Ms. Mary
Fisher
maryelizabethfisher@gmail.com
 Mary Fisher, an Australian, grew up in a churched family within the High
Church tradition
of the Church of England in Australia. Like many of her peers, she "gave
up" on this background while at University in the 1960's.
While working as a journalist on a story about a group of "Jesus people"
involved in drug rehabilitation in June 1972, she became a follower of
Jesus. This she refers to as her John 17 experience. "I did not believe
a thing they told me in terms of
intellectual content of the Gospel, but I could not get beyond how
astounding their life as a committed community reaching others was."
Mary attended the Australian National University and the University of
Queensland. She graduated from the Australian National University at the
end of 1970. After becoming a Christian in 1972, she spent two semesters
at Queensland Bible Institute and two more years at the Christian
and Missionary Alliance College of
Theology in Australia before graduating with a Licentiate in Theology.
She went first to Hong Kong and then the Peoples' Republic of China.
Australian students had been in Communist China since 1972. She is
licensed with the Christian and Missionary Alliance of Australia.
"The Australian government was kind enough to give me a scholarship. My
studying
China and Chinese history - a way to be present in China - profoundly
challenged my thinking. I became convinced that the Western church had
lost a strong
understanding of human personhood arising out of a Trinitarian
understanding of God in its implications for mission." It was in this
journey that she encountered Dr. Ravi Zacharias for the third time and
Dr. Dennis Kinlaw for the first time in 1982. "Dr. Kinlaw was the first
person to understand what I was very tentatively attempting to
articulate about the implications of Trinitarian Theology."
These encounters and an invitation from the Christian and Missionary
Alliance in the
United States led to her being invited to speak in a number of churches
as well as
universities and colleges in the United States of America in the Fall of
1982.
Study at Asbury Theological Seminary in Philosophy and Old Testament
followed.
In 1985 she returned to the Peoples' Republic of China as a teacher and
Central Administrator for Educational Services Exchange with China on
loan from the CMA. From 1988 to January 1994, she was Associate Director
of Missions and Urbana for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in the
United States. During that time she was involved in the establishment of
programs relating to student outreach around the world.
In 1994 she was invited to teach in Biblical Theology at Asbury
Theological Seminary. She currently is completing her Ph.D. from King's
College in England under Colin Gunton. Francis Watson also supervised
her work until he moved to Aberdeen.
"My major concern is the formation of a biblically/theologically astute
Christian
community for the sake of missions both at home and cross-culturally."
"It appears to me we in the church have lost theology from our reading
of the Bible, and our Bible from the doing of much theology. The
re-integration of these two disciplines such that the church is aware of
how the Bible is a theological book and theology is formed by the
canonical story of the self-revealing God of Israel is most important if
we are going to be whom we need to be."
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