ABSTRACT
I first met Andrew Kirk in June 1995, when interviewed for the job of Director of the Centre for the Study of New Religious Movements at Selly Oak Colleges, Birmingham, a job I took up that October. He was warm and welcoming to this foreign ‘Pentecostal’ from South Africa, despite a rather ‘posh’ accent. When I arrived with my family and loads of luggage at Heathrow airport on a wet autumnal Sunday night, Andrew met and transported the four of us back to our new home in Selly Oak, tying the luggage on a roof rack in order to fit us all in his car. My line manager, but always a friend and confidant, Andrew was a colleague whose contribution to the world of mission studies I greatly respected, especially as he followed in the tradition of one of my own mentors at the University of South Africa, David Bosch. While he was living in Birmingham on the same estate as my house, we regularly walked home from our office sharing vision and experiences. Andrew moved to the Cotswolds and retired in 2002, but we have remained in contact. I took over from him as Treasurer of the International Association for Mission Studies from 2004–08.
