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.
