EMQ » January–March 2021 » Volume 57 Issue 1
By Gregg Okesson
Baker Academic, 2020
256 pages
USD $24.99
Reviewed by Seth Bouchelle, who serves as the NYC leader for Global City Mission Initiative and is author of Lost Faith: A Practical Theology for Post-Christendom Ministry and coauthor of Mosaic: A Ministry Handbook for a Globalizing World.
We have a gospel problem. And while there are myriad resources available to help churches communicate more effectively and creatively strategize to find inroads to relationships with those outside the church, Gregg Okesson wishes to address a problem that lies deeper than simply communicating more competently. In his new book, A Public Missiology, Okesson takes up the problem of what he calls “thinness” in the Western church’s public witness. This “thinness” has probably been experienced by any who have taken up the task of sharing the gospel with a friend or neighbor or who have tried to disciple someone new in the faith: Simple theological formulations and elevator pitches for accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior are not sufficient to address the many social and interpersonal concerns held by spiritual seekers. What is required is a more robust understanding of the gospel, and one which intersects with a holistic understanding of the social sciences and our lives as social beings. We need a theology and a missiology that grapple with the complexity of the everyday lives of our congregations.
The work begins with an examination of the compartmentalization of public and private life as it exists in the Western context. Okesson, here, does an excellent job of explaining how this divide developed as well as capturing the complexity of contemporary life for churches today. Analyzing an array of contexts from villages in rural Kenya to globalizing Western cities, Okesson reviews the social, political, and economic concerns of each and demonstrates the ways in which this complexity – rather than being an obstacle to public witness – is a ripe context for preaching of the missio dei: the story of what the triune God is doing in human history through partnering with communities of Christ-followers. While this section is certainly written in an academic style, Okesson brings the latest from social sciences and missiology to bear in a way that is comprehensive while remaining comprehensible to the non-specialist.
In the second half of the book, Okesson gives us several case studies of real congregations in a wide range of contexts, such as Montreal, Nashville, and Machakos (Kenya). Having served in East Africa as a church planter for many years, his first-hand stories provide concrete examples of the principles for which he advocates. For those readers disinclined to wade through the theological and sociological work in the first half, the latter part of the work is a master class in ethnography and clarifies the implications of what A Public Missiology proposes. Both cross-cultural disciple-makers as well as domestic church leaders would benefit from this work as they seek to better incarnate and tell the story of God in an increasingly complex world.
For Further Reading
Drescher, Elizabeth. Choosing Our Religion: The Spiritual Lives of America’s Nones. Oxford University Press, 2016.
Looney, Jared. Crossroads of the Nations: Diaspora, Globalization, and Evangelism. Urban Loft Publishers, 2015.
