EMQ » April–June 2020 » Volume 56 Issue 2
By Scott N. Callaham and Will Brooks, Eds.
Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2019
376 pages
USD $24.99
Reviewed by Geoff Hartt, Executive Director of Hispanics for Christ (resourcing church-planting among Hispanics), Affiliate Faculty Sioux Falls Seminary, and Director of SFS Kairos Project–Spanish Program.
This very useful introduction to world mission, written by various authors, is structured in three sections covering the essential elements of global evangelism: theology, strategy, and contemporary issues. The majority of the content in these sections is foundational and well-presented.
In the first section, Callaham establishes the missiological importance of the Old Testament. Building on this foundation, Wendel Sun presents the New Testament as “…a collection of missional texts produced in the context of mission.” (33). “A covenantal view of mission” (100) is presented as a basis for understanding God’s mission. The third chapter is an introduction to this subject, much shorter than Christopher Wright’s Mission of God or Kostenberger and O’Brien’s Salvation to the Ends of the Earth, but appropriate for an introductory level text.
The flow of the second section is refreshingly simple. Chapters four through six argue for discipleship leading to baptism being a priority of mission work which should focus on “… all people without ethnic distinction scattered throughout the world” (147). This section ends with an argument for theological education to be another central part of mission work, to respond to the needs of new disciples, new leaders, and the missionaries themselves.
The final section of the book, “Current Issues in World Mission”, discusses language, hermeneutical methodology, and oral learners. The chapters on language and oral learners were useful, but the chapter on grammatical-historical interpretation could be confusing. It presents this as the ultimate hermeneutical methodology although it is accessible only to Christians who are able to use the appropriate hermeneutical tools. In contrast, ethnohermeneutics, as developed by Larry Caldwell and Enoch Wan, offers a practical and transcultural approach to interpreting and communicating the Bible cross-culturally. However, it is presented in the text simply as a tool to “confront and correct” (259) indigenous interpretations. It is clear that that the authors believe an academic, western approach to hermeneutics is superior to that of oral learners who are presented as limited (247) in their ability to understand scripture without the grammatical-historical method of hermeneutics.The last chapter briefly looks at the Apostle Paul’s missionary practices.
This last section, “Current Issues”, misses some of the more pressing issues today in world mission, such as refugees, immigration, and cross-cultural work. Emphasizing the importance of the grammatical-historical method of hermeneutics and the role of the Bible itself clearly had the priority of place over current issues in mission, or a discussion of the role of Jesus and the Holy Spirit in mission. It would be difficult to use this as a stand-alone text without other readings to balance out a full understanding of world mission today.
