Hope for Creation

Jonathan J. Bonk is research professor of mission at Boston University, where he is director emeritus of the Dictionary of African Christian Biography (www.dacb.org). He is executive director emeritus of the Overseas Ministries Study Center (www.omsc.org) where he served from 1997 until his retirement in July 2013. He was editor of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research (www.internationalbulletin.org) from July 1997 until June 2013. He has authored five books, edited eleven collaborative volumes, and published nearly two hundred scholarly articles, book chapters, reviews, and editorials. His best-known book is Missions and Money: Affluence as a Western Missionary Problem (Orbis 1991 and 2006). Past president of the APM, ASM, EMS, and IAMS, he has served on the executive of the Global Mission Leadership Forum since 2011. Each of the previous six forums has resulted in books published in English and in Korean. He retired as GMLF President following this seventh forum. He is a lay minister of the Fort Garry Mennonite Fellowship in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He was raised in Ethiopia by missionary parents.

Michel G. Distefano (PhD, McGill) thought he was on a fast track for a career in Hebrew Bible, but after Bible college (Providence) and seminary (TEDS) in the 1980s that plan was interrupted for over a decade. So he quickly studied nursing and worked in neonatal intensive care. In the 2000s, he got his PhD and was an instructor in Hebrew Bible and ANE religions at McGill. In the 2010s, his plans were interrupted again and he became a homesteader, and lately also an independent scholar. He has been involved with KGMLF since 2019. He has known Prof. Jonathan Bonk (Dad) for more than forty years, and it has been a great privilege to work with him and the rest of the executive again. Michel and his wife, whom he also met at Bible college, are Canadians and have three children, a son and daughter-in-law, and the cutest grandchildren.

J. Nelson Jennings (PhD, Edinburgh University) is vice president of the Korean Global Mission Leaders Forum. He is editor of Global Missiology?English (globalmissiology.org) and is involved in several other online mission research projects, including the Dictionary of Christian Biography in Asia (dcbasia.org) and the Alliance of Mission Researchers and Institutions (amriconnect.net). He and his family served in Japan for thirteen years (1986-1999), first in church planting, then in teaching at Tokyo Christian University. Jennings taught world mission for twelve years at Covenant Theological Seminary (and again since 2018 in an adjunct capacity), served at the Overseas Ministries Study Center (2011-2015), and was a mission consultant for Onnuri Church (2015-2021). He has published numerous books and articles and has also served as editor of Missiology: An International Review and International Bulletin of Missionary [now Mission] Research. Jennings and his wife, Kathy, are both US-Americans and live in Hamden, Connecticut, USA.

Kim Jinbong, the coordinator of KGMLF, proposed its creation in 2008 and is now the managing director of the umbrella organization, Global Mission Leaders Forum. Beginning in 1990, he served for a number of years as a missionary in West Africa. He and his wife, Soon Young Jung, joined GMS in 1994 and in 1998 joined WEC International as well. They spent two terms working among Fulani Muslims in Guinea, Afterward, Kim served for six years as the director of International Church Relations at Overseas Ministries Study Center. Kim pursued mission studies in England (ANCC) and he also interned at a church in France. In 2006, he earned the degree of doctor of intercultural studies in the US. He and his wife are blessed with two young adult sons.

Jae Hoon Lee is senior pastor of Onnuri Church and chair of the Korea Lausanne Committee.