Rev. Dr Israel Oluwole Olofinjana (PhD) is the Director of the One People Commission of the UK Evangelical Alliance. He is an ordained and accredited Baptist minister and has led two multi-ethnic Baptist churches and an independent charismatic church. He is the founding director of the Centre for Missionaries from the Majority World, a mission network initiative that provides cross-cultural training to reverse missionaries in Britain. Israel is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Queen’s Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education in Birmingham and is on the Advisory Group on Race and Theology of the Society for the Study of Theology (SST). Among numerous other roles and activities, he is a consultant to Lausanne Europe, advising them on matters related to diaspora ministries in Europe. He is on the Christian Aid Working Group of Black Majority Church leaders, exploring the intersection of climate justice and racial justice and a member of Tearfund UK’s Theology Committee.
There is a difference between an international gathering of Christians that is controlled by the West and gatherings that allow the full diversity of Christian expression to be experienced. Lausanne 4 exhibited the former, but we can do better.
As our world continues to experience the push and pull factors of migration, it is important to pay attention to how each context is defining their missions in the new mission fields of former Christendom. It is also important not to use just one terminology to define the migration and missions experiences of all Majority World people. we need to continually adapt our understanding of missions as we continue to develop theologies of migration.
