Integral Missiology and the Human Flourishing of Internally Displaced Persons in Colombia: Broader Dissemination and Deeper Impact Analysis of the Faith and Displacement Project​

This project aims to foster human flourishing of people who have been forcibly displaced by the violent armed conflict in Colombia. It is part of the Faith and Displacement project, an intervention developed and tested through a previous Templeton World Charity Foundation grant. This follow-on project will update the intervention in light of the pilot implementation, scale it through a diploma course, and document the project so that future researchers can adapt a humble approach to missiology in other contexts.

In Colombia—where over 7,400,000 people have been forcibly displaced by violence—a renewed integral missiology will enable the Protestant Church to become better able to foster human flourishing. Beyond the immediate impact of this project, the Colombian test case illustrates how a humble approach to integral missiology could help other religious communities confronting diverse crises around the world be more effective agents of fostering holistic human flourishing.

Directed by Dr. Christopher M. Hays, the project proposes that the human flourishing of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Colombia can be fostered through the application of a humble approach to integral missiology, resulting in:

• A vigorous and action-oriented engagement of theology with the social sciences, especially education, economics, political science, sociology, and psychology.
• The mobilization of the human capital in local Protestant churches through theological and non-theological education.
• Empirical analysis—in the form of Participatory Action Research—to study the diverse experiences of displacement, to design and implement an intervention, and to measure the intervention's effectiveness at mobilizing members of religious communities, in order to revise and reimplement it on a larger scale.