American Society of Missiology - Eastern Fellowship

ASM-Eastern Fellowship

Maryknoll Mission Institute

Maryknoll, New York

November 6-7, 2009

Mission in Urban Contexts

Friday, November 6

2:00 PM Registration at Maryknoll, Rogers Building (Maryknoll Sisters)

3:00 Welcome and Prayer

3:10 Anthony J. Gittins, C.S.Sp., Professor of Mission and Culture at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago

"Mission as Diakonia -- Table-Fellowship"

Description:

This presentation will use a case study of a homeless women's shelter in Chicago as a place of encounter, outreach, and mutuality. Jesus' question to Bartimaeus -- "What do you want me to do for you?" -- provides the stimulus for a missional response. I will describe how themes such as "mission in reverse," "the dignity of difference," and "mission as ongoing conversion" are exposed and challenged in the context of an urban shelter.

4:00 Break

4:15 Anthony J. Gittins, C.S.Sp.

"Mission as Diakonia -- Table-Fellowship" - continued

5:10 Announcements

5:15 Dinner

6:45 Worship

7:00 Christopher E. George, Executive Director, Integrated Refugee and Immigration Services, New Haven, "The U.S. Government Refugee Resettlement Program: The Challenges of Resettling Iraqi Refugees"

8:00 Introductions

8:15 Social Time

Saturday, November 7

7:30 AM Breakfast

9:00 Worship

9:30 Douglas Hall, Judy Hall, and Bobby Bose, Emmanuel Gospel Center, Boston

"The Primacy of Urban Ministry in an Increasingly Urban World"

Description:

How is the social system design of a city utilized to do the job of ministry?

We will give an advanced case study of the Quiet Revival-the growth of Christianity in Boston, one of the world's most secular cities--which illustrates how the system of the city was the primary way the faith carried out extensive social ministry as it grew dramatically.

We will show how the practitioner social science of systems thinking, initially used in business and management, tells us how the job of ministry gets done in our highly complex urban world. When the faith uses a practitioner social science, it can be enabled to do ministry through how social systems do the job. Organizational systems and programs only operate vitally when they are contextualized-by following the Process of the Gospel--to the operation of the social system, not when they are the primary approach of our missiology. The job gets done when the social system becomes designed to do it.

10:15 Break

10:30 Douglas Hall, Judy Hall, and Bobby Bose

"The Primacy of Urban Ministry in an Increasingly Urban World" - continued

11:15 Stanley H. Skreslet, Professor, Union Theological Seminary/PSCE, Richmond, "Reflections on What We Have Seen and Heard"

11:25 Reports on Research

11:50 Annual Business Meeting

12:30 p.m. Lunch

Biographical Information

Anthony Gittins, C.S.Sp.

Anthony J. Gittins, C.S.Sp, has taught at The Catholic Theological Union in Chicago for the last twenty years and is currently the Bishop Ford, M.M., Professor of Missiology. Born in Manchester England, he earned an MA and PhD from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He has taught and worked in some thirty-five countries. His pastoral outreach includes ministry in cultures from Africa to the Pacific, and work with Chicago's disenfranchised, especially homeless women. A personal priority for him is to combine teaching and speaking with learning and listening.

He is the author of a dozen books and numerous articles, including Ministry at The Margins: Strategy and Spirituality for Mission, A Presence That Disturbs: A Call to Radical Discipleship, and Where There's Hope There's Life, Women's Stories of Homelessness and Survival.

See www.ctu.edu/Our_Faculty/Biographies/Anthony_Gittins.html and for, books he has written, http://astore.amazon.com/wwwctuedu-20?_encoding=UTF8&node=146.

Christopher E. George

Chris George is the executive director of Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services (IRIS), a New Haven-based refugee resettlement agency which also has helped resettle Hurricane Katrina evacuees. Chris has been in this position since May 2005. Prior to starting his current job, Chris worked part time at the Connecticut Commission on Children in Hartford, taught several Parent Leadership Training courses in Meriden and East Hartford, and advocated for better government and citizen's rights by writing several articles on the legislative process, transparency, and voter registration. The Hartford Courant published six of his commentaries.

Chris has spent most of his professional life living in-or working on-the Middle East. Before returning to Connecticut in 2004, he worked seven years in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, directing contracts with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Working for the Vermont-based international consulting firm, ARD Inc., he directed a legislative strengthening project with the first democratically elected Palestinian Parliament and later established an emergency assistance program that gave grants to local nonprofits.

From 1994 to 1996, Chris was executive director of Human Rights Watch-Middle East, based in New York City, and he continues to serve on its advisory panel. Prior to that, he worked nine years with Save the Children (mostly in the Middle East) and three years with American Friends Service Committee (mostly in Lebanon). Chris began his international career as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Muscat, Oman. Altogether, he has spent more than sixteen years in the Middle East. He speaks Arabic.

Chris has a BA in History from the University of Pennsylvania. He grew up in Montclair, New Jersey, graduating from Montclair High School in 1972.

See www.irisct.org.

Douglas Hall

Douglas Hall is president of Emmanuel Gospel Center (EGC) in Boston, Massachusetts, where he and his wife Judy have served since 1964. The mission of EGC is to understand urban churches in the context of their broader urban communities and to help nurture their vitality, particularly in Boston's low-income and immigrant communities. Through a systemic approach that encompasses research, training, and consulting programs, EGC builds the capacity of urban churches to serve urban residents effectively, particularly in the areas of education, youth, economic development, and homelessness. By working with and through all different types of churches, EGC seeks to build a community that supports and cares for the spiritual and physical needs of all individuals throughout the city.

Hall is a graduate of Moody Bible Institute (1960), Michigan State University (1963) (B.A. in Sociology and Anthropology, M.A. in Counseling and Guidance), and Gordon Divinity School (1968). He was granted an honorary doctorate by Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in 1981. He has been teaching the M.A. course on Urban Ministry for Gordon-Conwell since 1973 and in the Doctor of Ministry on Complex Urban Settings program since its inception in 1998.

See www.egc.org.

Bobby Bose

Bobby Bose holds a Ph.D. in Intercultural Studies from Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California. He has served for three decades among Diaspora peoples in major cities of the world (Calcutta, Pune, London, Los Angeles, and Boston) through evangelism, discipling, and teaching in both informal and formal settings of local churches, Bible colleges and theological seminaries. Currently he is serving as the Global Urban Ministries Education Coordinator for Emmanuel Gospel Center, Boston, and is an active participant in an emerging network of global urban ministries serving in numerous cities around the world. He also teaches as an adjunct faculty of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary's Center for Urban Ministerial Education. He teaches missions, theology, and urban ministry courses for the Center for Urban Ministerial Education.