Dr. Makoto Fujimura

Leading Contemporary Artist and Author

Topic: Christianity in East Asian Art

Biography:
Makoto Fujimura is a leading contemporary artist whose work has been featured in galleries and museums around the world, including The Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, The Huntington Library in California, the Tikotin Museum in Israel, Belvedere Museum in Vienna, C3M North Bund Art Museum in Shanghai, and Pola Museum in Japan. His process-driven, refractive “slow art” has been described by David Brooks of the New York Times as “a small rebellion against the quickening of time.”

Fujimura is the author of 4 books: Art+Faith: A Theology of Making, Silence and Beauty, Refractions, and Culture Care. He is also the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2023 Kuyper Prize for Excellence in Reformed Theology and Public Life and the American Academy of Religion’s 2014 Religion and the Arts award. From 2003 to 2009, he served as a Presidential appointee to the National Council on the Arts. He is a celebrated speaker and advocate for the arts and is the recipient of four honorary doctorate degrees. Fujimura is an Equity in Action Visiting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania for the 2024-25 academic year.

Dr. Wonsuk Ma

Distinguished Professor of Global Christianity and Executive Director of the Center for Spirit-Empowered Research at Oral Roberts University

Topic: East Asian Pentecostalism Engaging with the World: A Theological and Practical Inquiry

Biography:
Wonsuk Ma (PhD OT, Fuller) is a Korean Pentecostal serving as Distinguished Professor of Global Christianity and Executive Director of the Center for Spirit-Empowered Research, Oral Roberts University, Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA. He also co-chairs the Global Network of Spirit-Empowered Scholars of Empowered21, which organizes annual scholars consultations.

Dr. Peter C. Phan

Ignacio Ellacuría Chair of Catholic Social Thought at Georgetown University

Topic: Vietnamese Christianity: Past, Present, and Future

Biography:
Peter C. Phan currently holds the Ignacio Ellacuría, S.J. Chair of Catholic Social Thought at Georgetown University. He has earned three doctorates and received four honorary doctorates. He is the first non-Anglo to be elected President of the Catholic Theological Society of America and of the American Theological Society. In 2020 he was given the John Courtney Murray Award, the highest honor of the Catholic Theological Society of America, in recognition of outstanding and distinguished achievement in theology. His writings, which include over 40 authored and edited books and 300 essays, have been translated into twelve languages.

Dr. Scott Sunquist

President and professor of Missiology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary

Topic: Conference Introduction

Biography:
Dr. Sunquist is the 7th President and Professor of Missiology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, a role he assumed in July 2019. He is an administrator, interdisciplinary scholar, pastor, visionary, and cross-cultural missionary whose unique mix of experience and entrepreneurial disposition uniquely equip him to lead Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary at this time. Previously, Dr. Sunquist served for eight years as Dean of Intercultural Studies and Professor of World Christianity at Fuller Theological Seminary. He has also served as Professor of World Christianity at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Lecturer in Church History, Ecumenics, and Asian Christianity at Trinity Theological College in Singapore, Pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church in Singapore, and Campus Staff Member for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in Virginia and Massachusetts. Dr. Sunquist’s main scholarly interests lie in Christian mission, evangelism, and world Christian history. He has written in the areas of mission theology, pluralism, and Asian Christianity, and has focused his research and writing on historiography, missiology, and Christianity in the non-Western world. In addition to his numerous articles, chapters, reviews, and essays, Dr. Sunquist is the author of 5 books. The most recent Why Church: A Basic Introduction. Dr. Sunquist received his B.A. in History Education from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; his M.Div. from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary; and his Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary. In 2017, he was the Senior Scholar in Residence at the Overseas Ministries Study Center, New Haven, CT. He and his wife Nancy have four children and 11 grandchildren.

Dr. Mary Ho

International Executive Leader of All Nations International

Topic: The future of Christianity in East Asia

Biography:
Dr. Mary Ho is the International Executive Leader of All Nations, a global Christian missions organization with workers making disciples and church planting in 45 countries. She also serves as an adjunct professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, co-leading a three-year doctoral program on “Mission, Development and Leadership in the Global Christian Context.” Dr. Ho is passionate about finishing the Great Commission in this generation by sharing the love of God among every people and in parts of the world where the name of Jesus Christ is little or not known. Dr. Ho received her Doctor of Strategic Leadership from Regent University, VA, U.S.A. in 2016. She is married to John and have two young adult sons.

Dr. Man-Hei Yip

Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at Wartburg Theological Seminary

Topic: From Exodus to Diaspora: Christianity in Hong Kong and Its Liminality of Transnational Identity

Biography:
Man-Hei Yip is Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa. Before joining the faculty at Wartburg, she served as a Visiting Researcher at Boston University School of Theology in connection with the Center for Global Christianity and Mission. Additionally, she worked for the offices of the Lutheran World Federation in Geneva, Switzerland and Phnom Penh, Cambodia. She is author of Interrogating the Language of “Self” and “Other” in the History of Modern Christian Mission: Contestation, Subversion, and Re-imagination (2020). She is also a contributor to Global Lutheranism: Vitality and Challenges (2018) and Luther’s Small Catechism: An Exposition of the Christian Faith in Asian Contexts and Cultures (2019).

Dr. Mark R. Mullins

Professor of Japanese Studies and Director of the Japan Studies Centre at the University of Auckland

Topic: Japanese Christian Responses to the Challenges of Imperialism and Postwar Nationalism

Biography:
Mark R Mullins is Professor of Japanese Studies & Director of the Japan Studies Centre at the University of Auckland. Prior to this appointment in 2013, he was engaged in academic work in Japan for 27 years. He is the author and editor of a number of works, including Christianity Made in Japan (University of Hawai‘i Press, 1998), Handbook of Christianity in Japan (Brill, 2003), Critical Readings on Christianity in Japan (Brill 2015), and Yasukuni Fundamentalism: Japanese Religions and the Politics of Restoration (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2021).

Dr. Steve SC Moon

President and CEO of Charis Institute for Intercultural Studies

Topic: The Korean Mission Movement In the 2020s: Considering Andrew F. Walls’ Theory of Serial Expansion of Christianity

Biography:
Steve SC Moon is a Korean missiologist serving as president and CEO of the Charis Institute for Intercultural Studies. He also teaches missions at Grace Mission University and several other Christian universities in different parts of the world. His PhD is from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (1998).

Dr. Kim Son Nguyen

Dean of the Vietnamese Theological School and Ordained Minister

Topic: Vietnamese Protestantism in the Early Twentieth Century

Biography:
KimSon Nguyen earned his PhD in Intercultural Studies from Fuller Theological Seminary, California, USA in 2017. In 2020, he was appointed dean of the Vietnamese Theological School (Union University of California). As an ordained minister, he has served the church in teaching and preaching ministry in Vietnam and the USA.

Nguyen’s scholarship has focused on mission and theology, interacting with both mission and theological traditions and contemporary contextual theologies in dealing with areas of cultural integration and theology in the Vietnamese and East Asian context. His publications are “Western missionaries and cultural integration in Vietnamese Protestantism” (forthcoming, Brill, 2025), “History of Christianity in Vietnam: Evangelical Churches in Vietnam in the Early Twenty-First Century,” and “Case Study of Cultural Integration for Self-Theologizing in the Evangelical Church of Vietnam” (Mission in Southeast Asia: Diversity and Unity in God’s Design, Langham Global Library, 2022), Cultural Integration and the Gospel in Vietnamese Mission Theology: A Paradigm Shift (Langham, 2019), “Familial Leadership: A Vietnamese Perspective” (Evangelical Interfaith Dialogue, 2017), “The Catholic Church in Vietnam: An Example of Contextualization” (Asia Journal of Theology, 2015), “Mission History of Vietnamese Evangelicalism in the Pioneering Stage: A Vietnamese Perspective” (Journal of Asian Mission, 2015), and a Book Review: “Grassroots Asian Theology: Thinking the Faith from the Ground Up” (International Bulletin of Missionary, 2015).

Ms. Joann Pittman

Vice President for Partnerships and China Engagement at ChinaSource

Prior to joining ChinaSource, Joann Pittman spent 28 years working in China as an English teacher, language student, program director, and cross-cultural trainer for organizations and businesses engaged in China. She has taught Chinese language and history as an adjunct instructor at Wheaton College (IL), The University of Northwestern-St. Paul (MN), and Taylor University (IN). She writes regularly for ChinaSource and has written articles for Christianity Today, The Gospel Coalition, and Desiring God. She is the author of The Bells Are Not Silent: Stories of Church Bells in China.