An ‘Interesting’ English Translation of the Bible

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The problem with the Bible is that some bits of it are distinctly uncomfortable; what we really need is a translation that is uplifting, but which doesn’t actually disturb our way of life. Thankfully, Archdruid Eileen has come up with the answer to this problem; the NUSV.

And so we have produced the Not So Unpleasant Version of the Bible. Like the original Bible, but with all the nasty bits sanitised. So if you’re fed up with bloodshed, slaughter and annihilation in your favourite inspired text, why not try the NSUV? For example:

In the NSUV, after a heated debate with his brother, Cain admits that his offering wasn’t as good as Abel’s. God tells them that, actually, he was just feeling a bit grumpy and off cereals, and they were both pretty good.

Noah trains as a lifeguard. In gratitude for him saving their lives in the Flood, the people of Mesopotamia mend their ways.

The people of Sodom and Gomorrah take Lot’s guests down the pub for a pint.  Neither fire nor brimstone are required.

If you’d like to read more blog posts on English versions of the Bible (which may be more serious, but less profound than this one) try this link. Just in case you need reminding, this post is filed under humour.

The Best Books On Mission (Again)

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This, dear reader, is the definitive list of the best books about world mission. In this case, “definitive” has a rather vague sense and basically means “until I get round to updating it”.

The Best Book On Mission

Without a doubt the best book on mission today is Kingdom Without Borders: The Untold Story of Global Christianity by Miriam Adeney. That being said, you’ll have to work pretty hard to find any mention of mission or missionaries within it’s pages. Essentially, it is a book about the world church, or if you like, a book which results from the the success of the 19th and 20th century world mission movement. From my point of view, this book should be compulsory reading for anyone in church or mission leadership. You cannot understand world mission today without taking into account the development of world Christianity (though some try) and, for my money, this is probably the best place to start.

Best Biblical Overview of Mission

Demonstrating regrettable indecisiveness and a failure to understand the meaning of the world “best”, I’m actually going to list three books in this category.

First, and most obviously, comes Chris Wright’s magnum opus; The mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative. This book does what it says on the tin. Rather than starting with the normal mission texts, Wright starts with Genesis and demonstrates how mission is a key theme running through the whole of Scripture. He doesn’t present a Biblical basis for mission, but a missional basis for the Bible. The downside is that the book is long and heavy; not only will your mind be engaged, but reading it will develop your forearms too! If you are feeling lazy or can’t afford another big book, you can download a pdf of a booklet by Chris Wright which covers some of the same themes (but that would be cheating).

Covering similar ground to Wright’s book is Dean Flemming’s excellent Recovering the Full Mission of God: A Biblical Perspective on Being, Doing and Telling. Like Wright, Flemming works his way through the Scripture from Genesis to Revelation looking at the theme of mission. Flemming’s key thesis is to integrate character, action and proclamation into a holistic view of mission across the whole of the Bible. There is nothing new here, but it is excellently presented.

My final selection in this category is The Message of Mission (The Bible speaks today) by Peskett and Ramachandra. The Bible speaks today series are all excellent and this is no exception. Unlike the other two I’ve mentioned, this does not work through the whole of Scripture but expounds specific texts in order to illustrate various concepts and ideas in mission.

Best Overview of Current(ish) Mission Issues

There is no doubt that the best overview of (more or less) current mission issues is Global Missiology for the 21st Century. It is almost fifteen years old, so it isn’t entirely up to date, but it is very comprehensive and it has the wonderful advantage of being a free download. I really can’t conceive of any reason why you would not download it (well, perhaps you are on a very expensive internet connection).

The Best History of Mission

This one poses a bit of a problem. I’m sure that the best history of Christian mission is Kenneth Scott Latourette’s 24 volume work. However, unless you are a library, you are unlikely to want to give up enough shelf space or money to get hold of it. In which case, you might find a second-had copy of his one volume abridged history (still a weighty tome) but you might prefer to get hold of the Pelican History of Christian Missions by Stephen Neil. Sadly, it seems to be out of print at the moment, but I’m sure that the usual online-second hand book shops would find you a copy. You can’t have mine!

Best Book of Mission Praxis

There really is only one contender for this title: The Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission (Biblical Theology for Life) by Chris Wright is absolutely excellent. In some ways it forms a companion volume to the Mission of God which I mentioned above, but it is much more accessible. Essentially, it is an overview of different activities which fall under the head of mission and an explanation of their biblical basis and a short exploration of how they can be carried out. It’s another one that needs to be on lots of peoples shelves.

The Best Overview of Mission Theology

There is no getting away from this, it has to be TRANSFORMING MISSION (American Society of Missiology). Bosch is the book! It gives an excellent overview of the development of mission thought historically and a broad canvas of where things are today. Some readers of Kouyant might object that it isn’t an Evangelical book, but I would actually argue that this is a part of its value. Much Evangelical mission theology seems to assume that nothing happened before William Carey, thus discarding three quarters of the life and history of the church. By adopting a broader sweep, Bosch allows us to learn from the thoughts (and mistakes) of others which we might be otherwise unaware of.

If you’ve read Bosch and are looking for something else, you might appreciate: Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for Today (American Society of Missiology) or Comprehending Mission: The Questions, Methods, Themes, Problems, and prospects of Missiology (American Society of Missiology).

The Best Overview of the Great Commission

If you are looking for a short, readable and cheap overview of one of the key Bible passages relating to mission, you could do far worse than get The Great Commission for your Kindle. Then again, if you don’t have a Kindle or if you are really mean, you can get the same work for free here.

Closing Thoughts

This is a somewhat updated version of earlier posts on the best books in mission and missiology. It is undoubtedly as flawed as those earlier posts were, but I hope it will give you something to think about. Meanwhile, if you have suggestions of books I’ve missed, feel free to suggest them in the comments – even better, buy me a copy! If you think the whole list is hopeless, then this is probably a good time to start your own blog and make your own list!

Let The LAMP Die: Missionary Language Learning

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Back in the mid 1980s, when Sue and I first started our training for Bible translation work, we were introduced to a book called LAMP (Language Acquisition Made Practical). Full of cartoons, wise sayings and practical ideas it was the latest word in self-directed language learning techniques. Though, even then, the ideas behind it were ten or more years out of date.

Seven or eight years later, after significant practical experience, a lot of reading and having helped numerous other language learners, I wrote a paper critical of LAMP called, Speech Led Versus Comprehension Led Language Learning. This was subsequently developed into a paper for the British Association of Applied Linguistics annual conference.

I won’t go into a detailed description of the issues here; I want to keep the few readers that I have. But the problem with the LAMP method is that it places a heavy stress on the language learner memorising phrases and repeating them essentially parrot fashion. This can give an impression of fluency very quickly, but the learner may not have a clue what is being said back to them. Lyman Campbell catches this dilemma in David Sinclair’s excellent guide to cross-cultural church planting (appendix 2).

A worker in India once told me, “When a stranger first starts talking to me in Urdu, I often have difficulty understanding him. Once I catch on to the theme, I do a lot better.” It interested me that this man had probably been using Urdu for twenty or thirty years, and was effective in
relationships and in his work. I encounter similar stories among people who have been working in a language group for five or ten years: “I can understand people who know me, when they are conversing with me, but when they begin conversing with one another, I can easily get lost.”

That worker in India illustrated that even with many more years, the situation may not change greatly. I believe that this profile—limited, though effective, language ability—often results from what Eddie Arthur calls “speech-led language learning.”

Some language learners tell me, “I only learn things that I feel I will have a definite need to say.” One such person, attempting to narrate an action cartoon for me in her field language, was unable to express the idea that “a drop of water fell and put out the cigarette.” She later commented

that she would never want to say that, in any case. This demonstrates a philosophy of language learning that focuses on “things I want to be able to say.” The problem is that five minutes from now someone might want to tell me a story in which a drop of water fell and put out a cigarette, or any of trillions of other possible, ordinary life events that might  have taken place—events which I might never have thought I would need to know how to communicate about.

Something that Campbell also highlights is the fact that the LAMP style learner must continually turn in on themselves to find information for language learning; whereas for the person who focuses on comprehension, every encounter with a native speaker is a learning opportunity.

In comprehension-led learning, by contrast, we aim for our own speech to be largely based on our growing familiarity with host peoples’ speech. Our vision is to move steadily and deliberately toward full comprehension of all we hear and, as a result of that, to keep growing indefinitely.

Don’t get me wrong; LAMP isn’t all bad. In its time it was revolutionary. It provided a daily structure and a wealth of ideas for the learner and these are extremely valuable. When I wrote my article criticising LAMP back in the 1990s, I wasn’t able to offer any better alternatives. However things have moved on in the last 20 years and self-directed language learners have far better options than LAMP available to them. Perhaps the best option is the Growing Participator Approach which you can read about here (there are lots of good links and resources to follow there).

So why am I rabbiting on about a twenty year old argument? Well, the thing is, despite having been superseded by more effective and more theoretically valid models, LAMP is still the language learning method of choice for many missions and mission training agencies. This worries me; if we can’t update our peripheral methodologies, will we be able to make the radical paradigm shifts needed for mission agencies to survive into the future?

By the way, if you are likely to have to learn a language or if you are responsible for training others in language learning techniques and you haven’t taken this course, then you should.

People Groups: Why Bother? No, I Really Do Mean It!

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You know what? I’m far from convinced that the idea of ethno-linguistic groups is a useful one for most Christian mission thinking. Before you call in the missio-heresy police, let me explain.

In a recent post on Mission in the 21st Century (which I unpicked here) Al Mohler made the following statement:

The new vision for world missions is directed toward the reaching of people groups rather than nations. Missiological focus upon the nation-state is a remnant of the nineteenth century, when nations were conceived as singular units and national identity was paramount. This paradigm was long out of date by the end of the twentieth century. Christians now recognize that there are thousands of distinct people groups, each identifiable by culture, language, and social structure–and they are not always divided neatly by political boundaries.

The problem for Dr. Mohler, is that the paradigm of people groups was running up against its “sell by date”  by the end of the twentieth century. He has discarded one long out of date paradigm to replace it with one that is (at best) on its last legs.

Firstly, the notion of people groups identifiable by culture, language and social structure is far too simplistic. You can’t divide people up this way any more than you can divide them into neat, homogeneous nation states. Let’s take a nice easy example, the Kouya of Ivory Coast; there are only about 14,000 of them, so things can’t be too complex, can they?

There are twelve or thirteen Kouya villages, but in three of them very few people speak Kouya; mostly they speak the neighbouring language, Gouro. Then around 10% of the Kouya population live away from the area in cities and towns where the linguistic and cultural situation is extremely complex – we will return to this. Even within this small group you can identify at least three language and culture groups. Things get even more complex if you try and classify bigger groups as having shared language, culture and structure. Sorry, it just doesn’t happen.

Singapore Sunset

Secondly, such homogeneity as  does exist is being eroded by urbanisation. Over 50% of the world’s population now live in cities where ethnic and linguistic identity is thoroughly up for grabs. I have Kouya friends who are married to people from other ethnic groups and who are bringing up their children as French speakers. The kids’ “mother tongue” is not actually the language of their mothers. This sort of thing happens over all the world; cities are melting pots where ethnic and linguistic identities are lost and redeveloped within generations. The classic case of this is the “melting pot” of the United States; it is strange therefore that it tends to be Americans who propagate the idea clearly defined ethnic groups.

OK. I realise that I have overstated my case somewhat. Despite the pressures that I have mentioned, it is still possible to identify a Kouya as a Kouya; at least in the rural areas. It’s also true that some ethnic groups manage to maintain a distinct identity despite living in a large, multicultural setting. That’s why I said this paradigm is near it’s “sell by date”, it hasn’t quite got there yet.

What does this mean for mission strategy? It seems to me clear that Bible translators will always need to have some sort of linguistic criteria to work with; but BIble translation is a fairly specialised – not to say unique – sort of mission work. It isn’t typical.

One of the sadder things that I come across in mission literature are the check lists of ‘unreached people groups’ (or UPGs). These purport to be lists of every ethno-linguistic group on the planet, with information on whether there is a Christian witness in those groups, often accompanied by the implication that when every box is ticked, Jesus will return. So what’s the problem?

  • As I showed above, the classification of the groups is blurry at best.
  • The information about which group has been “reached” is incomplete at best. I remember seeing one list which described a particular group as having ‘no Christian presence’ which was a surprise as Sue was working on Scripture translation with the local church at the time.
  • More importantly, by fixating on ‘ethno-linguistic’ groups, we are likely to miss the spontaneous urban “tribes” and new groupings which arise in different settings. Martin Lee of Global Connections wrote this:

I personally have a huge problem with how some people deal with the issue of unreached people groups and  the focus on ethnicity as if that is the only problem. Yes this is  important but middle class Buddhists in Japan have few Christians among them, middle class Hindus and Sikhs seem almost impossible to reach. We need something more nuanced now people are mixed up in an urbanised world. I leave in leafy Leamington Spa and we have one of the largest Sikh temples in Europe. Yet I personally have little contact with them. (read the whole presentation)

A paradigm which thinks only of “people groups” doesn’t deal with our rapidly changing, rapidly urbanising world. Sadly, there is a vast mission industry devoted to promoting this way of thinking. We need to break out of the box.

People Groups: Why Waste Our Time?

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A few years ago a prominent British Christian leader (names withheld to protect the guilty) told me that he couldn’t take Wycliffe Bible Translators seriously because we wasted so much time translating the Bible for tiny little people groups.

I might just have ignored this as the ramblings of someone who didn’t know what they were talking about, but the person in question had just given the weekly missionary talk at a well known summer gathering.

So what was the problem with my friend’s statement?

Well, firstly, it was a rather ignorant caricature. We do work with some very small groups (the Kouya number not much over 10,000), but we also work with some groups of several millions.

However, and much more importantly, the person in question really hadn’t grasped the nature of God’s mission to the world.

  • It isn’t all about size and bang for the buck. Our culture values efficiency and making the best use of resources in order to have a maximum impact. Now these aren’t necessarily wrong, but the Kingdom of God is a place where the shepherd leaves 99 sheep in order to go and look for the one who is lost; it is the smallest of seeds or the little bit of yeast lost in the dough. Just because a people group is small doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t invest time and energy to bring them the good news. After all, many clergy in the UK invest their whole lives serving Churches of less than 100 people.
  • It is about all peoples. The Scriptures make it plain that we are to take the Gospel to every people group on the planet and that every tribe, tongue and nation will be represented before the throne of God. There is no get out clause that tells us that we don’t have to worry about tiny people groups hidden in the forests of PNG or the Amazon basin.

Of course we have to be wise in our use of resources; a balance has to be reached between our vocation to reach all people groups and the people and finance available to us. However, in the upside-down world of the Kingdom of God, we simply can’t say that some groups are too small to deserve our attention. Our God is a God who continually reaches out to people wherever they are; we, his people, can do no less.

NT Wright on Worship

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To insist on a free-floating session of songs and prayers at the whim of one leader is not to strike a blow against ritualism but is to put that leader precisely in the place where the reformers saw the mediaeval priest; the person who comes between the worshippers and God. Good liturgy preserves us from personality cults whether Catholic or Protestant.

This short quote comes from a lecture on Biblical Worship that Tom Wright gave at Calvin College in 2002. I found it very helpful in thinking through why I so often feel dissatisfied at what we tend to call ‘worship’ in contemporary settings. I have chosen one of the more polemical quotes (found at at about 54 mins); the lecture, as a whole, is balanced and nuanced – and well worth a listen (or a read if you prefer).

From the blurb on the website.

Biblically correct worship—is there such a thing? This presentation discussed the trend from structured liturgical to free-flowing worship and helped determine if this is biblical. Are there biblical guidelines for worship? Is the fashion for rock-group-style worship a pure gift from God or a capitulation to the spirit of the age? Wright led listeners on spiritual journey regarding how to best glorify God and reflect his image in the world through worship.

Books I Have Read: A Brief Eternity

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A number of my friends have written books, but they tend to be non-fiction or technical ones in linguistics, biology, biblical stuides and other areas I've worked in. A Brief Eternity, by my friend Paul Beaumont is, as far as I'm aware, the first novel that any friend of my has had published. Not only that, it has been nominated for an award or two. Even more unusually, for a book by one of my friends, the novel serves as a basis for an attack on Christianity from an atheist point of view. Not what you'd expect at first glance from a book written by someone I first met in a church youth group!

So, first thing's first; Paul writes really well. The book flows nicely, is easy to read, generally makes its points well and at times is really funny. It's a good read.

The basic theme of the book is similar to Lewis' Great Divorce. Someone who unexpectedly finds himself in heaven is given the opportunity to visit hell and to get in contact with old friends. The story has a neat, if predictable, twist at the end so I won't say any more about how it works out.

There are some brilliant little cameos in the book. I loved the single goat that somehow managed to provide all of the goat's milk cheese needed for the whole of heaven and the idea of people smuggling cigarettes out of hell so that people in heaven could have a secret smoke. It's probably a mark of my own strange sense of humour that I found the idea of the rapture being triggered by a computer glitch really funny.

It is probably clear from this that there are aspects of the book which some Christians will find uncomfortable, blasphemous even, but A Brief Eternity is meant as an attack on Christianity and it's supposed to be uncomfortable!

For me, the book is at its best in its reaction to the absurdities the more extreme end of some modern forms of millenialism and bliblical literalism. At times I found myself nodding my head in agreement with things that I suspect I wasn't supposed to agree with. But then again, I don't believe in that God either!

However, I think this also points to the parts where the book is at its weakest. At one point, the main character is bored by the bland soft rock that is the only music available on TV heaven. Apparently there was no Bach or Mendelsohn! A Brief Eternity takes a swing at modern expressions of Christianity, which is fair enough, but it ignores two thousand years and more of thought and artistic endeavour.

This is most obvious when the book deals with “big themes”. Issues such as why God allows suffering or some of the “texts of terror” from the Old Testament are brought out of the hat as though they were entirely new questions which proved that Christianity was false. This is unfortunate. It's not as though Christians haven't wrestled with these things for the last 2,000 years, not to mention the books of Lamentations and Ecclesiastes in the Bible. In one scene, God is put on trial for cruelty an interesting idea which first crops up in the book of Job.

I'm not saying that an awareness of historical theology or OT wisdom literature would have changed the author's mind. However, it is unfair to imply that the ideas that are rasied are new ones or to imply that the only solutions are simplistic literalism. If Christianity were as intellectually vapid as Paul implies it would not have survived 2,000 years. Then again, perhaps the book is giving a fair critique of some current expressions of the Christian faith.

So, who should read this book? I would suggest that any Christian who is interested in western culture and how Chrisitans and the Christian faith are perceived by many people should read it. If you are easily offended by people criticising your faith then you really do need to read it.

I don't suppose many atheists read my blog, but they won't need to be told to read this book, as I suspect they will be snapping it up in their droves. But can I gently suggest that it doesn't give an entirely fair picture of Christianity and that they might want to get some balance by reading some of the more thoughtful Christian writers such as Alistair McGrath, NT Wright or even Peter Enns to get a broader view of Christian thought.

So; I reckon Christians should read an atheist book and atheists should read some Christian stuff. You can't accuse me of bias!

In closing, I need to remark that I was given a review copy of A Brief Eternity. I don't think my comments are coloured by the fact that I didn't pay for it.

 

On The Road Again … and again

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So my colleague Caroline suggested that we should go and visit a village where she is doing language research. We set out from Ban Lung and were merrily bowling along on a dirt road, when the car just stopped. Dead.

Being a technical sort, I lifted the bonnet and took a look inside. There was lots of steam and a good deal of heat. I calculated that we had overheated – told you I was a technical sort.

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So Caroline called a friend in town and twenty minutes later a knight on a White Toyota turned up to rescue us. Except he didn’t have the spanner we needed to get the aid out of the radiator. So we left Caroline’s car by the roadside with the universal warning for a broken down car and headed back to town.

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We got the right spanner and had a quick bite for lunch and headed back to the car. We filled it with water, let the air in the system out and gingerly set out back for the city.

For a few miles everything was fine and then the temperature shot skywards. We stopped in the shade of some trees and after a few moments’s thought decided that further driving was not a good idea. So the knight in the Toyota took us in tow and now Caroline’s car languishes in a garage waiting for a new head gasket.

It is nice to be reminded of some of our adventures in Africa! But perhaps not in this way.

Fear No Nightly Noises

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This is what Tom Bombadil advised Frodo and his companions.

The nightly noises in the tropics aren’t to be feared, but there are plenty of them.

Cicadas: I love the loud noise of the night insects. These days I hardly notice them, but in many ways they sound like home.

Music: in Gouabafla we would be kept awake by the sound of the most amazing drumming that I’ve ever heard. In most African cities the loud music from bars can keep you awake for a slice of the night. Here in Cambodia my sleep was disturbed by amplified music which involved some scrapey fiddle like instrument. I’m sure there is a proper name for the instrument, but I’ve no idea why someone would blast the sound of it across the neighbourhood at five am.

Morning noises: dogs bark, cocks crow and birds tweet. The tropical morning doesn’t sneak in quietly, it bursts on the world with a cacophony of sound. It’s wonderful. In cities and towns in some places, the call to prayer from the local mosque (or mosques) means that you don’t need an alarm clock.

What are the nightly noises in your world?

Sunshine

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20140217-083426.jpg there are some great things about my job! Here I am in Northern Cambodia, drinking green tea and looking at this view. To say the least it makes a change from the weather in the UK at the moment.

Admittedly the nine hour minibus trip to get here was somewhat tiring and my body insists on trying to sleep when I should be awake and resolutely staying awake in the middle of the night. But hey, what a great place to eat breakfast and catch up with email.

I’m here for a couple of days to visit a colleague and to see the work they are doing. This is a lovely place to visit, but living and working here is a different thing. It’s going to be an interesting time.

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The local wildlife trying to steal my breakfast.

Missing Home

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I’ve got another trip coming up. I’m heading off to Asia and the Pacific for a couple of weeks. I’m really looking forward to seeing new places and meeting colleagues on the ground. Then again, I know that I’ll miss Sue while I’m on the road and I’ll be very glad to get home. But it’s only a couple of weeks.

Things were different when we lived in Africa and went overseas for years at a time. I recall thinking that I wouldn’t see a daffodil for four years. It seems a silly thing, perhaps, but I like daffodils and love the way they signal a change in seasons. No daffodils meant no winter and no spring. African sunshine is wonderful, but I missed my home in many different ways. But it was only for a few years at a time.

I’ve never left my home knowing that I would never return’ I’ve never had to flee with my family from a government that wanted to imprison or even kill me and I’ve never been so impoverished that I had to move to a foreign land with the hope of finding a better life for myself and my family.

I can’t imagine what it must feel like to know that you are unlikely ever to go home. What are your emotions when the television shows a passing shot of a place you know well, but will never revisit, when you hear a few snatched phrases in your own language or when you meet someone who knows your friends and family ‘back there’?

We talk glibly about ‘asylum seekers’ and refugees, but how often do we reflect on the price people pay for being unable to return to their homes?

These thoughts were inspired by the weekend that Sue and I just spent with Exilio. Judy wrote some thoughts about it here.

I spent the weekend in company of a refugee family, a single parent whose ex partner is controlling and manipulative, another young woman who has left her husband because of his addictive behaviours, families who are struggling to make ends meet, people who are facing tragic ill health…

And I have to ask, “Is Jesus really enough for them?”

Is Jesus really enough for me?

My friend Eddie was helping us to understand what Paul wrote to the followers of Jesus in Colossae. He helped us wrestle with the great truth – “At one time you all had your backs turned to God, thinking rebellious thoughts of him, giving him trouble every chance you got. But now, by giving himself completely at the Cross, actually dying for you, Christ brought you over to God’s side and put your lives together, whole and holy in his presence. You don’t walk away from a gift like that!” (Colossians 1:21-23)

Jesus is enough because he has been there. He has entered into human suffering, has shared it, has transformed it and “put our lives together”.  But following Jesus is tough! Paul knows that (he’s in prison as he writes this letter). Following Jesus is not something for the weekend. It’s a “for all time”, “with all I am” deal.” Perhaps it’s only in taking faltering steps with him that we find out whether he really is enough.

I’ve put together a few additional reflections and prayer ideas. I hope you find them helpful in your stepping out in faith.

Almost But Not Quite

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Albert Mohler, who is President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has just published an article entitled Christian Mission in the Twenty-first Century. It is an interesting piece and well worth a read. However, the most significant things about the article are not what it says, but what it doesn’t say.

Mohler makes some interesting remarks about a move towards focussing on people groups rather than on nation-states, which is good, but hardly new:

The new vision for world missions is directed toward the reaching of people groups rather than nations. Missiological focus upon the nation-state is a remnant of the nineteenth century, when nations were conceived as singular units and national identity was paramount. This paradigm was long out of date by the end of the twentieth century. Christians now recognize that there are thousands of distinct people groups, each identifiable by culture, language, and social structure–and they are not always divided neatly by political boundaries. Each of these people groups represents a distinct missiological challenge, and each must be considered in its own right.

There are some interesting comments about generational changes in the US (though I’m not entirely convinced that these are accurate):

This generation demonstrates a readiness to take on new challenges and to go where no previous generation has yet taken the gospel. They have been born into a culturally diverse world, and they are gifted with skills in intercultural communication. They are impatient with the cultural isolationism of previous generations. They see no political boundaries to the Gospel. They are ready to cross political borders and see no limitations on the Great Commission. Where previous generations wanted to support missions, this generation is determined to do missions. Incubated in an experience-driven culture, these young Christians are not interested in missions by proxy.

And there is something about grass roots changes in American Churches:

This new vision for world missions is also remarkable in the fact that much, if not most, of the energy is coming from grassroots Christians rather than from institutional structures. Perhaps the greatest missionary advance among American churches is seen in the widespread participation of Christian laypersons in missionary trips and short-term mission projects. Churches that encourage and support this hands-on approach to missions will bear testimony to the powerful impact it has upon the participants and upon the missionary commitment of the entire congregation.

However, what you won’t find is is any mention of the growth in the world church and the role of majority world believers in the spread of Christianity beyond a couple of tangential references:

Reviewing the history of the missionary movement, it is clear that great gains were made for the gospel.

One missionary leader has defined this mobilization as “all of God’s people reaching all the peoples of the earth.” That motto sets the issue clearly.

Admittedly he does mention ‘all of God’s people’ but he rarely seems to imply that this means anyone outside of the USA.

Albert Mohler is an excellent theologian and a great writer; I very much appreciate his writings, especially on the subject of Bible translation. However, in this piece he is setting out a vision of the future of Christian mission that owes far more to the past than it does to the future. Welcome to the twentieth century.

A vision for the future of mission that does not take into account the explosive growth of the Church worldwide and the way in which majority world Christians are spreading the Gospel – often without reference to traditional missionary models – is grossly inadequate. Even if the article is aimed simply at an American audience (as this one seems to be, though it doesn’t say as such), it does a disservice to its audience by not pointing to the context in which American missionaries will need to work and live in the future.

Mohler quite rightly points out some of the failings of a previous generation of missionaries:

At the same time, every generation has left its own imprint on the missionary task, and each generation is blind to some of the cultural baggage it takes along with the gospel. At the height of the missions movement in the Victorian era, it often seemed that missionaries were just as intent on Westernizing native peoples as in evangelizing them.

However, in painting a future of a world mission movement that is essentially American and which ignores the shift in the centre of gravity of the Church, he is, sadly, committing the same mistake that these forefathers made. There is some good and interesting stuff in this article, but unfortunately its major flaw outweighs the good.