Previous Senior Mission Scholars in Residence
Each semester the Overseas Ministries Study Center welcomes Senior Mission Scholars who provide leadership in OMSC’s Study Program and are available to residents for counsel regarding their own mission research interests. Seasoned scholarship, internationally renowned instructors, cutting edge seminars, and an ecclesiastically diverse resident community make OMSC the place to be for renewal of mission skills and vision.
Current Senior Scholars in Residence
Dr. Wonsuk Ma and Dr. Julie C. Ma
Fall 2011
Dr. Wonsuk Ma is Executive Director of the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies, in Oxford, England. An Old Testament scholar and Korean Pentecostal, he is the author of Until the Spirit Comes: The Spirit of God in the Book of Isaiah (1999). Ma has edited numerous books. He was Vice President forAcademic Affairs at Asia Pacific Theological Seminary (1996–2006), .jpg)
coeditor of the Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies (1998–2006), and editor of the Journal of Asian Mission (1999–2001). He jointly led three Edinburgh 2010 study groups.
Dr. Julie C. Ma, his wife, is a research tutor in missiology at OCMS. She is author of When the Spirit Meets the Spirits (2000) and Mission Possible: The Biblical Strategy for Reaching the Lost (2005). Shealso edited the Journal of Asian Mission and served in the General Council ofEdinburgh 2010.
They are coeditors of Asian Church and God's Mission (2003) and coauthors of Mission in the Spirit: Towards a Pentecostal/Charismatic Missiology (2010).
Dr. Paul R. Gupta
Spring 2011
Dr. Paul R. Gupta, senior mission scholar in residence at OMSC for the spring 2011 semester, is president and director of the Hindustan Bible Institute and College, Kilpauk, Chennai, India, and president of HBI Global Partners, Forest, Virginia. A California native, Dr. Gupta is committed to equipping leaders for evangelism and church planting throughout India. After relocating to Chennai in 1983 to teach at the institute and college, he founded the Indian National Evangelical Fellowship and the Indian National Evangelical Church. The church implemented a strategy of recruiting missionaries to work throughout India, and today INEC counts 676 church planters who have started 4,264 churches with a membership of more than 250,000. In 1987 he hosted the first Consultation on National Strategy to consider ways of reaching unreached peoples of India. As a result, a movement called the Council on National Service was started with the vision of planting a church in every village, town, and city in India. Dr. Gupta is coauthor with Dr. Sherwood G. Lingenfelter of Breaking Tradition to Accomplish Vision: Training Leaders for a Church-Planting Movement: A Case from India (2006).
Dr. John W. McNeill
Fall 2010
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 discovered Russian literature as a child, and that appreciation led to his academic career. Dr. McNeill wrote a Ph.D. dissertation (Trinity International University, 1995) on “Western Saints in Holy Russia: Perceptions of Conversion and of Westerners Among Western Influenced Converts, Russian Church Converts, and Members of the Public in the Former USSR.” The ethnographic study was published as Western Saints in Holy Russia (Mandate Press, 2002). He is also author of “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).
Dr. Philomena Njeri Mwaura
Spring 2010
Dr. Philomena Njeri Mwaura, senior lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya, teaches courses in the areas of African Christian history, new religious movements, African-instituted churches, world Christianity, and gender. A former curriculum developer at the Kenya Institute of Education, Dr. Mwaura has also been a consultant on gender mainstreaming in education, theology, and HIV/AIDS vaccine clinical trials with clients that include the Kenya Episcopal (Roman Catholic) Conference and International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of World Christianity and is a contributing editor to Mission Studies. She was the Africa region coordinator of the Theology Commission of the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians.
Dr. Allison Howell
Fall 2009
Dr. Allison Howell, an Australian, was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly the Belgian Congo), where her parents were missionaries with the Brethren Assemblies. Since 1981 she has served mostly in Ghana as a missionary researcher and teacher, first with SIM Ghana in the Upper East Region among the Kasena, and for the past ten years on the staff of the Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission, and Culture. A senior research fellow and the dean of accredited studies at the institute, Howell also coordinates a group of Kasena pastors who are writing a Bible commentary on the Gospel of John in Kasem.
Dr. Randall Prior
Fall 2009
Dr. Randall Prior is professor of ministry studies and missiology at the United Faculty of Theology, Melbourne, Australia. He teaches in the areas of theological reflection for ministry practice and pastoral theology, as well as about the intersection of Gospel and culture, mission, and evangelism. Prior’s research interests include exploring these topics in the context of Vanuatu as an experiment in grounding theology in a post-independence South Pacific. He is editor of The Gospel and Cultures: Initial Explorations in the Australian Context (1997) and a series called The Gospel and Culture in Vanuatu. A former pastor, Prior is part of the Uniting Church in Australia.
Dr. Edith L. Blumhofer
Spring 2009
Dr. Edith L. Blumhofer is professor of history at Wheaton College and director of the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals, Wheaton, Illinois. Her research interests focus on the history of Christianity in post–Civil War America. She is also interested in the religion of ordinary people and has recently been exploring the history of Protestant hymnody. She is preparing a set of Web-based resources to facilitate the teaching of Pentecostal studies. Dr. Blumhofer, author of People of Faith: A History of Western Christianity (2007), is writing Evangelicalism: A Very Short Introduction (forthcoming from Oxford University Press).
Dr. Kevin Ward
Spring 2009
Dr. Kevin Ward, senior lecturer in African religious studies at the University of Leeds (U.K.), spent twenty years working in East Africa as a teacher and theological educator. He did his original research in Kenya, examining the problems of Protestant Christian ecumenical cooperation in colonial Kenya. He has continued to have a strong interest in East Africa, focusing on the history and spirituality of the East African Revival, church-state relations in Uganda, and the religious basis of conflict in Uganda. He is author of A History of Global Anglicanism (2006) and coeditor with Brian Stanley of The Church Mission Society and World Christianity, 1799–1999 (1999).
