ATLANTA – Mercer University's James and Carolyn McAfee School of Theology will host its inaugural World Missions Lecture Series, Feb. 3-4, in Cecil B. Day Hall on the Atlanta campus.
The speaker for the series is Dr. Alan Roxburgh, director of The Missional Network, a generative network of leaders and systems in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom that is focused “on the strange, disruptive future to which God is calling the church.” Dr. Roxburgh has served as a lecturer at Regent College and Tyndale Seminary in Canada, as professor and director of the McMaster Centre for Mission and Evangelism at McMaster Divinity College, and as pastor of congregations in Toronto and Newmarket, Ontario.
“McAfee is launching this lectureship right at a time of great flux in Christian missions: the decline of American Protestantism, the shift in leadership to the Global South and East, the changes in the economics of support for career missionaries, and the explosion of short-term mission trips in individual churches,” said Dr. R. Alan Culpepper, dean of the McAfee School of Theology. “Our hope is that these lectures will keep the urgency of mission work before our students and pastors, while challenging all of us to think more deeply about how the church is called to carry out her mission in the midst of these powerful changes.”
Dr. Roxburgh's first lecture, on Feb. 3 at 7 p.m., is titled “The Western Churches and the Global Mission Movement: The Emerging Challenges.” His second lecture, on Feb. 4 at 10:45 a.m., is titled “The Missiological Challenge in the West: Becoming the 'Other.'” This lecture will be followed by lunch and a guided roundtable conversation in the Trustees Dining Room, sponsored by the Center for Teaching Churches. For lunch reservations, RSVP to the Center at (678) 547-6477 or grizzle_rh@mercer.edu.
A graduate of Northern Baptist Theological Seminary and Fuller Theological Seminary, Dr. Roxburgh is author of numerous books on the church and mission, including “Missional: Moving Back into the Neighborhood” (Baker, 2011), “Missional Map-Making” (Jossey-Bass, 2010) and “The Missional Leader” (Jossey-Bass, 2006). He currently makes his home in Vancouver, British Columbia.
The World Mission Lecture Series is set to be held every two years and is made possible by a generous gift intended to nurture in students a passion for global mission in the 21st century. The gift also provides funds for a scholarship for Japanese students and supplements a mission immersion experience outside the United States for McAfee students every two years. This marks the first year of both the lecture series and the mission immersion experience, which will be held in May in India.
