Mennonite missiologist Paul Hiebert honoured

Dr. Paul G. Hiebert

Dr. Paul G. Hiebert, former missionary to India, educator and internationally recognized missiologist, was honoured at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Ill., June 21–22, with a two-day consultation called, “Doing Theology in a Globalizing World.”

Hiebert, a third generation Mennonite Brethren missionary to India, served there with his wife Frances Flaming Hiebert (deceased in 1999) from 1959 to 1965. He completed a Ph.D in anthropology at the University of Minnesota and taught anthropology at the University of Washington in Seattle. He earlier graduated from Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kan., and Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary, Fresno, Cal. He taught missiology and anthropology at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Cal., for 13 years before joining the faculty at Trinity as head of the inter-cultural program. He now teaches there one semester a year and at schools overseas the rest of the year. In the last year he has taught mainly in India but also in Singapore, Australia and Brazil.

More than 150 attended the consultation, including several international guests.

Hiebert’s concepts of bounded set and centred set and “the excluded middle” were frequently mentioned at the consultation. His books, published by Baker, include Anthropological Insights for Missionaries (1985); Incarnational Ministry: Planting Churches in Band, Tribal, Peasant and Urban Societies co-authored with his daughter Eloise Hiebert Meneses (1995); and Understanding Folk Religion (1999) co-authored with Daniel Shaw and Tite Tienou. His book Missiological Implications of Epistemological Shifts: Affirming Truth in the Modern/Postmodern World was published by Trinity Press (1999).

At a banquet in honour of Hiebert, tributes from his colleagues at Fuller Seminary were effusive. Hiebert was described as a modest person with remarkable brilliance, an original thinker, and a “bridge man.” Greetings were read from Mennonite Brethren representatives from India and Paraguay, and from Harold Ens and Dr. Victor Adrian, current and former directors of MBMSI, and from Dr. Hans Kasdorf of Fresno. His family of three children, as well as four of five grandchildren, were all present.

Dr. Ted Ward, former administrator at Trinity, evoked applause from the banquet audience when he described Hiebert as a man of gracious integrity, brilliant in his capacity for reasoning, careful authorship and a man of humble spirit reflecting the Lord Jesus Christ.

Five Mennonite missiologists in attendance echoed those sentiments. Dr. Wilbur Shenk of Fuller Seminary noted that in Hiebert there is no separation between who he is and what he teaches, no disjunction between his intellectual and his personal life. He has represented us as Mennonites well, said Shenk. Dr. Arthur McPhee, professor at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, observed that no one else had greater influence on more missiologists than Hiebert. (One estimate is that Hiebert has been the advisor of more than 60 Ph.D. dissertations and an equal number of D.Miss. theses.) Professor Walter Sawatzky, also of AMBS, added, “His is not a studied humility. His role in the evangelical settings of Fuller and Trinity has fostered a collegiality of common Christian global witness.”

Dr. Lawrence Yoder, professor of missiology at Eastern Mennonite Seminary, Harrisonburg, Vir., commented on Hiebert’s encouragement to him as a student. “[Hiebert] owns and radiates his identity as an Anabaptist‚” James Krabill of Mennonite Mission Network, commented. “He was not defensive about anthropology but used it as a tool and helped me ask the right questions.”

—Elmer A. Martens