Introducing Christian Mission Today: Scripture, History, and Issues

449 Pages·2014·3.79 MB·English

by  Michael W. Goheen

Introducing
Christian
Mission Today
Scripture, History and Issues
MICHAEL W. GOHEEN
InterVarsity Press
P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426
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©2014 by Michael W. Goheen
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from
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All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are from the THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL
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worldwide.
While all stories in this book are true, some names and identifying information in this book have been changed to
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ISBN 978-0-8308-9543-4 (digital)
ISBN 978-0-8308-4047-2 (print)
To Lesslie Newbigin, George Vandervelde and Jan Jongeneel

Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Introduction: A Paradigm Shift in Mission Studies Today . . . . . . . . 15
Changing World Church 17
Changing Global Realities 20
A New Understanding of Mission 25
The Landscape of Mission Studies Today 27
PART ONE: Biblical and Theological Reflection on Mission
1 . Scripture as a Narrative Record of God’s Mission . . . . 35
The Bible and Mission in a New Era 36
God’s Mission to Restore the Whole World 38
God Chooses Israel to Bring Salvation to the Whole World 39
God Sends Jesus to Gather and Restore Israel to Its Mission 49
The Church’s Mission to the Ends of the Earth 61
God’s Mission Continues Beyond Acts 69
2 . Theology of Mission and Missional Theology . . . . . . . 73
Theological Reflection on Mission 73
Missional Reflection on Theology 86
Conclusion 111
PART TWO: Historical and Contemporary
Reflection on Mission
3 . Historical Paradigms of Mission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
What Story Do We Want to Tell? 118
Early Church Paradigm 122
Christendom Paradigm 128
The Enlightenment Paradigm 142
4 . An Emerging Ecumenical Paradigm of Mission . . . . . . . 152
Responses to the Modern Missionary Movement: Toward
a New Paradigm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Mission Traditions Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
5. A Survey of the Global Church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Mission and Global Christianity? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Some Initial Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
The Global Shift to the South . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Sub-Saharan Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Latin America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
The Middle East and North Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
The Pacific . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Eastern Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
The West . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
PART THREE: Current Issues in Mission Today
6. Holistic Mission: Witness in Life, Word and Deed . . . . . 227
Our Legacy: A Split Between Word and Deed . . . . . . . . . 228
Authentic Evangelism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
Mercy and Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Calling of Believers in Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
7. Faithful Contextualization: Church, Gospel
and Culture(s) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
The Urgency of the Issue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
The Gospel and Cultures: Ethnocentrism and Relativism . . . 268
The Gospel and Culture: Syncretism and Irrelevance . . . . . 269
A Brief History of Contextualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
Contextualization Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
Models of Contextualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
Macrocontextual Differences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
Faithful Contextualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
8. Toward a Missiology of Western Culture . . . . . . . . . 296
An Urgent Task . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
Missionary Encounter with Culture: The Faithful
Posture of the Church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
The Theological Task: Liberating the Gospel . . . . . . . . . . 301
The Ecclesiological Task: Understanding Our
Missional Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
The Cultural Task: A Missionary Analysis of
Western Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
9 . A Missionary Encounter with World Religions . . . . . . 331
An Urgent Issue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
The Proper Posture Amidst Religious Pluralism—
A Missionary Encounter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
A Challenge to Pluralism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
A Brief Sketch of a Theology of Religions . . . . . . . . . . . . 344
A Missionary Approach and Subversive Fulfillment . . . . . . 355
The Church’s Mission in the Context of Religious Pluralism . 362
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368
10 . Urban Mission: The New Frontier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370
Our Urban Future—and Present . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
The Importance of Cities for Mission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
An Agenda for Urban Mission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
A Theology of Mission for the City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390
Elements of Faithful Missional Congregations . . . . . . . . . 397
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
11 . Missions: A Witness to the Gospel Where There Is None . . 401
Mission, Missions and Cross-Cultural Partnership . . . . . . 402
Our Legacy: Reduction and Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
A Return to Scripture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
World Need . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412
Problems Hindering a Fresh Missions Initiative . . . . . . . . 419
Structures of Missions—Who Will Do the Job? . . . . . . . . . 422
New Initiatives Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434
Sidebar Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436
Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439
Name Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441
Scripture Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443
Praise for Introducing Christian Mission Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445
About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
More Titles from InterVarsity Press . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448