3-6 April 2014, Helsinki, Finland – With encouragement from the International Association for Mission Studies (IAMS) NIME is hosting the European meeting in 2014. The NIME board has selected the Cultural Center Sofia, an orthodox center in Finland, for conference venue. The Sofia center is beautifully located and easily accessible from Helsinki Airport.
The theme for our 2014 conference is ‘Mission in the Context of Inequalities’. The program includes annual regional meetings of the various European missiological societies. We hope to include panels both on teaching missiology and developing courses, on research methodology and publication, mission history, contemporary global Christianity, and mission theology, and we encourage scholars to submit proposals for panels. We invite papers submissions in panels or as individual papers, relating to the conference theme of ‘Mission in the Context of Inequalities’. What we have in mind is not simply the economic dimension of missions let alone fundraising but the more fundamental question of the relation between economic power, development and shifting economies, and Christian missions. Possible themes and questions include, but are not limited to:
- Money, economics, and Christian missions
- Has Christian missions been a friend of the poor or a friend of poverty?
- How do unequal economic abilities affect Christian missions and partnership in mission?
- New economies and reverse missions
- The relationship between the transformation achieved by Christian missions and the goal of economic development
Confirmed plenary speakers of the conference include the missiologist Dr. Jonathan Bonk (OMSC, New Haven, US) and the economist Prof. Dr. Magne Supphellen (Bergen, Norway).
For more information, please refer to the NIME website at missionsresearch.org.