As Charles Van Engen explains in his introduction, this book is about “doing mission theology”. 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”.
Mark Anderson has answered a foundational question: ‘Can Christians fully grasp the Qur’anic worldview without becoming Muslims?’ Anderson has, by engaging the Qur’anic faith dialogically (grace) and by analyzing its doctrines thematically (truth).
Clemens Sedmak takes readers on a tour which spans the globe and plums the depths of the human spirit. Along the way, he introduces a diverse cast of novelists, philosophers, clerics, missionaries, and prisoners—from Chinua Achebe and Saint Augustine, Vaclav Havel and Isaiah the Solitary to Corrie Ten Boom and Cardinal Francis Xavier Van Thuen—and explores how they found the inner strength to endure in the “desert of displacement.” The result is a far-reaching, reflection on “sources of resilience derived from within.”
Intercultural ministry is “the defining theological line of the twenty-first century.” So begins this volume of fifteen essays that seeks to answer the question: “how do we build healthy communities that bring us together as next-door neighbors and global neighbors?”
Globalization is complex, highly debated, and often misunderstood. A number of Christians, acting out of fear, seek to resist globalization. Others, because of its complexity, have given up trying to understand it. Instead, they attempt to ignore this global-sized elephant walking around the room. Bryant Myers in his book, Engaging Globalization, offers a balanced approach to this topic, helping Christians understand the history and effects of globalization and how they can get involved in order to play a constructive role in the globalized world community.
John Mark Terry and Robert L. Gallagher, articulating their thesis in the concluding chapter of the book, assert that we can learn from both the successes as well as failures of the efforts of missionaries who have gone before us.
I agree with the importance of taking an oral approach to sharing the Good News about Jesus Christ because there are over four billion people in the world who can’t, don’t, or won’t read. Few, if any, of these people, would read scripture, even if it was published in their language.
Samuel Escobar’s analysis in his work The New Global Mission: The Gospel from Everywhere to Everyone that the new global mission is characterized by “missions from everywhere to everywhere” offers a helpful backdrop to what the editors were aiming to accomplish in Churches on Mission: God’s Grace Abounding to the Nations.
Evangelical Christianity’s explosive growth on much of the African continent cannot be fully understood without paying attention to the leaders God has used to bring this about. The present book breaks ground in the study of leadership in African churches by building on a foundation of extensive empirical research.
If it be true that second century Christians sometimes formed themselves into burial clubs in order to achieve a type of organization legal under Roman law, then that fact could give the Czechs, the Basques, and other oppressed minorities today some good ideas on how to run an underground church in an unconventional form.
Sign up for my newsletter to see new photos, tips, and blog posts.
