Jeannette Shubert (PhD Intercultural Education) is an Associate Dean of Academics at East Asia School of Theology (Singapore). In addition to her teaching and mentoring roles, she provides oversight for Advanced Studies programs, Formation, and Faculty Development. She has taught at seminaries in the Philippines, United States, and Kenya as well as a non-formal training program in Russia. She has focused on leadership development through theological education, discipleship, and formation. She also holds ThM and DMin degrees as well as a MSc in counselling. She has served with Cru since 1981.

Her PhD explored a gap in the literature related to mentoring within Asian theological education. Her grounded theory multi-case study identified that participation in faculty-led mentoring groups was a liminal experience that drew Asian theological students from 11 countries into a relational mentoring process with long-term impact in their perspective, lives, and ministries.

Research interests

orality, cultural dimensions of teaching and learning, theological education, mentoring, formation, leadership development, faculty development, discipleship, TCKs in mission contexts

Vale 22 October 1958 – 3 August 2022

We are very sad to share the news of the death of our dear colleague and sister in Christ, Isabel Moyra Dale. Isabel’s faith in the Lord Jesus Christ during her illness has been a shining beacon of hope to all those who have journeyed alongside her for the last six years. For those who pray, please remember her husband Lauren and children Tarek and Miriam before God’s throne of grace.

Isabel and her family served with CMS in the Middle East for over two decades. During those years, Isabel completed two unique ethnographic research projects exploring the lives and experiences of Muslim women. Her outstanding scholarship in the area of Women in Islam was rooted in the deep and trusting relationships that she built. The fruit of her work has been seen not only in the academic journal articles and books that she has published, but especially in the lives of those she taught and mentored. Isabel cofounded the When Women Speak network and played an important role in the establishment of the Angelina Noble Centre, ministries that were especially dear to her.

Lauren and Isabel returned to Melbourne in 2007 and joined the staff team at CMS’s training college, St Andrew’s Hall. Isabel has equipped a generation of gospel workers to love and appreciate the people and cultures in which they serve.

Isabel combined her incisive intelligence and passionate communication with a deep love for the Lord Jesus and those she taught. She poured out her life to equip many women to serve in gospel ministry around the world, especially in Islamic contexts. The Angelina Noble Centre, When Women Speak and CMS have been especially blessed by Isabel’s ministry; she also taught extensively at SMBC, MST and Ridley College, as well as at Columbia International University in the US.

We give great thanks to God for Isabel’s life, confident that she is now with her Father in heaven.

Research and teaching

In over two decades in the Middle East, Moyra was involved in teacher–training for adult literacy (Arabic) for a decade and a half.  Her PhD explored the gaps between what happened in the classroom and curriculum, and literacy practices in women’s everyday lives.  As part of her DTh she completed ethnographic research in a women’s mosque programme in the Middle East.  In her final years, she was involved in educating people for cross-cultural ministry, with a focus on cultural anthropology and Islam.  She taught in a number of Bible colleges in Australia, the US and Asia.

Academia

Research interests

Islam, Muslim women, women’s issues across religions and cultures, how the Bible and cultural anthropology help to re-read each other.

Patricia has over 40 years of experience in Education, having taught in schools, university, and above all, in theological colleges, and has participated in training school teachers and ESL teachers.  She has taught Missiology, Anthropology, Linguistics, Cross-Cultural Communication, TESOL, Ethics and other subjects at several ACT and SCD theological colleges. She has also been an adjunct professor at Fuller Theological Seminary and has taught intensives in Latvia, the Philippines and other countries.

Over a number of years, Patricia has supervised students in their Master’s and Doctoral research with various theological colleges. These include London School of Theology/Middlesex University, Oxford Centre for Mission Studies/ Open University, Alphacrucis College, Tabor College Adelaide, and Asia Graduate School of Theology Alliance and other institutions.  She serves on the Programme Board of the MA program in Theological Education of London School of Theology, and on the Academic Board of the Australian College of Christian Studies. She is also on the Board of Worldview, the WEC college in Tasmania (now affiliated with Melbourne School of Theology).

Patricia served for about a decade with the World Evangelical Alliance Theological Commission as an international consultant in Theological Education, working with many missions and denominations on all continents. In retirement, she continues similar consultancy on request. Patricia is also well known in Theological Education by Extension circles, and has conducted numerous workshops on this around the world.  She currently serves as an honorary Senior Advisor to the INCREASE Association, which works with TEE programs across Asia, Russia and the Middle East.  (In this region alone there are currently about 100,000 TEE students.)

Research interests

teaching & learning in cross-cultural theological education; theological education by extension (TEE); language & literacy in mission and in international theological education  – and more generally, missiology and cross-cultural communication; Christian social and political ethics

Birgit teaches Practices of Mission at the School of Intercultural Studies of Fuller Theological Seminary and has been working in cross-cultural contexts with WEC International for almost 30 years. She served eight years in Ghana where she trained leaders and organized the children’s ministry department of the Evangelical Church of Ghana, as well as coaching new missionaries in their cultural adjustment and language learning. Since 2015 she is the International Membership Department Coordinator for WEC International. In this role she coaches national leaders and coordinates the preparation of new missionaries from almost 60 different nations for work in cross-cultural contexts around the world.

Her studies and research interests focus on the history and present realities of intercultural missionary training and practice, especially in Africa. They include the history of global Christianity and the current global missionary movement, especially in and from Africa, Contextualization, Intercultural Theology, Spirituality and Leadership Development. Her PhD focused on the missionary training of the largest German mission in the nineteenth century and its (often adverse) effects on their work in Ghana. Her passion is to minimise in present day contexts the dynamic of Trained Incapacity which her research revealed.

Research interests

the history of the global Christian movement, especially in Africa; African missionary engagement and migration; missiology, contextualization, intercultural communication and cross-cultural ministry; education and training in and for intercultural contexts; Christian spirituality and leadership development.

Evelyn has experience in pioneer church planting. She had the privilege of being involved in discipling, leadership development and theological education for a movement of thousands of people to Christ after the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. Evelyn is working on developing accessible theological training for these believers who are now scattered across Western Europe.

Evelyn has had an international ministry helping cross-cultural workers with strategic planning, church planting, multicultural teamwork, and developing and evaluating training programs (face-to-face and online) at all levels from pre-literate adult learners to doctoral research students.

ORCID, Academia, Google Scholar

Research interests

cross-cultural and multicultural ministry generally, insider movements, women’s movements, gendered space, leadership, cross-cultural teaching and learning, cross-cultural hermeneutics, academic literacy

Cathy has worked in South Asia and the Middle East in areas of development, education, church and women’s activism, as well as leadership in mission. She is passionate about women and change, particularly how the transforming power of the Kingdom of God, expressed in the message of the Gospel, is foundational to challenging the structures that mediate Muslim women’s lives. In her PhD Cathy explored this theme through the lives of women activists in Pakistan. As one of the Founders of the When Women Speak … network Cathy is engaged in enabling women to understand the experience of faith for women living under Islam and ensuring women’s voices are part of our understanding of faith and mission.

Research interests

women, Islam and mission; women, social activism and change; issues that impact discipleship for women followers of Jesus out of Islam, honour and shame as experienced by women, and the intersection of women’s social activism and the gospel

Georgina is a Fellow of the Centre for Muslim-Christian Studies in Oxford and Research Associate of the University of Gloucestershire, UK. She has taught courses on Islam, Gender and Mission and Scriptural Engagement part-time at a variety of institutions, such as Redcliffe College, All Nations Christian College, London School of Theology and Bristol Baptist College. She founded an activity called the Holy Book Club which brings Christians and Muslims together to have conversations based on texts from the Bible and Quran. She has published on female characters of the Quran and Bible, as well as historical reflections on relations between Muslims and Christians in southern Africa.

Research interests

female characterisation in religious literature, life and work in Muslim contexts, scriptural engagement as inter faith dialogue

Dr Cathy Ross is Head of  Pioneer Leadership Training at CMS (Church Mission Society) and  Lecturer in Mission at Regent’s Park College, Oxford.  She comes from Aotearoa/NZ.    Until 2016 she was the General Secretary of the International Association for Mission Studies. She has previously worked in Rwanda, Congo and Uganda with NZCMS. 

Her recent publications include Women with a Mission, Rediscovering Missionary Wives in Early New Zealand, (Auckland:Penguin, 2006) and Mission in the 21^st Century, Exploring the Five Marks of Global Mission (ed with Andrew Walls); (London:DLT, 2008), Life-Widening Mission: Global Anglican Perspectives (Oxford:Regnum, 2012) and Mission in Context (with John Corrie, Ashgate, 2012), The Pioneer Gift (with Jonny Baker, London:SCM, 2014), Mission on the Road to Emmaus, (with Steve Bevans, London:SCM, 2015), Pioneering Spirituality (with Jonny Baker, London:SCM, 2015), Missional Conversations, A Dialogue between Theory and Praxis in World Mission (with Colin Smith, 2018), Bearing Witness in Hope, Christian Engagement in Challenging Times (with Humphrey Southern, 2020), Imagining Mission with John Taylor with Jonny Baker, London:SCM, 2020).

She is married to Steve, a GP in Oxford and they have 3 children and 4 grandchildren.  She enjoys tennis, swimming, coffee, travel and watching the All Blacks and Silver Ferns.

Research interests

mission, world Christianity, contextual theologies, feminist theologies, hospitality

Verena studied Applied Theology (BA/MTh) at Regents Theological College in the UK, after which she served as a theological educator in South Sudan from 2007-2011. She started her PhD in Educational Leadership at Columbia International University (USA) in 2011, which she finished in 2017. She spent 5 years in Mozambique with SIM working as a theological educator in Pemba and then as Academic Dean of the Instituto Teológico de Lichinga in Lichinga training pastors for the local evangelical churches. In September 2021, she started to work as a Regional Consultant for Theological Education in Africa with the Overseas Council.

Research interests

African theology, theological education in general and in Africa in particular, curriculum design for theological schools. She has published on pneumatology and has taught on many NT books and theology in general.