Comprehending Mission: The Questions, Methods, Themes, Problems, and Prospects of Missiology

Comprehending Mission: The Questions, Methods, Themes, Problems, and Prospects of Missiology
Author: Stanley H. Skreslet (II.)
Publisher: Orbis Books
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2012
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1608331180

"Stanley H. Skreslet offers an inviting new proposal for conceptualizing the field of missiology. Comprehending Mission includes a concise overview of the development of missiology of the last century, introducing its characteristic methodologies, and offering insight into the kids of questions missiologists typically ask. In the last hundred years missiology has moved form emphasizing the practical challenges of foreign mission service to highlighting the intercultural aspects of Christian outreach. Today, missiology is lesss a form of practical theology than a field of study where theological concerns intersect with critical studies undertaken by anthropologists, historians, and other scholars." --

Understanding Christian Mission

Understanding Christian Mission
Author: Scott W. Sunquist
Publisher: Baker Academic
Total Pages: 741
Release: 2013-09-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1441242147

This comprehensive introduction helps students, pastors, and mission committees understand contemporary Christian mission historically, biblically, and theologically. Scott Sunquist, a respected scholar and teacher of world Christianity, recovers missiological thinking from the early church for the twenty-first century. He traces the mission of the church throughout history in order to address the global church and offers a constructive theology and practice for missionary work today. Sunquist views spirituality as the foundation for all mission involvement, for mission practice springs from spiritual formation. He highlights the Holy Spirit in the work of mission and emphasizes its trinitarian nature. Sunquist explores mission from a primarily theological--rather than sociological--perspective, showing that the whole of Christian theology depends on and feeds into mission. Throughout the book, he presents Christian mission as our participation in the suffering and glory of Jesus Christ for the redemption of the nations.

Mission

Mission
Author: Carlos F. Cardoza-Orlandi
Publisher: Abingdon Press
Total Pages: 123
Release: 2002-06-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 142676328X

"Mission" has become, for many North American Christians, an ambiguous and often uncomfortable term. To many it brings to mind a past in which western culture was identified with the gospel in missionary practice and programs. Distressed with this history and uncertain about how to overcome it, many prefer to ignore the New Testament mandate that the church must be in mission if it is to be the church. Others swing the other way, declaring that everything the church does is mission, depriving the idea of mission of its power to define those specific actions of God which proclaim the gospel and build God's kingdom. "The church exists by missions, just as fire exists by burning." With these words of Emil Brunner, the author reminds us that to be the church is to be in mission. After describing the various "captivities of mission" which plague North American Christianity, the author argues for a robust and engaged practice of mission, beginning in congregations and extending to the broader community.

Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission

Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission
Author: David J. Bosch
Publisher: Orbis Books
Total Pages: 657
Release: 2011
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1608331466

"David Bosch's Transforming Mission, now available in over a dozen languages, is widely recognized as an historic and magisterial contribution to the study of mission. Examining the entire sweep of Christian tradition, he shows how five paradigms have historically encapsulated the Christian understanding of mission and then outlines the characteristics of an emerging postmodern paradigm dialectically linking the transcendent and imminent dimensions of salvation. In this new anniversary edition, Darrel Guder and Martin Reppenhagen explore the impact of Bosch s work and the unfolding application of his seminal vision." --

The Oxford Handbook of Mission Studies

The Oxford Handbook of Mission Studies
Author: Kirsteen Kim
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 769
Release: 2022-04-28
Genre: Missions
ISBN: 0198831722

The Oxford Handbook of Mission Studies represents more than a century of scholarship related to the theology, history, and methodology of the propagation of Christian faith and the engagement of Christians with cultures, religions, and societies worldwide. It contains more than 40 articles by experts from different disciplinary and ecclesial perspectives, who are from all continents. It not only offers a broad overview of key approaches and issues in mission studies but it also highlights current trends and suggests future developments. The Handbook builds on renewed interest in mission studies this century generated by recent key statements on mission from ecumenical, evangelical, Catholic, and Orthodox sources, and by a spate of academic works on the topic. Western church leaders now apply insights from foreign missions (such as, inculturation, liberation, interfaith work, and power encounter) to today's multicultural societies. Meanwhile, there are new initiatives in mission from the Majority World, where most Christians live, so that sending is not only 'from the west to the rest' but 'from everywhere to everywhere'. Therefore, this volume aims to reflect the voices of the receivers of mission as well as its protagonists and to raise awareness of new movements. In a time of growing recognition of 'religions' more generally, this work examines and theorizes the missional dimensions of the world's largest religion: its agendas, growth, outreach, role in public life, effect on cultures, relevance for development, and its approaches to other communities.

Paul's Understanding of the Church's Mission

Paul's Understanding of the Church's Mission
Author: Robert Lewis Plummer
Publisher: OCMS
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2006
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781842273333

This book engages in a careful study of Pauls letters to determine if the apostle expected the communities to which he wrote to engage in missionary activity. It helpfully summarizes the discussion on this debated issue, judiciously handling contested texts and provides a way forward in addressing this critical question. While admitting that Paul rarely explicitly commands the communities he founded to evangelize, Plummer amasses significant incidental data to provide a convincing case that Paul did indeed expect his churches to engage in mission activity. Throughout the study, Plummer progressively builds a theological basis for the churchs mission that is both distinctively Pauline and compelling.

Constructing Mission History

Constructing Mission History
Author: Stanley H. Skreslet
Publisher: Fortress Press
Total Pages: 477
Release: 2023-01-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1506481906

Three master narratives currently dominate the analysis of modern mission history.?One puts foreign missionaries at the heart of the story.?A second emphasizes the colonial aspect of modern missions.?Here, missionaries are not heroes but villains, who are implicated in hegemonic schemes of imperial domination.?Thirdly, mission history is subordinated to one of its outcomes, the advent of World Christianity.?In this master narrative, the concept of contextualization looms large, bolstered by Sanneh's notion of translatability and emphasis on the agency of non-Westerners, who participate in and subtly shape the complex social processes of evangelization.?While all three of these master narratives are insightful, none of them adequately balances concern for missionary initiative and indigenous agency.?? Borrowing from speech-act theory, Skreslet offers a new analytical approach to the modern roots of World Christianity that differentiates between what a speaker might intend to communicate and the effects of what has been said or actions taken both in the moment and over time.?Corresponding to the concepts of illocution and perlocution as these technical terms are used in speech-act theory, the book is structured in two main sections.?Initially, the focus is on expressed missionary motives. Part two engages a representative set of modern-era mission performances involving many more actors than just the foreign evangelizers whose stated or implied intentions are emphasized in part one.

Transcending Mission

Transcending Mission
Author: Michael W. Stroope
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 479
Release: 2017-02-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0830882251

Is the language of mission clearly evident across the broad reaches of time? Or has the modern missionary enterprise distorted our view of the past? Michael Stroope investigates how the modern church has come to understand, speak of, and engage in the global expansion of Christianity, offering a hopeful way forward in this pressing conversation.

Cultural Integration and the Gospel in Vietnamese Mission Theology

Cultural Integration and the Gospel in Vietnamese Mission Theology
Author: KimSon Nguyen
Publisher: Langham Publishing
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2019-11-14
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1783687398

Postcolonial Vietnam has an urgent need for contextualized theology of mission, God, Christ, and the church that is rooted in indigenous cultural traditions and the dual Vietnamese spirit of resistance and assimilation. Dr KimSon Nguyen navigates the religio-cultural dimensions of Vietnamese spirituality and Daoism that have hindered the assimilation of the Christian faith in the Vietnamese context and explores a fresh approach to missiology in Vietnam. Dr Nguyen draws upon his deep knowledge of Vietnamese evangelical history to analyze contextualization and mission theology in Vietnam. He proposes an evangelical theology of God as Ðạo (way / 道), the centrality of the Vietnamese home as the “house of the Lord,” and ancestor veneration as a theological framework for an indigenous theology of the family. Narrowing the gap between culturally removed evangelical missionary practice and widespread syncretistic spirituality in Vietnam, Nguyen calls for a paradigm shift in Vietnamese mission theology that is both robustly evangelical and authentically Vietnamese.

Longing for Community

Longing for Community
Author: David Greenlee
Publisher: William Carey Publishing
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013
Genre: Christian converts from Islam
ISBN: 9780878085330

Understanding the strength and unity of the ummah-- the worldwide Muslim community--and its role in an individual's identity is essential in comprehending the struggles that Muslims undergo as they turn to faith in Jesus Christ. It has been a place of security, acceptance, protection, and identity; turning away from it entails great sacrifice. Where, then, will Muslims who choose to follow Jesus find their longing for community fulfilled: ummah, church, or somewhere in between? Longing for Community compiles the research and reflection of twenty missiologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and linguists--among them Muslims who have become believers in Jesus Christ-- presented at the second Coming to Faith Consultation in February 2010. The contributors explore the multiple levels and hybrid nature of social identity, pointing to the need to free our discussions from single- dimensional scales, which are far from adequate to describe the complex nature of conversion and lived-out faith. Beyond the issue of identity, the contributors offer important lessons from mission history, explore liturgy as an appropriate vehicle for teaching, discuss appropriate means of communication, and point to both the need and contextually appropriate possibilities of greater involvement of women in training and ministry.