This issue features selected papers first presented at the Christian Scholars’ Conference, hosted at Abilene Christian University in June 2025. These contributions from sessions sponsored by the Missio Dei Foundation reflect the breadth of contemporary missiological reflection by scholars connected to the Stone-Campbell tradition while also engaging broader conversations in global Christianity. The essays in this issue reveal a recurring concern with the tensions between inherited forms and emerging realities, between established missional paradigms and new horizons for participation in the mission of God.
Building on these foundational concerns, several authors wrestle directly with the legacy of missionary transmission and the challenges of contextualization. In “Is the ‘Transplanted Tree’ Withering?,” Paul Chimhungwe examines the history and present condition of Churches of Christ in the Shona-speaking regions of Zimbabwe. He argues that imported North American worship forms and ecclesial assumptions have too often remained insufficiently contextualized within indigenous Shona religious and cultural frameworks. His article presses readers to consider whether forms of worship and ecclesiology transplanted wholesale from one setting to another can flourish without deeper engagement with local worldviews and practices. In a different context, Ariel Marie Bloomer provides us with a case study of the Saskatoon Church of Christ. In it, she traces a congregation’s movement from a more traditional, monocentric understanding of missions toward emerging missiological models marked by partnership, reciprocity, and polycentric collaboration.
Questions of partnership and relationality are spotlighted in Alan Howell’s provocative proposal of “koinonosis” as a practical theology for missional partnerships. Drawing on the concepts of kenosis, theosis, and koinonia, Howell argues that Christian mission and partnership in mission require more than transactional cooperation or financial support structures. Howell’s constructive theological and missiological neologism expresses his call for covenantally grounded participation in the divine life, reshaping relationships among churches, missionaries, and local leaders. The article contributes to ongoing discussions about postcolonial mission practice and the cultivation of healthier patterns of collaboration within global Christianity.
Theoretical and theological reflection takes center stage in two essays that challenge readers to reconsider prevailing assumptions about mission itself. Mark Love’s “Mission, Hermeneutics, and the Gospel as Sustained Apocalypse” critically engages influential paradigms associated with two missiological figures in contemporary missiology: Lamin Sanneh and Andrew Walls. Love questions whether the gospel can adequately be conceived primarily as a translatable “message.” Drawing on philosophical hermeneutics and contemporary theology, Love proposes instead that mission is participation in an ongoing apocalyptic unveiling in which meaning emerges within encounters between cultures and communities. Similarly, Renee Rheinbolt-Uribe’s essay employs Ivan Illich’s “It/She” framework of bipartite ecclesiology to critique institutional forms of faith that collapse salvation into institutional loyalty. Through ethnographic reflection and decolonial critique, she challenges the institutional arrangements of the International Churches of Christ, a Stone-Campbell branch that is infrequently addressed in academic treatments. Rheinbolt-Uribe imagines alternative forms of relational and communal life rooted in hospitality, mutuality, and what Illich termed conspiratio. Both essays push missiological discourse beyond familiar categories and invite readers to inhabit more expansive theological imaginaries.
Finally, Frank Obeng Essien’s contribution brings our attention to spiritual formation within Churches of Christ in Ghana, particularly among emerging leaders shaped by campus ministries and higher education contexts. Essien argues that the rationalist theological inheritance of the Stone-Campbell Movement in Ghana has often produced an anemic spirituality unable to sustain deeper transformation and communal flourishing. By examining the yearnings of a younger generation seeking more authentic spiritual formation, the essay highlights retreat practices and contemplative spirituality as resources for renewal within the Ghanaian context. In doing so, it raises larger questions about discipleship, formation, and the relationship between theological knowledge and transformed lives.
These essays show the growing mix of disciplines and global viewpoints in today’s missiology. History, theology, ethnography, local theology, and practical ministry all intersect in this issue. Most importantly, these articles remind us that missiology works best as an ongoing conversation among communities adapting to changing global realities.
