Meet the keynote speakers who presented at the Methodist Mission Bicentennial Conference, April 8-10, 2019, recognizing 200 years of mission work.
The Methodist Mission Bicentennial Conference was part of a year-long Methodist Mission Bicentennial recognition and celebration.
Rev. Dr. Arun Jones
Dan and Lillian Hankey Associate Professor of World Evangelism, Candler School of Theology, Emory University
Rev. Dr. Arun Jones
Watch Rev. Dr. Jones’ Keynote Address
The son of Methodist missionaries, The Rev. Dr. Arun W. Jones was raised in India and has worked as a missionary in the Philippines. As an ordained elder in the New York Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church, he has served as pastor of United Methodist congregations in the United States. He joined the Candler faculty in 2010.
Both his missionary and pastoral experiences have inspired Jones’ scholarly work, which investigates how Christians have spread and appropriated the gospel in different historical and cultural contexts. Jones is the author of two monographs, Missionary Christianity and Local Religion: American Evangelicalism in North India, 1836-1870 (Baylor University Press, 2017), and Christian Missions in the American Empire: Episcopalians in Northern Luzon, the Philippines, 1902-1946 (Peter Lang, 2003). He has also written numerous articles and book chapters on Christianity in Asia. His current research focuses on the history of Christianity in North India. He is a Vice-President of the American Society of Missiology and Secretary of the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies.
Bishop Mande Muyombo
Bishop of the North Katanga Episcopal Area, The United Methodist Church
Bishop Mande Muyombo
Watch Bishop Muyombo’s Keynote Address
Bishop Mande Muyombo is the Bishop of the North Katanga Episcopal Area of The United Methodist Church. In that role, he oversees the largest episcopal area in The United Methodist Church, including three annual conferences with a total of over one million members. Muyombo is also the youngest bishop in the Congo Central Conference.
Increasing the well-being of pastors, continuing the church’s evangelism efforts, and upgrading the health infrastructure in his episcopal area are all priorities for Bishop Muyombo’s ministry. Bishop Mande is also interested in engaging mining companies in the Democratic Republic of Congo on their Corporate Social Responsibility. He holds a Metallurgical Civil Engineering Degree from the University of Lubumbashi, DR Congo (1998). Between 2008 and 2010 Bishop Mande researched extensively on the role of the church in electoral processes respectively in Zimbabwe and DR Congo.
Prior to being elected as bishop, Mande Muyombo worked as president of Kamina Methodist University in the Democratic Republic of Congo and then for the General Board of Global Ministries, where he served as Executive Secretary for Africa, Assistant General Secretary of Missions and Evangelism, and finally Executive Director of the Global Mission Connections unit.
Born into a large family in Kambove village in Haut Katanga province in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Muyombo was the first of 16 children to graduate college. Muyombo received two degrees from Africa University, where he was also student director of the Africa University Choir. He is the first graduate from Africa University to be elected bishop in The United Methodist Church.
Muyombo received his Master of Divinity degree from St. Paul’s School of Theology with an Ethics/Church and Society Concentration in 2010 and his Doctor of Ministry as part of the Children and Poverty in a Globalized Economy cohort in 2015, also from St. Paul’s.
Muyombo is married to Blandine Muzhinga, and they have three daughters and a son.
Rev. Dr. Elaine Heath
Professor of Missional and Pastoral Theology, Duke Divinity School, Duke University
Rev. Dr. Elaine Heath
Watch Rev. Dr. Heath’s Keynote Address
Dr. Heath’s scholarly work integrates systematic, pastoral, and spiritual theology in ways that bridge the gap between academy, church, and world. Her research interests focus on evangelism and spirituality, evangelism and gender, the new monasticism, and emergence in church and in theological education. Heath is the author of numerous books and monographs, the most recent of which is Five Means of Grace: Experience God’s Love the Wesleyan Way (2017). She is also the co-founder of the Missional Wisdom Foundation, which provides opportunities for clergy and laity to learn how to live in intentional communities and how to develop missional communities and social enterprise in diverse social contexts. Her other publications include God Unbound: Wisdom from Galatians for the Anxious Church (2016), Missional.Monastic.Mainline (co-authored with Larry Duggins, 2014), The Mystic Way of Evangelism, Revised and Updated 2nd Edition (2017), Naked Faith: The Mystical Theology of Phoebe Palmer (2009), Longing for Spring: A New Vision for Wesleyan Communities (co-authored with Scott Kisker, 2010), We Were the Least of These: Reading the Bible with Survivors of Sexual Abuse (2011). Dean Heath is an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church.
Joy Eva Bohol, Youth Address
Program Executive for Youth Engagement, World Council of Churches
Joy Eva Bohol
Watch Ms. Bohol’s Keynote Address
Joy Eva A. Bohol is a missionary with the General Board of Global Ministries of The United Methodist Church assigned as a mission advocate for young adult mission service in the Missionary Services unit of the agency. She is a former mission intern, and was commissioned to her present work in October 2015.
Mission advocates promote and interpret missionary service as a vocational choice for young adults, including the Global Mission Fellows program that places persons between the ages of 20 and 30 for two-year terms of service in justice ministries. Global Mission Fellows is part of Generation Transformation, a comprehensive approach to young adult mission service.
Joy Eva also encourages congregations, districts, and annual conferences to join in covenant support for young adult missionaries. She will be based for one year in the United States and for a second year in Asia, where she will promote and recruit for Generation Transformation.
Joy Eva was a mission intern—the intern program was a forerunner to Global Mission Fellows—with the Centro Popular para América Latina de Comunicación (CEPALC) in Bogotá, Colombia. CEPALC was set up in 1978 to help the desperately poor of Colombia use communications resources to support their claims to human rights and justice.
Joy Eva—her name is short for “Joyful Evangelist”—is from Cebu City in the Philippines, where she is a member of the Labangon First United Methodist Church. She received a Bachelor of Arts in mass communication from the University of the Philippines. Her mother is clergy. Joy Eva has worked for an online newspaper, served as national president of The United Methodist Youth Fellowship in the Philippines, been a team member for Discipleship Resources in the Philippines, and worked as an Emmaus Walk community coordinator. She has taken part in mission trips within and outside the Philippines.
