What’s the Best Way to Teach Anglican Missions to Graduate Students?
While there are excellent books that cover this subject, and while I have lectured extensively, nothing compares to immersing students in the Biblically-grounded, missiologically-informed, and spiritually-uplifting experience of the New Wineskins Global Mission Conference! It is one thing to read or hear about Global Anglicanism or distinctively Anglican approaches to sharing the Gospel. It is quite another to share a meal with a bishop from the Global South, attend a MAP Talk with leaders from Anglican Frontier Missions (AFM) or Society of Anglican Missionaries and Senders (SAMS) or worship alongside Anglicans from every corner of the world.
Over the past three New Wineskins conferences, I have seen the Lord successively build a vision for how Anglicans are pursuing the Great Commission among the students I brought from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. In 2019, I brought five leaders from the Anglican Formation Program to get a taste of what New Wineskins had to offer. The enthusiasm they brought back for the global cause of Christ and the way the conference saturated them in its current realities was contagious, even if that enthusiasm was not matched for Cheerwine, a distinctly Southern soda, which one Ugandan student tasted for the first...and last time!
By 2022, three of my students wanted to up their level of missions engagement by creating a reading course wrapped around attending New Wineskins together, supplemented by group tutorials with me to discuss their essays on their readings during the semester. During the conference, Doctor of Ministry graduates and SAMS missionaries, The Rt. Rev. Todd and The Rev. Patsy McGregor, met with these students to share first-hand accounts of the joys and challenges of their missionary service in Kenya, Madagascar, and Mauritius, drawing on their doctoral research.
In 2025, the engagement needle increased even higher as I made New Wineskins the centerpiece of the Anglican World Missions class I was teaching through Gordon-Conwell’s partnership with the Diocese of Christ Our Hope. This program exists to provide theological education that is accessible and affordable, yet accountable and distinctively Anglican. I will confess I was uncertain if I could convince students who had been meeting one weekend per month in a local regional hub to travel to western North Carolina for four days. Yet, this turned out to be our largest enrollment, with 17 students attending.
We were able to supplement plenaries, workshops, and MAP Talks by drawing upon the unparalleled gathering of Anglican mission leaders at the conference. The McGregors joined us again. The Most Rev. Vicente Msosa, Archbishop of Mozambique and Angola, shared insights into Anglican missions efforts across Portuguese-speaking Africa. Mategyero Nuwamanya, one of the five who attended New Wineskins in 2019, returned to present his current Ph.D. research on missions to and from Africa by Bishop Festo Kivengere. The Rev. Matt Foster led a tutorial on the new Anglican Frontier Missions curriculum, that helped students fulfill one of their assignments: developing a plan to teach both the AFM and the New Wineskins’ Anglican Introduction to Missions (AIM) curriculum in their present or future ministry contexts.
Here are some of the reflections by students about their experience of New Wineskins:
“I felt closest to the Lord…in seeing him respond to one of my prayers for the New Wineskins conference, …to be resourced to reach out to those of the Muslim faith with the love of Christ and his Gospel.… I was amazed when it felt like everywhere I turned I was hearing about Muslims coming to faith in Jesus, and being encouraged and resourced to share with them.”
“One of the questions I walked away asking was: ‘How does the Lord want me to press in more to missions, and what might that look like?’ Practically speaking, our church has an East African congregation, including teenagers in our youth group. I am now considering engaging more with this people group through attending their services, volunteering on our farm, home visits, etc.”
“I felt closest to God during Bishop Yassir Eric's talk. One of his points was that he was not here because he was special…but because Jesus met him and changed his life. I am often resistant to sharing the gospel, because I'm weary of "cultural colonialism" and proselytizing. But hearing Bp. Yassir say, ‘Someone decided to share Jesus with me, and it changed my life,’ reminded me that we don't get a choice! This gospel is not ours to keep from others.”
“During the testimony about antisemitism, I found myself thinking about how the Lord has enabled my path to cross with many Jewish people, some of whom have identified Jesus as their Messiah. I followed what I sensed as the Lord's prompting and sent a quick note to as many as came to mind to let them know that I loved them and that I was in their corner.”
“The Eucharist service was incredibly moving, and God's presence was palpable throughout the entire time. Seeing the children process into the auditorium waving the flags of the nations was a picture to me of the Father's heart for the nations. It ushered me into a sense of standing on the last day when I will worship in a congregation comprised of every nation, tribe, and tongue.”
The depth of learning, formation, and engagement evidenced by these reflections has confirmed my belief that there is no better way to teach Anglican missions than through the New Wineskins Global Missions Conference. For that reason, I have already scheduled my next Anglican World Missions class for September 2028. I hope to see you at the conference, if not as one of my students, then at least as an attendee!
David A. Currie is Dean of the Anglican Formation Program, Dean of the Doctor of Ministry Program, and Professor of Pastoral Theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He is also a presbyter in the Diocese of Christ Our Hope, ACNA, and affiliate clergy at Church of the Cross, Boston.
