Mission as integral conversion

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Zeit: 7-9 October 2020

Ort: Phil.-Theol. Hochschule Sankt Georgen, Frankfurt am Main

The Institute for World Church and Mission can look back on 10 years of research and program work. On this occasion, the Annual Conference 2020 offers you a review of the Institute’s central research fields and projects.

The portfolio of the past commitment, which has taken place in intercultural exchange with world-church actors, proves to have its finger on the pulse of the times. Situations of vulnerability in global responsibility are being recognized as theological places. The topicality of our work is once again underlined by the Amazon Synod and the focal points in church and theology identified there: Interculturality, migration, education, holistic understanding of salvation and ecology.

For more information, please contact: sekr [at] iwm [dot] sankt-georgen [dot] de

Christian education and humanism in a global context

The 2019 Annual Meeting of the IWM focused on the Christian mission for education in the world today. It poses the question of the conditions and challenges when the goal of education work is the realization of a global “solidary humanism”. Which structures and institutional frameworks are helpful and necessary for building a “civilization of love”? What role should the church play in the future? How should it position itself in the educational systems of the different countries and local churches? Answers will be given by international and interdisciplinary experts from the church and non-church world.

Christianity and Mediation

The upcoming conference sets out to explore the role and meaning of media and media change within the history of Christianity from an interdisciplinary and global perspective. How to conceptualize the mutually constitutive relationship between media and processes of mediation on the one hand and Christian discourses, practices, modes of percepetion and socialization on the other? And how to assess and evaluate latest developments within the „digital era“ from a missiological perspective?

Postcolonialism and Theology of Mission

The conference wants to provide a critical introduction to history, current approaches as well as essential concepts of postcolonial theories and analyse the theological and missiological relevance of postcolonial discourses. During the conference we will examine the entanglement of (theological) knowledge and power, the challenge of creating a new understanding of mission regarding the conditions of a postcolonial context as well as the consequences, which arise from taking colonial and neo-colonial experiences seriously into account for pastoral services as well as Church development cooperation around the world.

Mission 21 – Opening the Gospel in new spaces

The Institute for World Church and Mission (IWM), in cooperation with the Catholic Office for Missionary Pastoral Care (KAMP), organizes an annual conference on the topic: “Missio inter gentes – A Missionary Paradigm for the 21st Century? The participants of the conference went in search of a contemporary understanding of mission and were inspired by the Asian theologian and religious scholar Jonathan Y. Tan. Against the background of the minority experience of the Christian churches in Asia, Tan identified a new mission paradigm “inter gentes”, which is characterized by the cooperative living together of people of different religions. The idea of “inter-religious hospitality” is formative, in which an affective component plays an essential role.

Mission: Sustainability – Theology and the church as a driving force for sustainable development

At the IWM Annual Conference 2015, the question was explored what a Christian theological contribution to global and local sustainable development could be? What is special about the self-understanding of a Christian, what is special about his understanding of his environment and his fellow human beings, from which a mandate to actively shape sustainable development could result?

Christ and the Religions – Religious Theological Positioning of Mission Theology

At this year’s meeting of the IWM, comparative theology and Israel theology were taken into consideration. Both approaches elude the usual schematizations of the religion-theological pluralism debate. While comparative theology interreligiously opens up individual religious convictions of different internal perspectives, Israel theology argues biblically for a fully valid path of salvation for Judaism.

In the course of the conference both drafts are to be discussed in a Christological perspective and with regard to consequences for the world church. Here it is important to sound out what the approaches mean for the Christian understanding of mission.

Opening new spaces – mission and secularization(s)

In large parts of Europe in the course of the last centuries – and particularly rapidly in the last decades – a secular world of ideas has established itself, “in which nothing Christian anywhere is still simply taken for granted” (K. Rahner). At the same time new religious search movements break new ground, so that the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor already speaks of a “spiritual super-nova”.

These far-reaching and apparently also contradictory processes of change place, as John Paul II formulated it already in 1985, “Christianity and the church before the most radical challenge that history has known so far, at the same time it opens today new and creative possibilities for the proclamation and incarnation of the gospel”.

At this year’s annual meeting of the IWM and the IIMF, the tension between secularization and mission will therefore be examined. Is this a typically European challenge or can – perhaps different – forms of secularization be observed worldwide? What are the consequences of secularization for church practice and theological reflection?

Contextuality and universality of the Gospel

Today’s diversity of theologies (indigenous, Dalit, Minjing, peasant, liberation, feminist, Latino, white, black theology etc.) constantly challenges theological reflection and church practice. The process of a real incarnation of the Christian message in a particular context leads to something new, to a new form of theological understanding and Christian action.

On the one hand, the message of salvation cannot be understood independently of a particular context, because Christian statements of faith always have a culturally determined form and dynamic. On the other hand, it is important to understand, spell out and preserve the universality or normativity of the Christ event in its cross-cultural meaning.

In view of this tension of universal claim and particular context ultimately the question about the Christian identity and its missionary realization arises.

The analysis of contextual thought and action challenges us to take a new look at basic theological issues. For this reason, the Institute for World Church and Mission is devoting its annual conference 2011 to this topic

International Conference 2010 - Pentecostalism

Pentecostalism – Questions to theology and church

The worldwide rapid spread of the Pentecostal Churches in their various manifestations of Pentecostalism, Neo-Pentecostalism and the Neo-Charismatic Movement gives rise to numerous questions regarding the manner of proclamation, community formation and leadership practiced there, of catechesis and the organization of worship, the role of the Holy Spirit, the importance of spirituality, the targeted use of modern media, the value of emotions in liturgy, the position of women in the Church, social commitment, the impact on society and politics and, last but not least, the forms of financing.

The declining numbers of the established churches make a discussion of these questions all the more urgent. For this reason, the Institute for World Church and Mission is dealing with this topic at its annual conference.

It is a symposium whose aim is a factually critical and at the same time self-critical examination of various aspects of Pentecostalism.