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This paper makes the case that human migration has played a vital and transformational role in the development and expansion of the Christian movement throughout its history. But it mainly focuses on the unprecedented rise of global migratory flows in the last four to five decades to explicate this link. According to recent data, Christians account for almost half of all international migrants. This, combined with the predominance of south-north migration, explains the remarkable rise of immigrant Christian churches (or communities) in many Western societies. While many of these immigrant Christian communities and their pastors exhibit strong missionary consciousness and commitment, they encounter formidable challenges in the area of crosscultural outreach. These stem from complex factors, including racial rejection, widespread anti-immigrant sentiments, and aggressive secularism. But this paper argues that perhaps the most significant obstacle stems from the disengagement and rejection that Christian immigrants experience in their encounter with homegrown churches. A brief examination of the key link between human migration and biblical faith is used as a basis for reflections on the challenges that confront African immigrant churches in Western societies. Five such challenges are highlighted and biblical insights (from Acts 6) are presented.

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This paper reviews the importance of historical studies within the theology curriculum and evaluates some of the perplexities and roadblocks that continue to beset efforts at writing or teaching a global Christian history. It argues that even though recent transformations within global Christianity have stimulated laudable efforts at constructing a new Christian historiography and produced fresh perspectives on non-Western Christianities, developing a global Christian history faces three formidable challenges: the entrenched metropolitan perspective of mission studies, a rigid and outmoded curriculum design, and Western intellectual hegemony. It concludes with a brief examination of credible solutions, including the need for new conceptual models and a new hermeneutic.M y discovery of history as a discipline came rather inadvertently and relatively late in my academic pilgrimage. Not until I took "church history" in college as a lowly divinity student did I discover a boundless fascination with the subject, which motivated me to pursue undergraduate study in general history. The study of history captured my imagination, and its functional elementsincluding the spirit of enquiry, the stimulating rewards of research, and the exciting challenge of probing the complex realities of human interactions, ideas, and events for meaningful insightsprovided fertile ground in which my particular interests and gifts easily flourished. My love affair with the discipline continues to this day; long after my early expectations that everybody else must surely appreciate its allurement had been rudely and repeatedly shattered.The majority of students I have encountered in history courses (at the undergraduate and graduate level) have a chronic aversion to the study of history. Most are firmly convinced that the subject essentially amounts to memorizing or mastering boring irrelevant details and dates, and many have a painful recollection of a history class that deadened rather than stimulated the imagination and had only a soporific Jehu J. Hanciles was born in Sierra Leone and is currently associate professor of mission history and globalization in the School of Intercultural Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. His current research focuses on migration and mission.