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International Association of Catholic Missiologists

Introductory Message from IACM President, John Gorski MM

The Constitutive Assembly of the International Association of Catholic Missiologists (the IACM) was held in Rome on 21 October 2000. In this Assembly the IACM’s Statutes were approved and the members of its Executive Board elected. The idea to found this Association came from some Rome-based missiologists who in 1996 sounded their peers throughout the world on the desirability and feasibility of such a project. The response was positive and since 1997 a “Core Group” acted as provisional executive board to compose the tentative Statutes, promote the IACM, initiate a coordination of Catholic missiological institutes and prepare the Constitutive Assembly.

Many of the members of the IACM are also IAMS members. The IACM does not see itself as an alternative to IAMS but rather as a complementary organization, to facilitate the more active interaction of Catholic missiologists on an international level and to place missiology at the service of the evangelising mission of the local churches. According to its Statutes, the IACM and its members “seek to promote the unity and common witness of all the disciples of Jesus Christ” and “to foster true dialogue with all people, with their own religious and cultural traditions, and to participate in interdisciplinary approaches to understanding human beings in their relations to God, and all of creation”. The IACM intends to work in close collaboration with other international, regional or national missiological societies, particularly IAMS.