Professor of global missions will convey the value of missionary biography in convocation address

When Louisville Seminary students, employees, and the community gather for the opening convocation of the 151st academic year on September 11, Dr. Frances Screnock Adeney, William A. Benfield Jr. Professor of Evangelism and Global Mission, will deliver an address that will help men and women, who have listened to God’s call to serve the world in many forms of ministry, understand the depth of that call contextually.

In her address, Why Biography? Contributions of Narrative Studies to Mission Theology and Theory, Adeney will demonstrate how studying the lives of missionaries can help us to know more about God in context and develop a better understanding of God in the global world around us.

“I have been looking more closely at the ways in which biographical studies can influence both mission theologies and mission theories. Narrative studies, investigations of the lives and stories of real people, have historically been part of mission study,” says Adeney. “However, in my address, I would like to go a step further and show how insights gained in studying the lives of particular missionaries in their contexts can lead to new theologies and theories of Christian mission.”

Adeney joined the Seminary faculty in 1999. As a professor of evangelism and global mission, she specializes in issues of Christianity and culture, and more specifically, the place of religion in the social world and the implications for ethics in the interactions between religion and society. She believes that one issue facing the church and society today is mission.

From 1991 to 1996, Dr. Adeney served in a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) mission assignment in Indonesia, where she served as a professor and as a national delegate for the 100 Years: World Parliament of Religions, held in conjunction with the Chicago World Parliament meeting. Before coming to Louisville Seminary, Dr. Adeney held appointments at the University of Southern California, Satya Wacana Christian University in Indonesia, Jakarta Theological Seminary, and New College Berkeley. She has been visiting professor at the Graduate Theological Union, St. John’s School of Theology in Collegeville, Minn., Asia Theological Seminary in Manila, Philippines, Fuller Seminary, and St. Edmund’s College of Cambridge University. During a recent sabbatical, she taught World Religions at Trinity Theological College in Singapore.

Her recent publications include Christian Women in Indonesia: A Narrative Study of Gender and Religion (Syracuse University Press, 2003), “Feet First: How Practices Have Shaped My Theology of Evangelism and Mission,” in Gospel Bearers, Gender Barriers: Missionary Women in the Twentieth Century edited by Dana Robert (Orbis Press, 2002), and contributions to Ethics and World Religions (Orbis, 1999). Currently she is completing the forthcoming Human Rights: Christian Influences and Issues (SUNY Press) and Christians Encounter the World’s Religions, which will discuss the challenges of mission in a global context and present the church with ways to interact with other religions while affirming the centrality of the gospel to Christian faith.

The Fall Convocation will be held in the Frank H. and Fannie W. Caldwell Chapel at Louisville Seminary on Sept. 11 at 7:30 p.m. The event is open to the public without charge. For more information contact Louisville Seminary at 1.800.264.1839, ext. 460, or by e-mail: lpts@lpts.edu.