Addenda 3.4 (April 2020)

By the time you read this, some of our colleagues may have been infected with the coronavirus, and some will have been quarantined or chosen to live in self-isolation. The world is facing the grim reality that, in spite of technological advances, something new can just show up and threaten to wipe the human race off the face of the earth. Many are asking, “What is going on?” I choose to ask, “What time is it?”

As a Christian scholar, how would you explain these things to a world that is asking for meaning? It took the world by surprise; and from all indications, it took the church by surprise too. But it certainly did not take God by surprise.

I am certain that the devil does not have the capacity or permission to shut down the earth when the Holy Spirit is still here. Isaiah 26:20 tells us that pestilences and quarantines are not new:

Go, my people, enter your rooms

    and shut the doors behind you;

hide yourselves for a little while

    until his wrath has passed by.

Pestilences can come from God, but according to Amos 3:7, “the Lord God does nothing unless he reveals his secret to his servants the prophets.” The problem, however, is whether we have space in our theology to hear the voice of God and understand this plague. Can this generation hear when God calls, “Samuel … Samuel”? What is God telling his church today? Are we spiritually and mentally prepared to guide our communities both in the present circumstances and in the post-virus world? 

COVID-19 is a wind blowing across the globe and lifting the undergarments of our civilizations and theologies, exposing our nakedness. It is telling us to enter our closets and seek God. It is reminding us of our mortality and that we are not almighty, and it is teaching us that those in Buckingham Palace and those in the streets of Nigeria breathe the same air. After COVID-19, our world may never be the same again, but our missionary mandate will remain. We will all realize more deeply that the church is not a building but a people. Rather than investing in massive buildings, we will invest in building the ecclesia, the community of true love.

What time is it? It is time to pray, think, and listen.

Lithuanian Society Member Visits Universities in Asia and the U.K.

Dr. Živilė Sederevičiūtė-Pačiauskienė––Dean of the Faculty of Creative Industries at Vilnius Gediminas Technical University in Vilnius, Lithuania and a member of the Society of Christian Scholars’ Executive Committee––travelled to South Korea in November 2019 to engage in collaboration with social-science faculty at Kyungpook University.

(Top two): Dr. Sederevičiūtė-Pačiauskienė with members of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Kyungpook University, South Korea.
(Bottom two): Dr. Sederevičiūtė-Pačiauskienė also visited Sheffield Hallam University in the United Kingdom to learn about new media study programs, management, and student support.

While sharing her widely recognized expertise in media and communication, Dr. Sederevičiūtė-Pačiauskienė is also conscious of her opportunities to represent God in academia. “My goal in South Korea was to establish contacts and make friends”, she said. “The way God works through me is that when I get to know people quite well, I can share my beliefs. Many have said that if they had not heard the gospel message from me, they would not believe it!”

Publishing Opportunity in the Walailak Journal of Social Science

Assistant Professor Dr. Siriporn Somboonboorana, Editor-in-Chief of the Walailak Journal of Social Science (WJSS), invites manuscript submissions from Society members. WJSS is a peer-reviewed journal covering all areas of science and technology. The journal, launched in 2008, uses a double-blind review system with at least 2 expert reviewers. The scope of the journal includes the following areas of research and related fields: 

• Anthropology
• Communication
• Cultural Studies
• Demography
• Development
• Education
• Gender Studies
• Health (social science)
• Human Factors and Ergonomics
• Life-span and Life-course Studies
• Linguistics and Language
• Political Science and International Relations
• Public Administration
• Social Sciences
• Sociology and Political Science

Explore the details of this opportunity here!

Real Success Stories from Editorial Services!
by Bruce Barron, Director of Editorial Services

The Society’s Editorial Services department has had a productive first year! With the help of 16 excellent associate editors who review submissions in their subject areas of expertise, we have handled nearly 40 editing requests. Testimonials from happy clients have appeared in previous Addenda editions. Here are some more recent stories.

Kraig worked diligently over his Christmas break to interpret Jean Jacques’s English and highlight substantive issues in his presentation of findings. He also patiently reviewed and commented on several rounds of revisions. Both papers have been accepted for publication by European materials science journals.
 
“I was happy to have a professor who was there to help me,” Jean Jacques commented. “His remarks helped me to go deeper into my work and drastically improved my research article.” 

In February, we received a conference proposal from Benjamin Koné of Senegal, who hopes to develop affordable connectivity solutions for rural Africa. We didn’t have an editor in electrical engineering, but two associate editors recruited colleagues to help. Benjamin effectively incorporated our suggestions into his revision of the conference proposal, and then into a request for funding a research collaboration in South Africa. His work could have great implications for African development.
 
We made things easier for Jean-Jacques and Benjamin by inviting them to correspond with us in French. Keep those foreign-language skills strong—you never know when they’ll be helpful!

I have personally enjoyed supporting her effort to treat evangelical artists as a serious academic subject—not uncritically, but in a way that should encourage fellow academics to view them and their messages seriously.

We love helping scholars with first-rate ideas to communicate in first-rate English, and we hope to serve many more Society members in the years ahead. Learn more today about our Society’s editorial services.

Don’t Fall Prey to “Zoombombing”!

Full and Associate Society members have complimentary access to Zoom’s group video conference features (a paid service at Zoom). You may have heard that Zoom has recently received significant attention in the media for the problem of “Zoombombing,” or people clandestinely and maliciously entering a Zoom meeting as a spy, doing something inappropriate, or otherwise disrupting the meeting.

Tips to prevent Zoombombing:

• Use a password when setting up your Zoom Meeting.
• If an uninvited participant joins your meeting, the meeting host can remove him or her.  Simply click “Manage Participants” on the bottom bar. Then, for the uninvited participant, click More > Remove.

• Lock your meeting once all invited guests arrive. The meeting host (the person who started the meeting) should click Manage Participants > More > Lock Meeting.

During this global pandemic, be sure to explore all that Zoom has to offer for Society members!

Live Society Webinars Now Open to Public! 

Society members have always had access to our many insightful webinars. Now, your non-member colleagues can experience them firsthand! There are three ways you can invite others to view webinars:

1. When you view a webinar at our member site, send your colleagues and friends the URL of the webinar page, or 
2. Forward the Zoom registration link that you receive by email when you sign up for the webinar.
3. Use the social media sharing links that accompany your webinar registration to let people know about the event through your favorite social media outlets (like Facebook).

Webinars Coming Soon

Here’s an opportunity to learn how to make the best use of EBSCOhost databases, the most used reference resource around the world. These databases, included with Full and Associate membership fees, offer more than 300 full- text resources via the EBSCOhost interface. EBSCO training professionals will host a third-party webinar on 7 May 2020, at 1400 GMT, for those who would like to learn more about the advanced features on the EBSCOhost interface. The one-hour session will cover the different search modes, how to refine results using limiters and filters, and tools such as printing, emailing, saving and citing results.

Please register here for this exceptional learning opportunity.

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