Missionaries Of Hope – Jubilee Summit Lectures Now Online!

In the summer of 2025, forty faith leaders from around the United States gathered for two-day summit of discernment, synodal dialogue and formation for living the mission and witnessing hope today. The USCMA is pleased to present the keynote lectures from this momentous occasion.

Missionaries of Hope Among All Peoples

Rev. Dinh Anh Nhue Nguyen, OFM Conv, Secretary General of the Pontifical Missionary Union, offers an inspirational reflection on our missionary identity as leaders and ministers dedicated to encountering and proclaiming God’s love in every person, place and circumstance to which Spirit leads.

Bearers and Builders of Hope

Shannon Wimp Schmidt, USCMA Board Member and content director for the TENx10 Collaboration, discusses authentic mission praxis in the concrete realities of our time and re-grounding ourselves and our ministries in “God’s ‘style’” of “closeness, compassion and tenderness, cultivating a personal relationship with our brothers and sisters in their specific situation.”

In the Footsteps of Christ Our Hope

Tisha M. Rajendra, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at Loyola University Chicago, calls us to encounter and recognize the face of Christ today. This session explores, broadens, and complicates our contemporary mission context, helping us answer Christ’s call to “to hear, like him and with him, the plea of suffering humanity and, indeed, the groaning of every creature that awaits definitive redemption.”

Renewing the Mission of Hope

William P. Gregory, Ph.D., formally of the American Society of Missiology and Clarke University, looks to the life and legacy of Pope Francis to cultivate a spirit of hope in ourselves, our community and all of God’s people. This session calls us to discern a Spirit-driven spirituality and ecclesiology and “discover how to become ‘artisans’ of hope” and “[build up] Christian communities through the accompaniment of each of the baptized along the path of the Gospel.”

Other Encounter Updates from May 2026:

Letter from the Executive Director
SAVE THE DATES – 2026 Members Meeting and 2027 Conference
Language & Cultural Formation for Missionaries to the US
Help Send Missionaries to Rome
Bringing Catholic Social Teaching to Life
World Mission News