Welcome to the 55th issue of Asian Missions Advance! We have good news to share with our readers about the birth of Bangladesh Missions Association (BMA). After decades of prayer and effort, BMA has been founded. It has been a long journey to arrive to this point of the birth of BMA. Since the Asia Missions Association (AMA) was conceived in 1973 and founded in 1975, Dr. Subhas Sangma, a representative from Bangladesh, has served as one of AMA’s founding Board members. At the time, however, Bangladesh was not able to form its own missions association. Recently, AMA leaders visited Bangladesh a couple of times to encourage Bangladesh church leaders to form BMA. This year, BMA became a reality!
Rev. Edward Ayub and Mr. Shankar Shikdar, upon their return to Dhaka from AMA Manila ’16 Convention talked about the need for BMA. They proposed the formation of BMA to the leaders of Bangladesh by sending them papers on “The founding of BMA” and “Impressions, Thoughts & Suggestions Bangladesh Missions Association.” The Bangladesh church leaders met on November 2016 and decided to hold a missions conference for the Bangladesh church on April 20-21, 2017 in Dhaka, Bangladesh. We anticipate that BMA will facilitate and lead the missionary movement of the Bangladesh church.
To add to our feature on Bangladesh mission, we included the paper of Rev. Edward Ayub called, “A Critique to the Missiology Based on Common Grounds Between Christianity & Islam”. This paper introduces us to the current situation of the relationship between Christianity and Islam in Bangladesh. Included also in this issue is a meaningful recommendation to Korean churches on how the re-unification of South and North Korea should occur in the paper, “Re-Unification of North and South Korea As Told by the Bible”.
To make this issue more relevant to missions, we added the works of Dr. Nelson Jennings’ “Did Roland Allen Foresee Diaspora Missiology?”; Dr. Susanta Patra’s “Continuity in Missions, and Why A Contingency Plan is Critical”; Rev. Lalano Badoy’s “Global Partnership in Missions” and a Ministry Report on ISM by Mr. Leiton Chinn. These papers though diverse were written to represent the different areas in mission that need our attention and continuous inquiry to evaluate their effectivity in the ministry.
We are thankful to our contributing authors who have shared their points of view and expertise so that we may learn and share with others as well.