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INTRODUCTION:

OF MISSIONARIES AND SCHOLARS

Somewhere in the long journey of your education you heard God’s call to scholarship. Maybe a professor nudged you in that direction, or perhaps it was your unquenchable thirst for knowledge. And, since you’re reading this brief book, somewhere along the way God called you to serve abroad. With degree in hand, you courageously left family, friends, and security in order to serve academia in a distant classroom. Years of preparation have paid off, and now you live at the intersection of two vocational loves: mission and scholarship.

As a missionary, you’re called, among other things, to travel, to learn a new culture, to speak a different language, and to eat exotic food. As a scholar—a label I use for simplicity, realizing that most of us, out of justifiable humility, would likely never attach it to ourselves—you’re called, among other things, to teach, mentor students, grade papers, and direct graduate students. There is, though, one additional task that any missionary-scholar particularly struggles to fulfill: research (a term that I use in this book to collectively include, and at times use interchangeably with, writing and publishing). Research is an academic itch that all scholars live to scratch. Scratching this itch, while living in your own culture, is challenging enough. Emails. Advising students. Class preparation. And the list goes on. When you move to a locale where resources are scant, electricity is infrequent, and “turning on the air conditioning” in 100 degree weather might mean “opening the window,” then advancing your field becomes exhaustingly more complicated.

It is, to say the least, much easier to write and research while working from your home country in a plush, air conditioned library than in a loud, smoke-filled office which you share with five other professors. But fret not! There is hope. In most circumstances, you can fulfill that deep longing to push your discipline forward. Helping you do this is the purpose of this book—to offer tips and tools for researching and writing while serving internationally.

I briefly mentioned a couple of these tips and tools in a 2013 article in the Journal of The Evangelical Theological Society (JETS): “The American Evangelical Academy and the World: A Challenge to Practice More Globally.” My basic argument there is that, in light of America’s flooded academic market, more evangelical scholars should consider practicing their disciplines abroad. Given your personal sacrifices to live missionally, this argument for you is a no-brainer. What might concern you more is a subsidiary question I ask: “Can one serve abroad and advance scholarship at the same time?” I answer “yes.” But, I only offered a few passing suggestions on how to do it (e.g., use of e-books and hiring assistants), suggestions that this book builds upon.

Before adding to these comments with more tips and tools, I should clarify what qualifies me to write this book and also clarify who will most benefit from it. I have lived and researched in and around Shanghai, China for four years. During that I time, I published a monograph (Of Heroes and Villains: The Influence of the Psalmic Lament on Synoptic Characterization, Wipf & Stock), three peer reviewed journal articles (“The American Evangelical Academy and the World,” which I mentioned above, and “New Testament Lament in Current Research and Its Implications for American Evangelicals,” both in JETS; and “China’s Intelligentsia: A Strategic Missional Opportunity” forthcoming in Evangelical Review of Theology), several book reviews, the book you are now reading (Researching Abroad), and I am currently underway with a new book for the popular press. These few publications written while living in Asia are not paradigm shifting works that will forever change my fields nor do they make me the guru of researching abroad. But, while researching and writing these works, I did pick up a number of tips and tools that seem worth passing along to you. For future editions of this book, I would love to hear by email about the tips and tools you use in your specific setting: ­kcampbell@global-scholars.org.

Scholars who fit into the following three categories will most benefit from this book. First, I write for those who will soon—or, who have just recently—move[d] abroad but not necessarily for those who have lived internationally for years, though seasoned academic missionaries might find a few tools to add to their own well-worn toolboxes. Since I focus on scholars who have moved from one place to another and since I frequently reference their previous home, I struggle with how to succinctly reference their previous locale. I could use the word “stateside,” but some of my readers hail from Canada and beyond. “The west” sometimes proves too grammatically cumbersome, though probably all of my readers lived there. I choose, therefore, to use the word “home” in referencing your sending culture, though I am fully aware of its inadequacies; your new culture is now your home. More accurately, our home is actually nowhere in this universe; rather, our home is being prepared by Christ himself (John 14:1–4), a place where no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind can understand (1 Corinthians 2:9). With this nuance in mind, please read patiently my references to your “home” culture.

Second, I focus on those serving in the world’s more challenging places, where a country’s general infrastructure is yet to provide stable internet, electricity, and similar amenities. Third, I direct these tips and tools to researchers who primarily serve in the arts and humanities. Others, more competent in researching the hard sciences while living abroad, will subsequently need to add more discipline-specific suggestions. With this caveat in mind, however, those researching in the hard sciences may find some of these tips and tools either directly or indirectly beneficial for their own research.

One final note: some of these tips and tools, especially those related to current technology, may prove rather elementary for my tech savvy reader. At the risk of being overly simplistic, I choose to include every applicable tip and tool that comes to mind, regardless of how obvious their implementation may seem.