Diaspora Missiology

Last week (September 22-23, 2010) I convened the North American Diaspora Educators Consultation in Charlotte, North Carolina.  Dr. Enoch Wan, President of Evangelical Missiological Society, and Dr. Grant McClung, President of Missions Resource Group assisted me, a world missions resourcing ministry that provides training, consulting, and mentoring to the global Great Commission community

We invited a group of missiologists, missionaries, and professors who represented leading North American seminaries such as Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Wheaton College, Western Seminary, Asbury Theological Seminary, Tyndale Seminary, and The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Our discussion was:

1. The urgency of integrating Diaspora Missiology in the missions curriculum;
2. Publication of diasporic literatures in relation to missions.
3. Intentional recruitment of Evangelical scholars to study diasporas in its multi-faceted reality.

What is Diaspora Missiology anyways?

"Diaspora Missiology" has emerged as a biblical and strategic field of missiology and is defined by the Lausanne Diaspora Educators Consultation (Read about this consultation at http://www.lausanne.org/diaspora-2009/consultation-on-diaspora-missions.html) as: a missiological framework for understanding and participating in God’s redemptive mission among people living outside their place of origin. 

Diaspora Missiology necessitates interdisciplinary study of academic fields related to who, what, when, where, and how populations are moving (e.g. anthropology, demography, economics, geography, history, law, political science, and sociology) and classic missiological study (e.g. theology, missiology, biblical studies, evangelism). 

Who is studying Diaspora Missiology?

The study of migration and diasporas is not new.  Social sciences:  e.g. history, anthropology, sociology, geography, demography, economics, political science, and law are disciplines that are carefully examining migration.  Each discipline has its own sets of questions, hypotheses, and variables.  In Migration Theory:  Taking Across Disciplines, Caroline B. Brettell and James H. Hollifield suggest that migration theory is interdisciplinary, with each discipline focusing on specific aspects of migration, but all working together to provide the bigger picture.  Practitioners of these disciplines interact to develop migration theory:

• Anthropologists are interested in the immigrant experience and the results of social and cultural changes.
• Demographers project the future of population movements by analyzing the nature of population change.  They document the pattern and direction of population shifts.
• Economists use human capital terms and labour market patterns to chart population shifts.
• Geographers study the spatial patterns of migration (e.g. employment patterns and residential patterns; the development of ethnic enclaves; segregation patterns of ethnic and racial groups).
• Historians study past immigrant experiences.
• Lawmakers and researchers of migrant law study and develop national immigration policies related to migration.
• Political scientists study the relationship between migration and a nation’s policies.
• Sociologists are interested societal changes that occur with migration. 

The tenets, methodologies, theories, and hypothesis of disciplines concerned with migration and people movements are presented in the table:  Migration Theories across Disciplines [1].  Please refer to PDF attachment