Cathy Ross (born 1961) is a New Zealand-born academic and scholar of missiology. She leads the Pioneer Mission Leadership Training centre of the

Church Mission Society The Church Mission Society (CMS), formerly known as the Church Missionary Society, is a British mission society working with the Christians around the world. Founded in 1799, CMS has attracted over nine thousand men and women to serve as mission ...

, in Oxford, England. She is also

canon theologian A canon (from the Latin , itself derived from the Greek , , "relating to a rule", "regular") is a member of certain bodies in subject to an ecclesiastical rule. Originally, a canon was a cleric living with others in a clergy house or, later, i ...

at Leicester Cathedral. She is the author of ''Women with a Mission: Rediscovering Missionary Wives in Early New Zealand.''

Biography

Born in New Zealand, Rose graduated from the University of Auckland in 1983. She worked for a time as a teacher of French and German. In 1991, she went to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (then known as Zaire), as a mission partner with the New Zealand Church Mission Society. She also served in Uganda and

Rwanda Rwanda (; rw, u Rwanda ), officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of Central Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator ...

. In the late 1990s, she studied at the

Melbourne College of Divinity The University of Divinity is an Australian collegiate university of specialisation in divinity. It is constituted by eleven theological colleges from eight denominations. The University of Divinity is the direct successor of the second oldest ...

, where she completed a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1998. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of Auckland in 2004. She has taught at the Bible College of New Zealand. Ross moved to England to work with the Church Mission Society in 2005. She was the head for CMS's mission exchange and the scholarship program. She also held an appointment as Tutor of Contextual Theology at Ripon College Cuddesdon. In August 2008, Ross became the general secretary of the International Association of Mission Studies. She led the organization for eight years, stepping down in 2016. She was installed as canon theologian at Leicester Cathedral in 2018. In May 2019, Ross was selected to lead Church Mission Society's Pioneer Mission Leadership Training program in Oxford.

Works

Ross has written on pioneer women's mission work. She authored a book examining the lives of four women who engaged in mission with their husbands in New Zealand in the 1800s. The book, entitled ''Women with a Mission: Rediscovering Missionary Wives in Early New Zealand,'' was published in 2006''.'' The women featured in the book are Charlotte Brown, Elizabeth Colenso, Kate Hadfield, and Anne Wilson. In 2008, Ross co-edited, with Andrew Walls, a collection of essays on missiology, entitled ''Mission in the Twenty-First Century: Exploring the Five Marks of Global Mission''. She also edited a collection of essays by Anglicans involved in mission who had attended the centenary celebration of the

1910 World Missionary Conference The 1910 World Missionary Conference, or the Edinburgh Missionary Conference, was held on 14 to 23 June 1910. Some have seen it as both the culmination of nineteenth-century Protestant Christian missions and the formal beginning of the modern Prot ...

, held in Edinburgh, Scotland, in June 2010. The publication was entitled ''Life-Widening Mission: Global Anglican Perspectives''. The book was published as part of a series by Regnum Press, about the Edinburgh 2010 gathering. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote the foreword to the collection. In the preface, Ross noted that her mother passed away in New Zealand, while she was attending a workshop for the project in Toronto, in August 2011. Ross has collaborated on several books with Jonny Baker, the director of mission education at Church Mission Society. They co-edited ''The Pioneer Gift'' , published in 2014, and ''Pioneering Spirituality,'' published in 2015. In 2015, Ross co-edited, with Steven Bevans from

Catholic Theological Union Catholic Theological Union (CTU) is a private Roman Catholic graduate school of theology in Chicago, Illinois. It is one of the largest Catholic graduate schools of theology in the English speaking world and trains men and women for lay and ordai ...

in Chicago, the book ''Mission on the Road to Emmaus: Constants, Context and Prophetic Dialogue''. In 2018, Ross co-edited ''Missional Conversations: A Dialogue between Theory and Praxis in World Mission,'' with Colin Smith. In 2020, Ross and Baker published ''Imagining Mission with John V. Taylor,'' about the missiology of Taylor, who was general secretary of the Church Mission Society and the former Bishop of Winchester.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ross, Cathy Missiologists 1961 births Living people People from Auckland University of Divinity alumni

Biography

Works

See also

References