Vignettes: Walls and Shenk

In my last blog, I paid a brief tribute to Andrew Walls and Wilbert Shenk. I did not know either man well. Wilbert knew me, but I doubt that Andrew Walls remembered me from our brief meeting. Still, I have my own memories of these two men, whom I have called "heroes" in the world of missiology.

I remember meeting Shenk at the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries (now Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary -- AMBS) in Elkhart, Indiana. I was looking for missions courses to teach, and he was the missiology professor at AMBS. He was engaged in a research project analysing secular culture, which meant that he needed someone to teach his regular missions course.

He invited me to teach that course, which became my first step into the world of teaching missions. I also taught a world religions course at Huntington College at that time. The college course was rocky and could have ended my foray into teaching; the seminary course was wonderful and confirmed my calling to teach at this level.

I remember the end of our initial conversation together. Wilbert said something like, "It has been wonderful to talk to someone who speaks my language." He spent his time with colleagues who spoke a closely related academic language, but as missiologists we shared a common understanding that he found nourishing. As did I.

A few years later, we were at a meeting of the American Society of Missiology together. I was teaching a missions history course and had trouble finding a good source to recount the cross-cultural witness of mainline churches. As we went in to lunch, I asked Wilbert if he could recommend a good source on mainline missions history. He replied curtly, "There is none." He meant, of course, that churches who saw missionary outreach as illegitimate did not have much outreach to describe. Evangelicals in the USA have many problems -- especially with what is sometimes called civil religion -- but they do at least witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ wherever they go.

One brief story about Andrew Walls, which I have told before. When Wilbert retired from teaching at Fuller's school of world mission (where he had gone from AMBS), he returned to Elkhart, where he lived his last years. The Anabaptist Association of Missiologists (I think) held a dinner with several speeches in his honour. The keynote address came after the evening meal and was delivered by Walls, who had been Wilbert's mentor in his doctoral studies.

We were in the Chapel of the Sermon on the Mount.and the lighting was dim. Walls could not read his manuscript as he stood at the podium, so someone went to get a lamp they could place over the podium. While we waited, Walls spoke briefly with us. He said something like this: "People have told me that I am a dry speaker, and I believe that it is true. But I must tell you that I have only fallen asleep once while lecturing, and in my defense, I was the last to go." He spoke the truth -- he was a dry speaker, but his insights were and are powerful and continuing. I am greatly in his debt, as well as in Wilbert's debt. 

I did not know them well, but I miss them and thank our common Creator for giving us the privilege of knowing them.

Walls and Shenk

 Over the past few weeks, two of my missiological heroes have died.

Andrew Walls wrote several texts that I use regularly in my teaching. He developed the idea, for example, of Christianity as growing through serial expansion and Islam growing through progressive expansion (see the second essay in The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History). Christianity has moved around the world throughout its history, so that some one-time centres of Christian faith have become thoroughly de-Christianized. In contrast, Islam tends to take territory and hold it.

This insight rests on the fragility of the cross (as Walls terms it) and reminds us of the necessity of choice. As someone else has said, "The church is always one generation away from extinction."

The serial nature of the church also leads to a remarkably diverse and rich history, described in the first essay of The Missionary Movement in Christian History. Walls describes five centres of the faith down through the centuries -- from Jerusalem to Southern Europe (home to Greek  culture) to Ireland to England to Nigeria. The serial nature of the church also helps us to see the richness of the Persian and Eastern Church, so often ignored in the study of Christian history.

A final contribution (although I could name many more) from Walls' essays: He describes the indigenous principle and the pilgrim principle of being the church. The church and Christian faith are at home in every culture and in no culture. Our final home is with God; yet we are at home here in every culture. These two principles held in tension protect us from civil religion and imperialism on the one hand and from sectarian irrelevancy on the other.

I mentioned also Wilbert Shenk. Walls and Shenk knew each other well. Walls was Shenk's advisor in his doctoral studies, and together they edited a seminal book on "new religious movements", Exploring New Religious Movements: Essays in Honour of Harold W. Turner. (A harder book to find!) Which brings me to remember Shenk.

Wilbert Shenk was a leading Mennonite missiologist. When he taught at AMBS, he gave me my first experience teaching missions courses. He was involved in a Pew Grant-funded study of contemporary culture, which led to a series title "Christian Mission and Modern Culture". (I have used several of the resulting volumes in my own work.)

That experience at AMBS was my first step in teaching missions at Providence Theological Seminary (Manitoba) for the past 25 years. I am indebted to Shenk for his invitation and I learned much from him in our contacts over the years.

They are both gone now, and I am semi-retired. The faith in which they lived their lives sustains me, and the hope with which they lived has become sight and pure fact.