Revd Dr Peter S Heslam, Director of Faith in Business and CCCW Research Associate.

Insights from the Faith in Business Leadership Retreat (Westminster College, Cambridge, 24-25^th April 2026)

Leadership today is in flux. Traditional hierarchies are weakening, trust in institutions is fragile, and the misuse of authority has left many people suspicious of power. Yet power and influence are not inherently dangerous. They are God-given. Their impact depends on how they are used.

Across the six sessions of this retreat, a clear message emerged: responsible leadership is rooted in humility, shaped by the character of God, and expressed through influence more than position.

Power and Influence: Neutral Forces with Transformative Potential

The retreat opened by distinguishing power from influence. Power is the capacity to direct others’ behaviour and is derived from formal authority. Influence, on the other hand, is the ability to cause an effect indirectly through persuasion, inspiration, or guidance. As both are morally neutral, they can be used for good or ill.

One speaker shared a story from her time as a CFO during organisational turmoil. The team was competent but fractured. Through regular meetings centred on mission and shared purpose, trust grew. Eventually, the team identified each other’s “superpowers” (special giftings or charisms). This transformed collaboration. The challenge, then, is to identify your superpower/s, recognise the superpowers of others, and then to combine them to strengthen your workplace culture.

This strategy fits well with the wider shift in the world of work alluded to at the start of this blog. Younger generations lead through ideas, networks, and credibility rather than titles. Leadership is increasingly about value, insight, and trust rather than positional authority.

Safeguarding: A Core Expression of God‑Honouring Leadership

Wherever power exists, the potential for abuse exists alongside it. Safeguarding, therefore, is not peripheral but “a core concern for God.” Scripture is full of stories showing the consequences of unaddressed abuse – from Eli’s failure to restrain his sons to the suffering of Tamar and Dinah.

Safeguarding is a shared responsibility, rooted in the priesthood of all believers. It requires courage to intervene, humility to listen, and a commitment to protect the vulnerable even when it is costly.

A striking theme in this discussion was the role of lament. Lament acknowledges suffering while holding onto hope: “life sucks but it shouldn’t”. In avoiding despair and superficial optimism, lament allows communities to face trauma without losing sight of God’s healing.

Safeguarding also demands listening to marginalised voices especially of women, people of colour, people with low social standing, and people with disabilities. When these voices are suppressed, a community’s self-understanding is warped.

Servant Leadership: Power Reimagined Through Jesus

In the upper room of John 13, Jesus, fully aware that “the Father had given all things into his hands,” chose to wash his disciples’ feet. This was not weakness but deliberate, self‑giving strength.

In reflecting on the foot washing narrative, three subthemes emerged:

• Leadership as Care

Leadership is not only strategic; it is embodied. It involves attentiveness, and prioritising the wellbeing of others.

• Leadership as Equipping

Leaders empower others by modelling what they expect and by giving away opportunities. The main speaker recalled being entrusted with a major presentation as a junior programmer – an act that shaped his confidence and his career trajectory.

• Leadership as Connecting to Vision

People thrive when they see how their everyday tasks contribute to a larger mission. Leaders help others see purpose in their work, even in seemingly ordinary roles.

Honor also emerged as a vital leadership virtue. Positioning oneself to bring out the best in others, grounded not in performance but in the image of God is crucial.

Influence Over Position: Lessons from Paul and Barnabas

Case studies in servant leadership can be found in the stories of Paul and Barnabas. Paul held no formal office, yet his influence was immense: it was rooted in divine calling, relentless effort, suffering, theological depth, and persuasive skill. Barnabas, by contrast, embodied quiet, enabling leadership. His encouragement of Paul and John Mark shaped large portions of the New Testament.

Barnabas’s legacy is a reminder that leadership is not always front‑facing. Sometimes the most transformative leaders are those who see potential in others well before anyone else does.

Responsible Leadership in a Complex World

Broadening the lens, what lessons can be drawn from Joseph and Boaz in the Hebrew Bible; and from female preachers and business leaders today?

Joseph’s story illustrates both the beauty and danger of power. Though empowered by God, he also participated in the enslavement of Egyptians. A reminder that even well‑intentioned leaders can cause harm when humility falters.

Boaz, by contrast, models integrity in a culture – like our own – rife with misogyny. He protects Ruth, refuses to exploit her vulnerability, and follows due process even if it comes at a personal cost (he was willing to Ruth to another relative). In a world wrestling with toxic masculinity and the rise of the ‘manosphere’, Boaz offers a counter‑narrative of honour, restraint, and justice.

Misogyny is also one of the challenges women face in preaching today, along with overly critical scrutiny, and the pressure to conform to preaching patterns developed by men. Women flourish when encouraged and trusted, especially by men, and when they are released to preach with creativity, vulnerability, and authenticity.

Finishing Well: The Fragility of Leadership

The retreat closed with a sobering warning. Paula Vennells and King Solomon both began with promise but ended with damaged legacies. Even gifted Christian leaders can “go seriously astray” when power, wealth, or ego eclipse integrity.

Christian leadership must reflect the being, nature, and character of God. The true litmus test is the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self‑control. The key to manifesting this fruit is obedience to God, exercised (even when we do not understand God’s ways) through belonging to and serving the communities in which God has placed us.

A Final Call

Across all sessions, one truth rang clear: leadership is a sacred trust. Whether we hold formal authority or exercise quiet influence, we are called to steward power with humility, courage, and love. We are called to safeguard the vulnerable, elevate others, and pursue God’s purposes above our own.

Protestant Women and the Making of Global Religious Worlds

“I have a Testimony”. Autoethnography, Faith, and Decolonial “Self” in African Pentecostalism by Dr Chammah Kaunda

Tuesday 9 June 2026, 4.00–5.30pm BST, Lecture Room 7, Faculty of Divinity & Online

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This presentation is grounded in autoethnography as a decolonial methodological gesture to explore African Pentecostal testimony as a source of lived theology through the lens of the decolonial “self.” I will examine how my testimony and embodied practice have evolved from my childhood rural worldview rooted in an African, Bemba – to be more precise, indigenous spirituality – to an urban Pentecostal spirituality, understood as a relational, Spirit-shaped, and historically situated site of reflection that resists inherited epistemologies while articulating decolonial subjectivity. I will highlight that while “the self” in African Christianity is relationally autonomous and embodied, it participates fully in communal (union of) life. Thus, I will seek to demonstrate how personal testimony and embodied practice serve as “a window” into collective faith discourses, showing that there is no sharp separation between “the self” and the community of faith within African Christianity. With this approach, I seek to demonstrate how an African-centred account of local Pentecostal faith expressed through an individual testimony, historical, and spiritual realities intersect in World Christianity.

Dr Chammah J. Kaunda is an Academic Dean at Oxford Centre for Mission Studies (OCMS), UK. He is also Professor Extraordinarius at the University of South Africa. He is an affiliated Research Fellow with the Southern African Institute for Policy and Research (SAIPAR) and the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide (CCCW). Previously, he worked at Yonsei University, Korea.  Kaunda has published over 150 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. Additionally, he has co-edited over 10 volumes and authored four monographs. His recent book is Decolonial Pentecostalism: A Post-Nicene Theology from Africa (T&T Clark, 2026). 

Michaela Copsey, PhD Researcher, School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh

On 30 August 1951, Rosemary Guillebaud called her mother, Margaret, to hear the final verses of Revelation read in Kirundi, marking the completion of the first full New Testament for the nation of Burundi. Following this extraordinary reading, the two women spent time in prayer, reflecting on a journey that had begun more than two decades earlier. In February 1930, Rosemary’s father, Harold, had called 15-year-old Rosemary, and Margaret, to hear the same verses read aloud, completing the Bible translation in Kinyarwanda, the language of Rwanda. Margaret later described that day as, “a moment worth all that it has ever cost us to be here.”

Margaret and Harold Guillebaud first sailed for Uganda in 1925, leaving behind their eldest son, Peter, and infant twin daughters, Veronica and Mary. They took their three middle daughters, including 10-year-old Rosemary, with them. Margaret later recalled the opposition they faced from friends at home, some of whom threatened to sever ties, and the acute pain of leaving their children. Despite these challenges, both Margaret and Harold felt an enduring conviction that God was calling them to East Africa, even after initially being rejected by the Church Missionary Society over health concerns. This sense of conviction and divine calling guided their decisions over the following decades.

In the face of opposition regarding their post in Uganda, Margaret and Harold spent several days in prayer on the Isle of Wight, concluding that they would “never find happiness again” if they turned back. The sense of happiness they describe was not one of personal comfort but rather to be in the centre of what they perceived as God’s will. Margaret describes her sense of calling in the midst of considerable sacrifice: “The outstanding memory of those dark days is the quiet certainty that this was God’s call, and that we had no choice save to obey and leave the responsibility with God.”

The Guillebaud family is widely recognised within twentieth-century missionary history in East Africa, with involvement spanning multiple generations. Historically, missionary women’s motivations have been overlooked or oversimplified, often casting them as representatives of empire, as missionary spouses with little agency, or as single women seeking escape from domestic life in Britain. Archival research, particularly letters and reflections, such as those of Margaret and Rosemary, reveals a more nuanced narrative, one of vocational clarity, theological conviction, and substantive contributions to missiology and the native churches in East Africa.

The lives of Margaret and Rosemary demonstrate how personal theological commitment and moments of disruption shaped their vocational identity and missiological direction. These women navigate personal sacrifice, opposition from family and friends, and personal and global crises to pursue what they describe as a sense of divine calling to the people of East Africa. Their work exemplifies how single and married women increasingly exercised agency in shaping mission initiatives, advancing Bible translation, while simultaneously collaborating with African Christians.

Missionary life was integral to Rosemary’s upbringing. She witnessed the joy of distributing newly translated Bibles across Rwanda and participated in family hymn-singing evenings where her father translated the children’s chosen songs into Kinyarwanda. These sessions led to the creation of a hymnbook created in collaboration with African Christians. Rosemary’s formative years immersed her in the transformative impact of scripture and worship in local languages.

In 1935, the Guillebaud family returned to England for the children’s schooling, settling in Cambridge. Rosemary studied languages at Newnham College, quietly hoping for eventual involvement in Bible translation work alongside her father. In 1939, the family returned to Africa amid personal and global upheaval, including the sudden death of Archbishop Pitt-Pitts, the outbreak of World War II, and ongoing tensions within the mission. Harold, who was appointed Archbishop of Burundi, died within a year, leaving a critical gap in translation work and an obvious blow to the tight-knit family.

Following Harold’s death, Dr. Stanley Smith, founder of the Rwanda mission, suggested to Rosemary at the graveside that she might continue her father’s translation work. Although untrained in Kirundi and grieving deeply, Rosemary accepted the challenge. “I felt like it was a call from God to tackle the impossible”, she recalls, “it seemed so strange to be asked such a thing, but God has been all along preparing me for it”. Her experience illustrates the emerging opportunities for women in roles historically reserved for men.

Rosemary’s early work involved collaborating with her father’s translation team, navigating wartime disruptions, suffering the loss of manuscripts at sea, and the need to form an all-female team to translate texts like the Song of Songs, which could not be handled by mixed-gender teams. Her efforts advanced both translation work and the participation of indigenous women in bible translation projects.

After a decade of dedicated work, the Kirundi New Testament and Psalms were printed in 1951. Rosemary and Margaret personally drove to collect the first copies from the postal service in torrential rain. They returned to the mission, blaring their car horn, where awaiting crowds erupted into celebrations of song and dance. The initial shipment sold out that evening, and people stayed up all night reading the scriptures by little tin lamps. Rosemary later reflected, “They were bleary-eyed the next morning, but full of joy. It was worth it to have the Bible in their own language.” This milestone came nearly twenty years after Rosemary first accompanied her parents to distribute the first Kinyarwanda testaments.

Despite personal crises, both Rosemary and Margaret remained steadfast in their sense of calling. While Harold’s linguistic contributions are often emphasised, Margaret’s development of a printing press, her teaching, hospitality, and tireless support enabled the translation to reach its intended audience, and her commitment to the people of East Africa carried on fifteen years following her husband’s death. Margaret returned to England in 1956 due to declining health and died in 1961. Rosemary’s career continued as a Bible Society translation advisor, overseeing eleven translation projects across East Africa. She continued travelling throughout Africa into the 1980s. Her reflections highlight the combination of linguistic, relational, and administrative skills required to achieve accurate, culturally appropriate translations. When asked how it felt to complete a bible translation, Rosemary responded, “I felt like a mother hen whose only daughter had just got married”.

The lives of Margaret and Rosemary Guillebaud demonstrate that female missionary motivation was deeply rooted in theological conviction. Their missiological contributions developed through lived experience, spiritual discernment, and engagement with both local communities and global crises. They demonstrate how women navigated unprecedented roles in mission, translation, and partnership, leaving a legacy of cross-cultural impact through Bible translation in East Africa.

Letters from Rosemary and her sister Philippa are housed in the CCCW Archives, and include one of the early manuscript copies of the Kirundi bible translation.

Bibliography

• GUI/3, Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide Archives [Accessed 2025]
• JEC/20, Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide Archives [Accessed 2025]
• CMS/ACC448, Church Missionary Society Archives, Cadbury Research Library, Birmingham [Accessed 2025]
• CMS/MAM/E8 Church Missionary Society Archives, Cadbury Research Library, Birmingham [Accessed 2025]
• Guillebaud, M. Rwanda: The Land God forgot. Monarch Books, 2002
• Guillebaud, L. A Grain of Mustard Seed: The Growth of the Rwanda Mission of CMS.1959
• St John, P. Breath of Life: History of the Rwanda Mission. London, Norfolk Press, 1971

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Evangelists, Mules, Horses, and Canoes: Missionary Travels and the Dynamics of the Evangelical Encounter in Central Brazil

Dr Pedro Feitoza, University of Edinburgh

Venue: Faculty of Divinity, West Road, Cambridge, and Online. The speaker will join us in person.

This presentation will explore how the modes of travels of missionaries associated with the Evangelical Union of South America (EUSA) in the backlands of Central Brazil shaped the way the missionary encounter unfolded in the twentieth century. EUSA missionaries moved about the vast and sparsely populated Brazilian hinterlands on horse and muleback to minister to far-off congregations and ventured down the Araguaia River in their attempts to reach out to indigenous populations. Itinerant evangelism shaped the relationships they developed with such rural communities: they relied on the expertise of local informants and indigenous guides, depended on the hospitality of the rural population for shelter and protection, and their experiences of physical and psychological exhaustion impacted their sense of vocation and how they imagined the missionary enterprise. The presentation will also explore how EUSA missionaries were drawn into popular narratives that stigmatised the Brazilian backlands as wild and inhospitable, and how their lived experiences on the ground reshaped such representations.

Dr Pedro Feitoza. Trained as a cultural and social historian, Pedro Feitoza is lecturer in Latin American Christianity at the School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh. His monograph Propagandists of the Book: Protestant Missions, Christian Literacy, and the Making of Brazilian Evangelicalism was published by Oxford University Press in 2024 and was joint winner of the Ecclesiastical History Society Book Prize 2025.

Muthuraj Swamy

Connecting Christianities: World Christianity and Mission in the 21st Century. Edited by Muthuraj Swamy and Jenny Leith, Theology and Mission in World Christianity (TMWC) Series, Brill, January 2026. https://brill.com/display/title/73554 (A discount code is available to purchase the book at a reduced price. Please email centre[at]cccw.cam.ac.uk)

We at the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide (formerly the Henry Martyn Centre) are delighted about the publication of Connecting Christianities. A key aspect of CCCW’s work is to resource the field of World Christianity and the study of mission, and we strongly hope this book will contribute to that goal.

Connecting Christianities was originally envisioned during the Silver Jubilee of CCCW in 2021 and is dedicated to all who have worked at CCCW throughout its history and to the Henry Martyn Trust which runs the Centre. Twenty-five scholars from diverse backgrounds across the world have contributed to the volume including a Foreword by Rt Revd Dr Guli Franci-Dahqani, Bishop of Chelmsford. The book focuses on questions such as: “How should World Christianity and mission be understood and practised in the twenty-first century?”; “What does World Christianity mean to an ordinary Christian in their everyday life?”; and “In what ways do Christians belong to a global Christian community?”

In a context where World Christianity is often understood either as an effort to make the whole world Christian or as the Christianity of the Global South, this book emphasises the importance of global connections within Christianity. This way of thinking about World Christianity not only opens up new horizons in scholarship but also has implications for the practice of everyday Christian mission in the contemporary context: through building connections with fellow Christians from different denominational and geographical backgrounds (ecumenism), with people of other religions and traditions (interreligious peacemaking and reconciliation), and with wider society (Christian public engagement).

The book was launched during the annual CCCW Day Lecture on 17 February 2026 at the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, when we together with CCCW friends had gathered to celebrate the 30^th anniversary of CCCW. The Lecture was delivered by Professor Dana L. Robert of Boston University. Professor Robert serves on the editorial board of the TMWC series, so it was both apt and an honour for CCCW and the book’s authors that she launched the book. Professor David Fergusson, Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge and an ex officio Trustee of the Henry Martyn Trust, which runs CCCW, received the first copy.

There will be an expanded launch and discussion of Connecting Christianities at a symposium on Friday, 17 April 2026, from 11.00 to 15.00, together with two other recent books: Types of Christian Mission: An Introduction by Stephen Spencer (SCM Press, November 2025) and Lived Mission in 21st Century Britain: Ecumenical and Postcolonial Perspectives, edited by Benjamin Aldous, Harvey Kwiyani, Peniel Rajkumar, and Victoria Turner (SCM Press, October 2024). The symposium will take place in the Healey Room, Westminster College, Cambridge, and online. Everyone is welcome to attend. Please register via Eventbrite using this link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1981313250267?aff=oddtdtcreator. A Zoom link will be emailed to those joining online. More information about this event is here: https://www.cccw.cam.ac.uk/events/other-events/

CCCW exists in memory of Henry Martyn (1781–1812), a Cambridge student and later Fellow of St John’s College, who dedicated his life to mission, evangelism, and Bible translation in India and Persia. As we approach the 250th anniversary of his birth in 2031, we plan to use this occasion to continue to reflect on key themes and issues in the study of mission and World Christianity. In preparation for 2031, we are also organising a series of events and publications, and Connecting Christianities marks the beginning of this endeavour.

Download a poster here

Refreshments and lunch provided
Register via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1981313250267?aff=oddtdtcreator

Connecting Christianities: World Christianity and Mission in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Muthuraj Swamy and Jenny Leith, Brill (January 2026) https://brill.com/display/title/73554

Types of Christian Mission: An Introduction by Stephen Spencer, SCM Press (November 2025) https://scmpress.hymnsam.co.uk/books/9780334064039/types-of-christian-mission

Lived Mission in 21st Century Britain: Ecumenical and Postcolonial Perspectives, edited by Benjamin Aldous, Harvey Kwiyani, Peniel Rajkumar, and Victoria Turner, SCM Press (October 2024) https://scmpress.hymnsam.co.uk/books/9780334065531/lived-mission-in-21st-century-britain

With presentations from:
Prof Eugene Baron, University of Johannesburg
Dr Nuam Hatzaw, University of Edinburgh and Church Mission Society
Dr Laura Popa, University of Cambridge

This is a free event, but donations are welcome to cover the costs.
To find out more about this event, please contact centre[at]cccw.cam.ac.uk

“Intricate Entanglements: A Missionary Collection of Spiritual Artifacts from West Africa at the Übersee-Museum Bremen“

Professor Birgit Meyer, Utrecht University

Tuesday 17 March 2026, 4.00–5.30pm GMT

Lecture Room 7, Faculty of Divinity & Online

Abstract: The starting point for this lecture is my work in a collaborative, international research project – the Legba-Dzoka Project – which investigates the origin, significance and future of a missionary collection from the Ewe-speaking region (now south-east Ghana and south Togo) held at the Übersee-Museum Bremen. This collection, consisting largely of spiritually charged artefacts – dzokawo and legbawo – was given to the museum by Carl Spiess, a missionary with the North German Mission, around 1900. I understand these artefacts as time capsules that contain complex connections between mission, museum, colonialism and conversion and can thus be interrogated as witnesses to this complex history of interdependence. In my lecture, I will a) trace the history of the collection’s origins in the missionary-colonial context, b) critically examine the Eurocentric attribution of terms such as ‘idol’, ‘fetish’ or ‘magic,’ c) develop an alternative understanding of the artefacts in the collection as carriers of power, which understands them as an expression of the indigenous Ewe knowledge system, and d) discuss multiple positions formulated vis-a-vis the possibility and desirability of a return of the items in the collection to Ghana and/or Togo, ranging from downright rejection in the name of “idolatry”, to recognition as valuable cultural assets and forms of heritage, to an their embracement as spiritual forces. Arguing that these positions evolve around the secular-religious boundary, I will pay special attention to the notion of heritage, which is situated at the core of that boundary.

Professor Birgit Meyer (PhD, 1995) is Professor of Religious Studies at Utrecht University. Trained as a cultural anthropologist, she studies religion from a material and postcolonial angle. She directs the research program Religious Matters in an Entangled World (www.religiousmatters.nl) and co-directs the collaborative Legba-Dzoka research project (https://religiousmatters.nl/the-legba-dzoka-project-tracking-and-unpacking-the-collection-carl-spiess-ubersee-museum-bremen/).

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“A Dialogue through Time: Revisiting the Cambridge Seven in Contemporary China”

Dr John Usher, International School of Qingdao in Shāndōng, China

Tuesday 3 March 2026, 4.00–5.30pm GMT

Lecture Room 7, Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge & Online

Abstract: History is a dialogue between the subjects and the interpreters, shaped over time as new evidence, circumstances and perspectives emerge. One hundred and forty years ago, seven young men associated with Cambridge set sail for China, “Never before,” The Nonconformist effused, “probably, in the history of missions has so unique a band set out to labour in the foreign field….” This moment coincided with the height of the Western missionary movement and the British Empire, when China’s so-called “open century” came at the cost of Chinese sovereignty. The China of a century and a half ago is almost unrecognisable from the China of today. This paper offers a reflective dialogue with the Cambridge Seven, grounded in personal experience and informed by historical and missiological analysis, comparing and contrasting contemporary China with the China of the late Qing, early Republic and Warlord Era.

Dr John Usher teaches at the International School of Qingdao, China. He is the author of Cecil Polhill: Missionary, Gentleman and Revivalist Vol.1, 1860-1914 (Brill, 2020), and the forthcoming Cecil Polhill: Missionary, Gentleman and Revivalist Vol.2, 1914-1938. His research combines historical and missiological analysis with reflective engagement shaped by long-term experience in contemporary China.

Please download a flyer here.