For three years I have waited impatiently for a representative of the “global Christianity paradigm” articulated by scholars such as Andrew Walls, Philip Jenkins, Lamin Sanneh, Jehu Hanciles, and others to respond to Robert Wuthnow’s 2009 critique of their paradigm in his Boundless Faith: The Global Outreach of American Churches (University of Calif Press). So…

In response to my recent post “What in the World is Missiology?” Steve Bevans suggested that missiology has a distinctive contribution to make to other seminary disciplines like systematic theology, church history, or biblical studies. In this post I build on Bevans’ thought, but in relation to the discipline of homiletics.

Academic conferences are core to the life-blood of any discipline. By conference participation younger scholars are inducted into the discipline, and all scholars overcome isolation, receive encouragement, develop scholarly networks, interact in ways that sharpens their own scholarship, and find opportunities for collaboration and publication.

Every academic discipline has its own journals.  Scholars read the journals of their discipline, assign articles from them to students, and contribute to them through research and writing.  Part of socialization to any discipline is developing a familiarity with the journals of one’s discipline, acquiring a commitment to their success, and learning to recognize which…