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

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1608331180

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"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

Published: 2013-09-15

Total Pages: 741

ISBN-13: 1441242147

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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 as Penance
Mission as Penance

Author: Charles J. Fensham

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2023-05-03

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 1666797251

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Mission as Penance explores the posture of Christian mission in Canada, while also uncovering the theological roots that gave birth to the sense of cultural and religious superiority that led to profound harm to others and to God's creation. The story begins by an examination of Johan Bavinck's famous 1954 claim that "mission is thus the penance of the church which is ashamed before God and man." By drawing on his work through forty years in theological education and pastoral ministry, Fensham prescribes a pathway that liberates the church from power games, numerical growth, and preoccupation with programs and technology, to focus instead on genuine listening, solidarity, and love in action. True penance is never satisfied with passivity, nor should it result in a state of paralysis. For a posture of humble penance to be fruitful, it must lead toward concerted action toward change, advocacy for justice, compassion for the marginalized, and care for creation. If mission in Canada is engaged in this way, the Christian faith might cease to do harm and build a new life-giving community of healing.

Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission
Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission

Author: David J. Bosch

Publisher: Orbis Books

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 657

ISBN-13: 1608331466

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"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

Published: 2022-04-28

Total Pages: 769

ISBN-13: 0198831722

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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

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 9781842273333

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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.

Mission
Mission

Author: Carlos F. Cardoza-Orlandi

Publisher: Abingdon Press

Published: 2002-06-01

Total Pages: 123

ISBN-13: 142676328X

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"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.

Toward a New, Praxis-Oriented Missiology
Toward a New, Praxis-Oriented Missiology

Author: Rosalia Meza

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2020-06-17

Total Pages: 134

ISBN-13: 1725258250

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The new and different frontiers and factors discussed in missiology are reshaping the meaning of mission. Christian mission today is searching for new directions to approach the postmodern, postcolonial, and ecumenical paradigms. This book argues that mission is the process of embodying the content and praxis of the gospel, not the transmission of knowledge that keeps an established structure and culture alive (often justified by a specific ecclesiological model). Thus, mission initiates a transformative process of faith, which leads to personal and social transformation. This work brings into dialogue Stephen Bevans's notion of mission as prophetic dialogue and Paulo Freire's concept of conscientizacao. The aim is not to discover a method to do mission but to rescue the process that leads to transformation, allowing one to encounter the other where they are while respecting the uniqueness of every person, culture, church, and society. Prophetic dialogue enriched by conscientizacao (and vice versa) can open new perspectives within missiology and provide a new approach to mission praxis. This approach is then analyzed through the experiential and transformative elements of the Verbum Dei charism applied in ministry, demonstrating the effectiveness of prophetic dialogue and conscientizacao in the Verbum Dei Missionary Fraternity mission praxis.

Constructing Mission History
Constructing Mission History

Author: Stanley H. Skreslet

Publisher: Fortress Press

Published: 2023-01-17

Total Pages: 477

ISBN-13: 1506481906

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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.

A Theological Assessment of Reconciliation for Missiology in the Korean Context
A Theological Assessment of Reconciliation for Missiology in the Korean Context

Author: Hyo Seok Lim

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2021-07-01

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 1725289210

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Any Christian who lives in such a broken world may ask God what their role would be as the person who is reconciled with God, and about the implications of the vertical dimension of reconciliation. Many would agree that the vertical and horizontal dimensions of reconciliation should not be separated. It is, however, still necessary to examine further. For instance, what does the inseparableness of the two dimensions actually mean--in theory and practice? How does the vertical dimension of reconciliation become the source and foundation of the horizontal dimension? How should the church maintain its theology of reconciliation, which includes both dimensions? All these questions point to an underlying question: what is the relationship between the vertical and horizontal dimensions of reconciliation? This book explores this question, interacting with the four thinkers and practitioners of reconciliation, Karl Barth, Miroslav Volf, Son Yang-Won, and Desmond Tutu, and assessing the theology of a leading theologian in the discourse of mission as reconciliation, Robert Schreiter. Based on the discussions, it presents a proposal for a more wholesome and robust understanding of reconciliation for the discourse in mission studies, which can be applied to any broken context, including the Korean peninsula.