OCMS is delighted to welcome Andy Kingston-Smith, who has recently joined the team as part-time Academic Assistant, working alongside our GRP Director, Mark Oxbrow, to support the development of the Guided Research Programme (GRP) and its scholars.
Andy brings to OCMS a combination of practical mission experience, theological education and many years of working with postgraduate students.
Having grown up in Chile, Andy began his professional life in the UK as a solicitor before sensing a call into cross-cultural mission. He subsequently served with his family in La Paz, Bolivia and has remained closely involved with cross-cultural mission in Latin America through Latin Link.
On returning to the UK, Andy moved into theological education, first as a postgraduate lecturer and programme leader at Redcliffe College and later at ForMission College, where he spent ten years as Postgraduate Programme Director. His teaching and research interests have ranged widely across contemporary mission and ethics, including contextual theology, globalisation and postcolonialism, biblical justice, creation care, advocacy and reconciliation, and cross-cultural living and working.
Alongside his academic work, Andy has maintained a strong interest in the relationship between theology and practice. With his wife Carol, in 2010 he co-founded the jusTice initiative, helping churches and Christians engage more deeply with biblical justice and its implications for mission. Together they contributed to and co-edited *Carnival Kingdom: Biblical Justice for Global Communities, which brings together theological reflection and practical perspectives on what biblical justice can mean for Christian life and mission in communities around the world. They also contributed material to Zondervan’s God’s Justice Bible, and published an extensive training programme handbook on Biblical Justice in collaboration with International Justice Mission, used to train groups of pastors in India.
This combination of academic and practical experience makes Andy particularly well suited to OCMS’s Guided Research Programme. GRP enables experienced Christian scholar practitioners and leaders from around the world to undertake a substantial piece of research, with individual personal tutor supervision, and access to Oxford’s extensive library resources. Andy will work alongside Mark supporting scholars through their research journey and contributing to the continuing development of GRP.
Away from work, Andy and his wife live on a multi-generational family smallholding in Gloucestershire. They have four grown-up children and share the property with the wider family — as well as a small group of alpacas and chickens. Andy enjoys sport, gardening, the outdoors and walking the dog.
We are very pleased to welcome Andy to OCMS and look forward to the experience and perspective he will bring to GRP and to the wider OCMS community.