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.