This blog is a convening place for commentary and discussion of mission. Topics include ecumenical mission theology, mission in higher education, congregational mission, mission in theological education, mission developments in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion, issues in the current Anglican crisis, inter-religious relations, mission leaders, mission in the news, mission in liturgy, mission in the arts. In short, the works! Please let me know if you’re interested in particular topics that need commentary.
I welcome your e-mails, but I especially welcome your comments entered on the blog, for that is how we can get discussion underway.
Currently president of the Global Episcopal Mission Network (GEMN), I am a mission activist in the Episcopal Church. GEMN is a freestanding network of dioceses, congregations, agencies, seminaries and individuals committed to catalyzing world mission engagement in the church.
My most recent extended mission experience abroad was as principal of Edwardes College, a church-sponsored undergraduate and graduate institution in Peshawar, Pakistan, 2011-2014. Other extended mission experience includes Zimbabwe, where I pastored the rural Bonda Church District in Manicaland in the 1980s; India, where I was born and grew up, in Jabalpur and Mussoorie, as part of a mission family in theological education; and various settings in the USA, most relevantly in inner-city Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I was rector of St. Peter’s Church, and currently in Vermont, where I am convener for Green Mountain Witness, the evangelism initiative of the Diocese of Vermont.
Past chair of the Standing Commission on World Mission and active in the Episcopal Partnership for Global Mission, I’ve taught mission studies at General Seminary, where I was academic dean; the Seminary of the Southwest, where I was president, Episcopal Divinity School, and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and Gaul Theological College in Harare – and preaching at Harvard Divinity School. More information and a list of publications are available at my website – which, however, has not been updated for quite awhile!
Questing: The Way of Love in Global Mission is my most recent book (2020), a seven-week study series co-authored with Grace Burton-Edwards and published by GEMN through Amazon, where it’s available in both print and electronic formats. An earlier book is Going Global with God: Reconciling Mission in a World of Difference, which discusses mission in the context of 21-century contemporay issues. Publications of particular interest to blog readers include “Mission is Ministry in the Dimension of Difference: A Definition for the 21st Century,” which appeared in the October 2010 issue of International Bulletin of Mission Research, and “The History of Mission in the Anglican Communion,” a chapter in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to the Anglican Communion. An especially popular book is Horizons of Mission, an overall introduction to global mission with attention to biblical, historical, theological, cultural and inter-religious issues. I was a consultant for Continuing Indaba, the Listening Process of the Anglican Communion, for which I organized consultations in Delhi, Barbados and Virginia.
I change the blog header picture from time to time. The current picture is from the April 2019 annual conference of the Global Episcopal Mission Network, held at the Bishop Skilton Conference Center in Boca Chica, Dominican Republic. Included are most of the 120 attendees from around the Episcopal Church. The personal picture above was taken in Cape Town, South Africa, on the morning of a meeting my wife Jane and I had with Desmond Tutu. The World Mission Sunday picture above is from Christ Church, Alexandria, where I presented on that Sunday a few years ago.
Titus on Mission 
Dear Rev Dr Presler
I came across your name as the one who was the Rector at Bonda Mission (1983-1986). I am Godfrey Maunga from Nyachibva rural area under Anglican Bonda district, about 40km south of Bonda mission. I just came across your name and said to myself that this must be the Reverend that my father Augustine Maunga talks about whom he fellowshipped with as his shepherd back in the 80s. I was only 2 years old when you left Bonda district upon completion of your mission assignment in 1986 but your name still lives in the greater Bonda district. I will tell him (Augustine) that I came across Rev Dr Presler’s blog, a confirmation that you are still in the Lord’d field.
God bless you.
With Regards
Godfrey Francis Masoko Maunga
By: Godfrey Maunga on May 18, 2023
at 8:08 pm
Dear Godfrey,
Thank you so much for being in touch. I am very touched to hear from you. Please give my greetings to your dear father Augustine.
My time with your father was memorable. He came to see me at Bonda and told me the story of his time in the Liberation War and the vitality of his spiritual life. He told me that he and some others at Nyachibva – a village I had never heard of! – had begun worshiping together in a field and that they wished to become a congregation of the Bonda Church District. So would I come and visit them?
I said that of course I would. We fixed a date some weeks in the future.
I went with two or three sisters of the Community of the Holy Transfiguration, the monastic community at Bonda – maybe Sister Milda and the now late Sister Alice. None of us had ever been there before. Did we simply follow your father’s directions to that isolated spot in the hills above Manica Reserve? No, I think he met us at a turnoff and guided us up the track on a steep slope to the meeting place.
When we arrived in the afternoon sun, there were maybe 50 people in the field to greet us, singing and dancing and praising God. It was a truly Spirit-blessed time as we celebrated Eucharist in the field. And that group became one of the congregations of the Bonda Church District. As the catechist, your father participated in the deliberations of the district and in the formation program we had for church leaders in the Bonda Lay Training Program.
Your father’s vision and zeal were an inspiration to me and to others.
Godfrey, I remember you as a child. How good that you are following in your father’s footsteps. Thanks be to God!
Blessings,
Titus
By: Titus Presler on May 19, 2023
at 6:19 am
Thank you, Revd Dr Presler.
I passed your words of greetings to my father Augustine, and he was very elated by them as they took him down the memory lane, back to your “Auld Lang Syne” together. He also greets you in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord and wishes you many blessings. “Moto Moto Vhangeri”, he added.
To date, the Anglican believers of Bonda district still speak highly of your works of service and sacrifice during your days with them, a convincing testimony that the seed you sowed, and plant that germinated from it will never die.
Even me, I could not believe that you walked on foot all the way to Nyachibva following a path through that long stretch of a forest. You are indeed a soldier of Christ.
However, in the mid 90s, a road connecting Bonda and Nyachibva to the areas further south of Nyachibva was opened, and motorists are now using it the most. It became the most convenient link road between Bonda Mission and many villages to the south of it.
Ndinoti Mwari vakomborere mhuri yenyu yose uye varambe vachikusimbisai pabasa ravo.
Ndatenda zvikuru,
Godfrey
By: Godfrey Maunga on May 23, 2023
at 6:26 pm
It’s inspiring to read about you, Dr Rev Presler. You were our priest at Bonda Mission in 1985, and you are a friend to my father, Beaven Tsinakwadi, a subdeacon at St George’s Church Sadziwa. You once shoot us a video on the death of Jesus Christ, in which I was Simon of Cyrene. By then I was doing Grade 7 at Bonda Primary School. I am Kuziwa Michael Tsinakwadi, now teaching Divinity and History at Bonda Girls High School. Thanks for your concern at a time when when the Anglican Church in Zimbabwe was facing persecution from the renegade bishops. We hope you will visit us one of these days.
By: Tsinakwadi Kuziwa Michael on April 13, 2014
at 3:12 pm
This is a wonderful note to get from you, Kuziwa! Truly from generation to generation we support one another in faith! Please give my greetings to your father, who is such a warm and welcoming person and minister of God, always trekking quite far from Chirarwe, where I once visited their home, to get to St. George’s. I enjoyed our times in that church and the work with both your father and the late catechist Sylvester Gorogodo. I believe the first pungwe that either my wife or I attended was one she went to with the Bonda Mothers Union at St. George’s – the first of scores and scores of them over the years. Not knowing much yet about pungwe, I was worried when she did not return all through the night and only appeared in the morning, and then she told me that she had never been crowded with so many people for such a long time in her life – there were probably upwards of 1,000 people at that pungwe! When you mention the passion play I think you have in mind the excellent composition “Mazuva okuPedzisa” [The Last Days] by Abraham Maraire, truly one of the most moving depictions of the Passion that anyone in our family has witnessed, and for years afterwards we sang such numbers as “Aiwa Zuva-owe” as a family. Maybe you can organize a performance for next year. And now you are teaching Divinity as well as History at Bonda Girls High School – congratulations / makorokoto in Shona / shabash in Urdu! Ndinofara chaizvo kuti makandinyorera. Ndapota mukwazise Baba wenyu pamwe neMai neshamwari dzedu dzese wari kuSaDziwa nokuChirarwe nokuBonda nokuBonda High School. Ndichiri kudisa vaKristu veBonda Church District uye tichadzoka rime gore. Isita yakanaka kwamuri! Ngarifambe Vangeri! MunaKristu, Titus
By: Titus Presler on April 13, 2014
at 4:22 pm
Dear Rev Dr Pastor
Greetings from the Bonda and Sadziwa Christians. Amen
I talked about you to most people whom I thought knew you, and they confessed that they are still moved by your word of the eighties and especially the song “Ngariende Vhangeri.” They all wish you can pay us a visit again. I will sent you pictures and videos soon.
from
Tsinakwadi Kuziwa Michael
.
By: Kuziwa Michael Tsinakwadi on July 27, 2014
at 7:27 pm
Mazviita chaizvo nokuti makandinyorerazve! Ndapota musimbise shamwari dzangu dzese. Ndinovaminamatiro zuva nezuva. MunaKristu, Titus
By: Titus Presler on July 29, 2014
at 11:46 pm
Hello, Titus, and hello also to Jane. I follow Titus on Mission with attention. You may wish to see my http://www.tohearthefalconer.net and maybe also on YouTube my “Spiritual but not religious. . . .” Blessings to you both for this season and the New Year, and may your good works continue through the months ahead.
By: Howard Webber on December 17, 2012
at 11:32 am
Dear Howard: So good to hear from you, and how I treasure the work we did together in connection with Jubilee 2000 and the DioMass Jubilee Committee! Jane joins me in greeting you warmly. Would be lovely to see you sometime. Blessings, Titus
By: Titus Presler on December 17, 2012
at 12:56 pm
Thanks very much for your work. This is my first visit here!
By: Randall Giles on May 23, 2010
at 9:03 pm
Greetings Titus! Good to see your blog. I was buying The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe, by Douglas Rogers for my library and I thought of you. So that’s how I found your blog. Also bought Echo and other Elephants DVD for the library and have been watching it (BBC documentary of elephants in Kenya’s Amboseli National Park.) Very good.
By: Gayle Pershouse on November 23, 2009
at 11:55 am