EMQ » April–June 2018 » Volume 54 Issue 2
[memberonly folder=”Members, EMQ2YearFolder, EMQ1YearFolder”]Book Review
Transforming Mission Theology
William Carey Library, 2017
ISBN: 978-0878086351
435 pages
USD $24.99
Reviewed by Daniel Topf, PhD student at Fuller Theological Seminary; World Team.
As Charles Van Engen explains in his introduction, this book is about “doing mission theology” (xiii). He describes mission theology as “an activity that seeks to discern what God wants to do primarily through God’s people at a specific time, place and context in God’s world” (xxi).
The first chapter introduces the various agents who do mission theology (the first being the Holy Spirit). The following fourteen chapters are based on articles that Van Engen published between the years 1989 and 2010. For that reason, some of the material can come across as somewhat dated—such as when the author writes about a Google search he did on the term “glocal,” which (at that time) resulted in 347 entries (44). That was in 1996, when this article was first published, but when one searches for this term today, Google provides over three million search results.
One of the strengths of Transforming Mission Theology is that it is ecumenical in scope while at the same time maintaining an evangelical perspective as, throughout the book, Van Engen’s primary source for expounding his mission theology is the Bible. Based on this biblical foundation, the author interacts extensively with the work of other theologians and missiologists, sometimes using bloc quotes several paragraphs in lengths when quoting scholars like Donald McGavran, James Scherer, Johannes Verkuyl, Tite Tienou, and, above all, David Bosch. Transforming Mission Theology is therefore an invaluable resource to gain a comprehensive overview of mission studies as a whole, which can also be seen by the fact that it features a bibliography of over thirty pages.
Van Engen is to be commended for writing with passion and conviction, sharing his point of view on a variety of issues—such as the importance of contextualization, or the need to plant reproducing churches. Transforming Mission Theology touches on many other topics as well, and the author is aware that much more could be said to further develop these themes, acknowledging that to do so would be “beyond the scope of this book” (4). These themes include Israel’s calling as a missionary nation, the mission of the local congregation, a comprehensive missiology of transformation, and various models of missiological education.
The book is organized in five parts presenting the sources, meaning, methods, and goals of mission theology, followed by three samples in which practical themes like urbanization and migration are explored. That is to say, Van Engen’s concern is primarily of a theological nature; what is missing is a historical part, and in that sense his approach is different from David Bosch’s magnum opus Transforming Mission as well as recent publications like Scott Sunquist’s Understanding Christian Mission (2013), which is divided into three major parts (historical, biblical, and practical considerations). Nonetheless, Transforming Mission Theology is a valuable contribution inviting both students of missiology and practitioners to think more deeply about the theological assumptions of mission in order to align themselves more closely with the purposes of the missio Dei.
For Further Reading
Bosch, David J. Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. Twentieth Anniversary Ed. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2011.
Sunquist, Scott W. Understanding Christian Mission: Participation in Suffering and Glory. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013.
