Tag Archives: mission

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!

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.

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.

Where Do Missionaries Go?

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This is another of my posts inspired by talks at the recent Global Connection’s Conference. During one of his talks, Daniel Bourdanné of IFES came out with a phrase that was very dear to my heart and which I immediately tweeted.

N’oubliez pas l’Afrique francophone @Bourdanne #GCC2014 >> OUI!!!!

“Don’t forget Francophone Africa!” To which I added my own YES!!

Daniel was referring to the fact that a huge proportion of missionaries go to places where there are already lots of Christians, or as he also put it:

#GCC2014 When you look at the number of missionary agencies who base themselves in Nairobi you wonder if it’s mission or tourism @Bourdanne

This ties up with my experience of Nairobi, where I’ve often thought that you couldn’t throw stones for fear of hitting an evangelical missionary. Interestingly, when I tweeted this a number of people agreed with it, while others suggested that Chiang Mai in Thailand suffers in the same way. Someone else suggested that there are more missionaries in Nairobi than in the whole of Francophone Africa.

I realise there is a need for regional offices and stable, foreigner friendly cities are very attractive for them, but it is surprising how many missionaries you can find in tourist hubs!

However, leaving the issues of the big cities aside, I believe that Daniel has highlighted a significant issue. Missionaries are distributed in a very uneven way and the majority of them go to places where there is an established church and often many other missionaries. As Hannah put it in a post on the Wycliffe blog:

or every 20,000 Christians like you – Bible believing and living out their faith – only one will go to tell the gospel to an unreached people group.

Or as Martin Lee put it in his excellent talk to introduce the conference:

There are still vast numbers of people who have never heard of Christ and many countries still where Christians are few and far between. Indeed some countries have seen Christian fleeing elsewhere due to war and conflict and persecution such as Iraq and Syria.

Despite this according to the Atlas of Global Christianity, 85% of all Christian mission is aimed at other “Christians”. Much mission deployment is still trying to sustain the growth of the churches in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Often when I am talking to church leaders, they will tell me that their church has a link with a church in Africa. Almost invariably this means in one of the Anglophone Countries in East Africa. This is understandable, it is easier to reach people who speak our language, and the relatively easy climate makes travel easier (not to mention the game parks). But these countries are also the ones that have the most Christians. I have never heard of a church in the UK which has a direct link to a Church in the Central African Republic, Gabon or Togo. These areas tend to be left for the mission agencies!

As we look at world mission, we can’t afford to forget Francophone Africa, or those other parts of the world that receive the fewest missionaries.

The Great Compassion

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An older generation are committed to global mission, while younger people are committed to global compassion.

This is according to John Stevens of the FIEC who was speaking at the recent Global Connections Conference. I think it’s fair to say that not everyone agreed with what he said and a small storm brewed up on Twitter about it (sadly, world mission doesn’t attract enough attention for a large storm to develop).

For the record, I think that John was partly right. I think there is a large and increasing proportion of the Church for whom mission is seen in terms of compassion or works of mercy and nothing more. However, I’m just not sure that this falls neatly into different generations in the way that John suggested.

My observations of the mission scene in the UK suggest that people are increasingly motivated by a desire to help relieve poverty, work for justice and defend the oppressed, but there is less willingness to proclaim the Good News of Jesus. We are happy to be involved in helping people out of poverty, but reluctant to tell people that they need a Saviour.

I have nothing against poverty relief, working for justice and the like; far from it. However, these things must go hand in hand with proclaiming the Gospel. They are a part of mission, not the sum total of it.

On the other side of the equation, we mustn’t tell people about Jesus without also helping them when they are in need. This makes a nonsense of the words we are speaking. That being said, I don’t see this being a huge issue in most British church circles.

I plan to return to this theme in more detail at some point in the future, but for now I’ll just simply reiterate that Biblically speaking works of service and proclamation of the Gospel are intimately entwined. Separating them in the way we do is much more to do with modern culture and worldview than it is to do with the Bible narrative. Compassion without proclamation is a nonsense in Biblical terms. It’s not a bad thing, but it ain’t mission.

You might want to take a look at this post in which Chris Wright talks about this dichotomy.

Edit: John Steven’s short talk is now available online here.

Who Gave You The Right To Say That?

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We can be very diffident about spreading the Christian message in this day and age. What right have we to tell people that they need to come to Christ? Or what gives us the right to take the Christian message to other parts of the world?

The simple answer to questions like this is that we have the right to spread the Christian message, because Jesus has ultimate authority and he gives us not just the right, but the obligation to take the Gospel out into the wider world. Matthew 28:18 makes it clear that Christian mission is carried out by Christ’s authority, at Christ’s command and in Christ’s presence (anyone looking for a three point sermon is welcome to use this)!

DontYell

However, the outside world doesn’t recognise Christ’s authority and we can’t reasonably expect doors to open to the Gospel around the world because of this passage. It just doesn’t work like that. But whether or not the political authorities or social convention allows for the spread of the Christian message, we are still under an obligation from Jesus to make disciples in all nations. That includes post-modern Britain and it includes parts of the world that are quite happy with their own religious tradition, thank you very much.

Jesus’ authority does not give us the excuse to be arrogant, unreasonable or manipulative. There is undoubtedly a time when Christians should directly confront the culture around them, but for the most part, Christian mission should be a model of gentleness and service. This is partly because gentleness is more effective than confrontation (“more flies are caught by honey than vinegar” is a quote I remember from the first book on evangelism that I ever read) but mainly because we are following in the steps of the one who became a servant and submitted to death on a cross.

This text is taken from my ebook on The Great Commission, which you can download for free from the links on the right hand side of the screen. Alternatively, you can buy a copy for your Kindle from Amazon and make me insanely rich (it costs 77P).

Graphic by Jason Ramasami

For reasons currently beyond my control, the comments system on the blog isn’t working. I will try and fix it as soon as I can. 

 

Not by Missionaries Alone

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I reckon that the Church in the West places too much emphasis on missionaries.

Before I get dragged before the mission-leaders’ trades union, let me quickly point out that I have argued on numerous occasions that the Church in the west should still be sending missionaries out into the world; try this series for size.

In one of those earlier posts, I wrote this:

The Church is called to be a witness to Jesus (Acts 1:8) and to make disciples (Matthew 28:19). These commands are universal and apply to all Christians everywhere and in every time. The two passages from Matthew and Luke also assume that Christians will bear witness and make disciples in all parts of the world. So, all Christians everywhere are to make disciples and bear witness to Christ to all people everywhere. You can’t argue with that: see Serge’s comment on an earlier post.

However, we should not make the mistake of assuming that sending missionaries is the same as bearing witness to Christ and making disciples. We are very apt to confuse our own cultural expressions of the Christian faith with the deeper reality of the faith itself and this is a case in point.  The modern missionary movement is one response (among many) from the Church to God’s call to serve him. (If you want more on this theme, see the following post.)

I would add to this, that in the current situation in the UK, not all churches have the human or financial resources that would allow them to send people across the world; but that doesn’t absolve them from the call to make disciples. So, what are the alternatives to sending missionaries?

The World Has Come Here

Whatever we think about the economics and social impact of immigration, as Christians we have to recognise that it provides us with an unprecedented opportunity to share the Gospel with people from around the world without needing to visit a travel agent or buy malaria tablets. English language classes, overseas students’ cafés, providing help to navigate British bureaucracy, are all meaningful and useful ways that Churches can serve their local international community and provide opportunity to share the message of Christ.

Going Without Going

There are many ways in which a congregation can become involved in world mission without actually sending a missionary of their own. I’ll give examples from Wycliffe, but there are plenty of other options out there.

Support a Missionary Anyway

There are many missionaries who struggle to raise adequate financial and prayer support who would be grateful if a Church were to get behind them and encourage them.

Pray for a Project Overseas

Prayer is really important; really important! Even if a church doesn’t have a lot of people or money, they can pray. There are a number of good websites which will provide you with information for praying for different needs around the world. However, many of us find it difficult to pray for lots of different countries or situations; it is easier to concentrate on one thing. A programme such as First Gospel prayer can be a real help to many. First Gospel Prayer involves a group committing themselves to pray for the translation of the First Gospel (hence the name) for a people group. This normally involves a time period of 1-4 years, during which the group will be provided with regular prayer and praise updates to encourage and motivate them.

Get Involved With A Church or People Group

There are many programmes that help churches in the UK partner with Churches or groups around the world. In Wycliffe we have a thing called In Focus which will ‘introduce’ your church to one group so that you can:

  • pray for the Lord to break through into their lives
  • build meaningful relationships with national workers ministering to this group
  • prayerfully consider the financial needs of the programme
  • praise God as scripture becomes available and has impact
  • celebrate as the kingdom expands as a result of your involvement

There are lots of other ideas out there. The important thing is that we need to realise that changes in the demographics of the Church, new technologies and the ease of travel mean that we have many more opportunities to obey Christ’s commands to make disciples than were available to previous generations.

We have to be involved in mission work; but that may well not involve missionaries!

Books I Have Read: Recovering the Full Mission of God

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I came across a new (for me) acronym today: “tldr” which means “too long, didn’t read”. This is not going to be a long post and you should read it, but if you can only cope with highlights; this is a brilliant book and you should buy it.

I have already given severe quotes from Recovering the Full Mission of God by Dean Flemming, so if you are a regular reader of Kouyanet, you have had an insight it. Subtitled A Biblical Perspective on Being, Doing and Telling this book looks again at the perennial thorny question of the relationship between proclamation and action in Christian mission.

Flemming takes us on a tour through Scripture; the first two chapters look briefly at the Old Testament, these are followed with overviews of each of the Gospels, Acts, the Pauline letters, 1 Peter and Revelation. This builds up into a very clear picture of mission through Scripture; a picture in which proclamation and social action simply can’t be separated. The overall argument of the book is caught in a longish quote from the last chapter:

If this pilgrimage through the Bible teaches us anything, it is that being, doing and telling related seamlessly in the mission of God’s people. Granted, to make the point clear, I have amplified distinctions between these various aspects of the church’s mission. But in the end we cannot separate them, because Scripture doesn’t. Consistently, the biblical texts introduce us to a word-and-deed witness. And both proclamation and practice are always anchored in who we are.

This does not mean, however that speaking, practicing and embodying the gospel always function in equal balance. At times, due to the needs of the context, one takes a leading, and another a supporting role. For example, 1 Peter spotlights the church’s identity as a distinctive and holy people. Acts especially brings out the church’s witness to the word to all kinds of people. And Mark’s Gospel gives particular weight to Jesus’ actions as an expression of his kingdom mission. yet none of the special emphases ignores the whole picture of mission.

The conclusions that Flemming reaches are not particularly new or original; anyone who has looked seriously at the Bible’s teaching on mission will be familiar with them. The great advantage of this book is not its novelty, but the thorough way in which it deals with one simple, but controversial, question.

If you teach, write about or promote Christian mission then this book should be on your shelves and it should be well thumbed.

More on the Mission of God

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On more than one occasion, I’ve questions whether the terms ‘missiology‘ or ‘mission of God‘ (even when written in Latin a missio Dei) are actually very useful terms. They are used in so many different ways that you are never quite sure what people mean by them.

In a recent article, Ed Stetzer highlights the evolution of the term ‘Misison of God’ and notes why some Evangelicals are reluctant to use it. This quote gets to the heart of the issue:

Johannes Hoekendijk and others, sought to define themissio dei as larger than the church. Their concern was that the mission of God was more than church extension–and they were partially right.

Hoekendijk challenged the member bodies in the World Council of Churches to abandon both the traditional form of church and the traditional approach to missions. He held that the congregations should abandon their buildings and institutions and become bands of roving ministers, believing that the time for evangelistic mission work had passed. This was called participating in the missio dei.

Because of this history, and much of the social justice emphasis (or “social gospel” depending on your view), evangelicals have historically shied away from missio deitheology. For example, there is this telling description in the Evangelical Dictionary of Missions under the heading, “Missio Dei”:

Hoekendijk challenged missionaries to identify and integrate with the suffering masses, seeking to realize God’s shalom on earth. As this occurred in the 1960′s and 70′s, the World Council’s ministry focused almost entirely on social, economic, and political “liberation.” Positively, the WCC reminded evangelicals that Jesus came feeding and healing as well as teaching and preaching. Evangelicals, especially the neo-evangelicals, admitted they had presented a “one-sided Gospel,” as Ron Sider put it. Unfortunately, the leaders in the World Council of Churches also advocated a “one-sided Gospel,” one that neglected humanity’s need for reconciliation with God.

However, you really need to read all of Ed’s article (and the associated links) if you want to get a full picture of what he is saying.

If you want some further background to the term missio Dei, you could do worse than read my chapter in James Butare’s book International Development in Kingdom perspective. It’s now available as a pdf here.