Short
Story:
We are
moving to the Philippines with IMB soon, hopefully at the end of March! Cameron
will direct a PhD program at a seminary in Manila and teach missions at a
different seminary. Jessica will teach math part-time at an international Christian
school, where Sara and Noah will attend.
Long
story:
I (Cameron)
graduated from college with a degree in History and a minor in Education. I
landed a job that fall teaching secondary history and English literature at a
Christian school in Saipan, an island north of Guam. It was a fascinating
learning experience for me. The staff and students were super kind and I got to
do some cool stuff like community theater and learn to scuba dive. Almost
all of my colleagues were Filipino, and I had a blast getting to know them and
their culture. Due to a number of circumstances, I only taught there a year
before moving to seminary in North Carolina. I also met Jessica not long after
I moved to seminary, and we were married July 2, 2011.
During my
last semester of my Master of Divinity program at Southeastern Baptist Seminary
in Fall 2011, I needed one more class to graduate. My advisor told me about a
Bible Storying class that would be offered during Fall Break, to which I
thought, “Sounds easy enough. Sure, I’ll take it.” That week was pivotal for
me. I learned how over 80% of the world chooses to learn through mostly non-literate
means, such as through telling stories, watching video clips, singing songs, drama,
and dancing. I learned that, in contrast, over 95% of the world’s pastors and
missionaries are trained in highly literate models, which they naturally bring
with them as they graduate and serve churches around the world. As an
experiment, I chose to use Bible Storying in my ministry I was involved in at
the time – counseling the boyfriends of pregnant teenage girls at the Crisis
Pregnancy Center in Wake Forest, NC. As these guys began to open up to
spiritual conversation in a way they never had before, I knew I had stumbled on
something crucial. One guy, for example, successfully retold the story of the
First Sin back to me, and then asked, “Does it really say in the Bible that Adam
was with Eve?” “Yes, it does,” I answered. “I want to see that for
myself,” he said, reaching for a Bible from the shelf (which he’d never done
before).
At the end
of the week, a man named Grant Lovejoy came down from Richmond, Virginia, to
speak in our class. Grant was serving as the Director of Orality Strategies (now the Scripture Resource team) for IMB.
Grant asked if anyone would care to join him for lunch, which we all did, and
asked if anyone had any questions. I’m not the kind of guy to wait around for
others to ask questions first, so I began pummeling Grant with questions about
Bible storying, orality, and how telling stories affects our belief in biblical
authority. After about fifteen minutes, Grant stopped me and said other people
should have a turn, and that, really, he was asking if anyone had questions
about the process of becoming IMB missionaries.
I could
not get those questions out of my mind. So, I decided to pursue a Master of
Theology (a research degree similar to the MA) on the topic of how orality
interacts with the doctrine of biblical inerrancy.
It was
during my ThM phase (completed in 2012) that I kept coming across the name Tom
Steffen. Steffen is an emeritus professor at Biola University and has played a
central part in the orality movement (the push to use oral strategies in mission
work) from its beginning in the Philippines in the early 1980s. I thought, “If
the Lord ever opens the door for me to do a PhD, I’d like to study under
Steffen.” In 2014, after we had lived in Romania for two years, God answered my
request. I finished my PhD at Biola in May 2020, studying how the use of oral
strategies might look in a formal seminary context in Bucharest. Steffen
continues to be a huge encourager in my life.
In
September 2019, I was invited to speak about my research at a conference on
orality in Oxford. The conference was a joint effort between the Oxford Centre
for Mission Studies and the International Orality Network (ION), of which IMB
is a part. During that weekend, I met the leaders of ION and they asked me to
be a part of a global conversation about how to get seminaries on board with
using orality strategies in their curriculums. Beginning in August 2020
(delayed due to the pandemic), I met monthly with a group of scholars via Zoom.
In January
2021, the International Director of ION asked me if I could put down on paper
what a ThM/PhD curriculum in Orality Studies might look like. I was privileged
to do so and genuinely enjoyed the effort. I brought my curriculum before the
monthly Zoom group and we began tweaking it. I was then informed that Asia
Graduate School of Theology in Manila was in talks with ION to make this
program a reality. At the end of April, ION offered me the role of Program
Director.
This offer
took me and Jessica by complete surprise. As we began to pray and ask advice
from supervisors, friends, and mentors, it became clear that the Lord was doing
something new in our lives; something for which he had been preparing us for a
long time.
At first,
we did not think remaining with IMB would be possible. The theological
education-specific role, we thought, would not fit IMB’s vision as a church
planting organization. But our supervisors encouraged me to reach out to Grant
Lovejoy in Richmond, who began making calls and emails to personnel in the
Philippines to see if such a transfer would be possible. In early August 2021,
the leader for IMB Philippines told me that, actually, they have been praying
for ways to reengage the seminaries there, and that my coming could do just
that. My work time will be divided between the Program Director role in Manila
and connecting with the Filipino Baptist seminaries, particularly the
Philippine Baptist Theological Seminary in Baguio (a city about four hours
north of Manila).
There is a
great Christian school in Manila called Faith Academy, which is actually a
sister school of Bucharest Christian Academy. Having taught high school math
for five years in the US before we went to Romania in 2012, and then having
taught part-time for Bucharest Christian Academy this past year, Jessica applied,
interviewed and was offered the role to teach math part-time at Faith Academy. We
will also send Sara and Noah to Faith Academy.
We are
very excited about this new chapter the Lord is writing for our ministry. God
is opening amazing doors for our family! At the same time, we know leaving our
home of nearly ten years, where we moved as basically newlyweds, where both our
kids were born, and where many of our dearest friends in the world live, will
be an emotional roller coaster. Please pray with us that we transition well and
honor our many friends, leaders, and, above all, our good and faithful God.
