The lecture begins at 12:30 p.m.
Bring a light lunch at 12:15 p.m.
Coffee will be provided.

Friday, October 15, 2010

Dr. Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké Okomo

“Àìní obìnrin ò seé dáké lásán, bí a dáké lásán, enu níí yo ni (Having no wife calls for positive action; to keep quiet is to invite trouble and inconveniences)”: Women’s Leadership Roles in Aládŭrà Churches in Nigeria and the United States

Dr. Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké Okome is professor of political science, African and women’s studies, Brooklyn College, City University of New York. She is author of “African Immigrant Churches and the New Christian Right,” a chapter in African Immigrant Religions in America (2007) and A Sapped Democracy: The Political Economy of the Structural Adjustment Program and the Political Transition in Nigeria, 1983–1993 (1998) and is coeditor of Ìrìnkèrindò: A Journal of African Migration (www.africamigration.com). Earlier this year Central Connecticut State University recognized Dr. Okome with the 2010 Amistad Award for contributions to International Education.

The lecture begins at 12:30 p.m.
Bring a light lunch at 12:15 p.m.
Coffee will be provided.

Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2010

Dr. John W. McNeill

The Russian Church, the Collapse of the Soviet
Empire, and Missions

Dr. John W. McNeill, senior mission scholar in residence at OMSC for the fall 2010 semester, is professor of anthropology and intercultural studies at Providence College, Otterburne, Manitoba, Canada. Prior to joining the Providence faculty in 2000, he was an intercultural teacher and administrator with the University of the Nations, an affiliate of Youth With A Mission. Dr. McNeill trained leaders for nineteen years (1990– 2009) at the university’s center in Eastern Europe and Russia, and he held the same position in former East Germany (1989–92). A native of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, he is author of Western Saints in Holy Russia (2002), “The Church and Western Ministry: What Russian Christians Think,” in The East-West Church and Ministry Report (1994), and “Reclaiming Augustine for Christian Education,” in Christian Education Journal (2003).

The lecture begins at 7:30 p.m.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

David M. Mace

Changing the Face of Poverty: Providing Hope and Dignity
to the Entrepreneurial Poor Through Microloans

David M. Mace retired in September 2003 as chairman, president, and chief executive officer of Northern Trust Company of Connecticut. Prior to joining Northern in October 1996, he was chairman of The Pacific Group, a holding company for the U.S. interests of the Noboa group of companies, which owns the Ecuadorian Line and is the largest privately owned banana exporter in the world. Mace is chairman of Vision Fund International, a World Vision International subsidiary responsible for its microlending ministry worldwide. An Overseas Ministries Study Center Board of Trustees member, Mace is also a trustee of Princeton Theological Seminary and a former board chair. He is an elder of Noroton Presbyterian Church, Darien, Connecticut and is founder and chairman of the Fairfield County Micro-Investors Council, a group of families interested in supporting microlending in developing countries.

The lecture begins at 7:30 p.m.

Friday, November 19, 2010

Professor Andrew F. Walls

The Last Crusade and the Origins of the Western Missionary Movement: The Christian Significance of the Americas

Professor Andrew F. Walls, founder and former director of the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World, is senior research professor at the Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission, and Culture, Akropong, Ghana. He is honorary professor at the University of Edinburgh, and professor of the history of mission at Liverpool Hope University. He served as a missionary in Sierra Leone and Nigeria. His writings include The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith (1996), The Crosscultural Process in Christian History (2002), and The Cultural History of Christian Conversion (forthcoming).His lecture is the conclusion of a weeklong Distinguished Mission Lectureship at OMSC on “The Church on Six Continents: Many Strands in One Tapestry–II.”

The lecture begins at 12:30 p.m.
Bring a light lunch at 12:15 p.m.
Coffee will be provided.

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