Mission Studies

This article demonstrates historically and statistically that conversionary Protestants (CPs) heavily influenced the rise and spread of stable democracy around the world. It argues that CPs were a crucial catalyst initiating the development and spread of religious liberty, mass education, mass printing, newspapers, voluntary organizations, and colonial reforms, thereby creating the conditions that made stable democracy more likely. Statistically, the historic prevalence of Protestant missionaries explains about half the variation in democracy in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania and removes the impact of most variables that dominate current statistical research about democracy. The association between Protestant missions and democracy is consistent in different continents and subsamples, and it is robust to more than 50 controls and to instrumental variable analyses.

Regnum Studies in Mission are born from the lived experience o f Christians and Christian communities in mission, especially but not solely in the fast growing churches among the poor o f the world. These churches have more to tell than stories o f growth. They are making significant impacts on their cultures in the cause o f Christ. They are producing 'cultural products' which express the reality o f Christian faith, hope and love in their societies.

This article discusses the mission theology and practice of Martin Luther. The author demonstrates that the popular view which claims that the German Reformer was neither interested in the mission of the church nor made any noteworthy contribution to mission theology lacks substance. Luther’s critics seem to overlook the fact that Wittenberg, in which the Reformer lived, studied and taught, served as a hub of a huge missionary enterprise. Hundreds of preachers went out from this centre of the Reformation to spread the gospel all over Europe. Leading Scandinavian theologians, such as Olaus Petri and Hans Tausen, had all studied under Luther in Wittenberg and had been deeply influenced by him before they began their reform work in their home countries. Furthermore, with his rediscovery of the gospel of justification by faith alone, his emphasis on the personal character of faith in Christ, his radical reinterpretation of the priesthood, his recognition of God’s authorship of mission, his reminder that the witness to the gospel takes place in the midst of a spiritual battle, and his insistence that the Bible has to be available in common languages, Martin Luther laid down important principles for the mission work of the church which are still valid today.

Entire mission in Old Testament flows as obedient response to and participation in the prior mission of God-just as all our effort to represent Him through Israel’s individual lifestyle. God separate them from world as they know gentile as well, God appointed them to become role model and being His people (as he promised Abraham)

How have Anabaptists and Mennonites followed the Spirit in mission? How might we follow the Holy Spirit in mission? Articles in this issue address these question through examination of Anabaptism and the Pentecostal-Charismatic movement; early charismatic expressions among Russian Mennonite Brethren; Spirit-empowered witness and the church in South Africa; Anabaptist inspiration for the church in postmodern Britain; and the story of the Meserete Kristos Church in Ethiopia. The issue also features poetry and book reviews.

This is a 24-page paper presented to a small study group of the National Council of Churches Faith and Order Commission (USA) gathering in Puerto Rico in 2012.  The study group was called "Contextual Theology from the Margins," and this paper was written in order to provide other members of the group a survey of the work that has been done previously as we discerned together what new areas of study we might undertake. Unfortunately, this group was not able to continue its work due to radical restructuring of the National Council of Churches a few months later.  It is perhaps best described as a bibliographical essay - but far from an exhaustive one - with a focus on World Council of Churches and evangelical contributions in contextual theology. I am posting it here with the hope that it's survey of the field may be useful to ecumenists, missiologists, and others trying to get their bearings on an expansive field of study.

(From the introduction by the editors:) Volker Rabens considers how Paul approached his mission, to make Christ known, in the urban settings of the first-century Roman Empire, analyzing how Paul chose the cities he visited and how he acted once he arrived in a city. Rabens argues that Paul was no mere pragmatist, but that his highly flexible practice and missiological principles were closely interlocked.
- Includes discussion of scholars such as Tom Wright, Rodney Stark, Thomas Robinson, Robert Sack, Ksenija Magda, Rainer Riesner -

This paper will look at some of the strengths and weaknesses of church planting models and will assess several different popular church planting models that have been used in many different contexts. Also, emphasis will be placed on what each model looks like, how they function, how they multiply, and how they have been used in various international contexts.

John Wesley (1703-1791) was an effective practitioner of mission, but the theological sophistication of his missiology has never been fully appreciated. This article shows the depth and sophistication of Wesley’s doctrinal and missiological thinking, noting his use of Irenaeus and affinity with the Celtic tradition, drawing implications for church, discipleship, and mission today.

While working among the Jews in the nineteenth century, Protestant missionaries from Europe and the United States encountered with the Sabbateans/ Dönmes, the followers of Sabbatai Sevi, and the missionaries wanted to extend their activities to this community as well. In this article, the American missionary activities among the Ottoman Sabbateans are traced by focusing on letters, memoirs and reports of the missionaries who worked in the AB-CFM (American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions) station in Salonica. The ABCFM mission to the Jews discontinued in 1856. According to the available reports, none of the Sabbatians in the Ottoman Empire converted to Christianity.

The purpose and aim of this book is to develop an appropriate leadership model for missional churches. This implies a positioning of this book within the broader theology of mission and a consensus on the theology of the Missio Dei, originating at the 1952 conference of the International Missionary Council in Willingen, Germany. In this approach to the theology of mission, mission is understood as the work of the Trinitarian God, and the church is privileged to participate in God’s mission. It is against this background that the growing consensus on missional ecclesiology challenges leadership models developed for a different time and a different kind of church (with less or no emphasis on the missional character of the church). The aim is to reflect theologically on the role of leadership in the missional church. What kind of ideas about power, authority and leadership are appropriate for a missional church? New missional challenges demand new ideas about missional leadership.  Church organisation and leadership reflects a theological position – there is a strong relation between ecclesiology and church organisation. The nature of the church provides the framework to understand the character of the church. What the church is determines what the church does. The church organises what it does and agrees on rules that regulate ministries and organisation. Issues such as the way the church organises and governs what it does, and thus church leadership, need to be answered against this background and understanding. Church polity and organisation, as well as leadership, must reflect the identity, calling, life and order of the church.  This book, therefore, addresses life in the Trinity, participation in the Missio Dei and contours of the missional church as the point of entry to develop leadership insights. It contributes towards the development of an appropriate model of leadership for missional churches, because although recent developments in the theology of mission comprehensively addressed the area of missional ecclesiology, there is a gap in the development of a leadership model based on the concept of authority in the missional church.

While the author cannot speak for churches of Christ, common among them are unique ways of understanding holy scripture, believed to have been written by apostles and prophets of the Lord before the destruction of Jerusalem (70 A.D.) and circulated among the early Christian communities (E.g. A letter called First Clement in about 95 A.D., refers to at least ten New Testament books), then collected as a volume by the self-identified Christian community of the second century A.D. or earlier, e.g. the list of Marcion (140 A.D.).

John Wesley's theology was a theology of mission. This becomes clear when we examine his theological orientation and four key Wesleyan themes: The image of God, prevenient (preceding) grace, salvation as healing, and the perfecting of Christian character (sanctification). In conjunction, these themes show how Wesley’s missiology was at heart holistic, integrating physical, social, economic, and spiritual dimensions and thus providing timely resources for today.

This article was published in full in Paul de Neui (ed.). Developing Indigenous Leaders: Lessons in Mission from Buddhist Asia (Pasadena: William Carey Library 2014), 83-110. It has 2 appendices: "Effective Disciple-making Made Simple" and "Biblical Basis of Jesus Movements."

You may purchase a printed journal on Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/EMQ-January-March-2019-Evangelical-Quarterly/dp/1793180504/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=Evangelical+missions+quarterly&qid=1555903039&s=gateway&sr=8-4).

In nuce, this article explores the last three days of John Allen Chau's life and death in attempting to evangelize the Sentinelese tribe on North Sentinel island, Andaman archipelago, Bay of Bengal, India. On Nov. 17, 2018, Chau was, apparently, murdered by the Sentinelese—one of the most isolated, unreached, and unengaged people groups (UUPG) remaining on earth. This essay identifies the three main opinions toward Chau's missionary efforts and death, evaluates these opinions by surveying salient excerpts from Chau's recently released journal, and asks the question: Did Chau's missionary efforts and death honor Christ?

Chau's story has sparked a firestorm of debate within and without the church, and, as a result, numerous questions surrounding missions and martyrdom have surfaced. This essay seeks to introduce readers to some of these questions, and to initiate the conversation with the aim of paving the way forward for future, more detailed discussions.

The trope in which conversion – especially of non-Western people to Christianity – is envisioned as a type of conquest is one many scholars have found compelling. This article examines the implicit moral psychology behind the idea that conversion is a ‘colonization of consciousness’, which it identifies as rooted in a secular liberal model of the self and of religion. The appeal of the conversion-as-conquest trope lies in its focus on power, but by building secular liberal assumptions into its theoretical optic it remains ironically blind to some of the most pervasive ways power operates today – namely, through the production of secular truths about religion, and by authorizing ‘autonomous’ secular subjectivities as normative. Drawing on examples from the author’s research on Pentecostal conversion in Indian slums, and on a national context where violent anti-conversion activism is prevalent, the article argues that while both conversion and opposition to it entail power, this power is not well understood on the model of mental colonization, or ‘resistance’ by uncolonized subjectivities.

In this article, I examine the way in which Franz Delitzsch envisioned his masterpiece translation of the New Testament into Hebrew, first published in 1877. I focus on the aims Delitzsch attributed to his translation and on the way in which the translation project was embedded in the wider views held by Delitzsch as a Hebraist and a theologian. Furthermore, I show how Delitzsch’s conception of his endeavor structured the translation work itself.

The Bible was almost entirely composed by Jewish writers. An examination of its Jewish or Hebraic roots provides considerable fresh insight into the Christian faith and worldview—particularly in respect of covenant, community and creation.

Covenant forms the dominant paradigm governing the biblical worldview. The new covenant inaugurated by the Messiah likewise forms the dominant paradigm governing the New Testament. Each biblical covenant is associated with a community. A “covenant community” who receive a vocation commensurate with the relationship into which they have been brought.

The biblical view of creation ultimately anticipates its global renewal, whereupon heaven is united in harmony with earth, God dwelling amidst his people. En-route to this finality, the biblical worldview incorporates the bondage of creation to the effects of sin and its partners: death, disease and decay. Amidst this corrupted creation, the vocation of the covenant community is to be an incarnate Messenger of Hope. Both recipient and giver of New Life; a sign, symbol and harbinger of creation‟s ultimate, glorious liberation from bondage.

The thesis seeks to express the message of Scripture according to Scripture’s own priorities. It uses biblical rather than philosophical terminology, presenting the Bibles message within the framework of a primarily Hebraic worldview. To aid recognition of vital theological threads woven throughout the biblical narratives, the thesis develops a graphical “panorama” of the biblical narrative.

Significance and Value of Findings

Traditional, post-Enlightenment theologies—i.e. reformed, dogmatic, systematic, critical, non-contextual etc.—having undergirded Western Christendom during the past two centuries, are presently creaking under the strain of post-modern, post-colonial critiques and worldviews. In order for Christian faith and community to flourish within this hostile cultural climate, the challenge of missiological renewal and reformation needs to be embraced, so that Christian theology, missional praxis and culture to flourish in new ways.

Insight into the Jewish roots of Scripture and, in particular, the biblical covenants and the vocational communities of both Israel and the Church, proffers a significant contribution towards such a renewal, potentially rendering a widely appealing paradigm: centering upon God‟s commitment to creation, in partnership with his covenant community; incorporating the combating of evil through pursuit of this-worldly peace, justice and dignity for human beings; lived out amidst the biblical backdrop of an ultimate Judgement and Regeneration.

Within an increasingly agnostic West, a covenant, creation and community centred worldview offers fresh insight and a significant contrast to the individualistic drift of modern, protestant-evangelical culture and praxis, with its dualistic perspective of earth and heaven and concomitant focus upon personal salvation and eternal heavenly “escape‟ from earth‟s “mortal coil.‟

Within the increasingly Christian South—where community-centred readings of Scripture are normative and worldviews are more free of anti-biblical, secular, atheistic and materialistic philosophical presuppositions—burgeoning, missional Christian communities can relate readily to a biblical theology of covenant, creation and community as a vital, educational, theological introduction to the Bible.
Finally, the recognition and incorporation of the Jewish roots of the Christian faith builds a small, but potentially significant, cultural bridge with the Jewish people.

Conclusion

By aiming at a biblical theology based upon an Hebraic worldview centred upon creation, covenant and community, this Thesis seeks to provide an educational resource inviting people to enter into and comprehend the worldview, culture and theology of the Bible, rather than the worldview, culture and theology of the West.

Drawing on extensive research on the Christian understanding of the Spirit in both Asian and Western contexts, Kirsteen Kim explains how different cosmologies have shaped Christian pneumatology. The contrast between belief in one universal Spirit and many spirits is then related to the experiences of modernity and post-modernity, contemporary interest in 'spirituality'and the theological reflection and mission practice of both charismatic and liberation theology.

God's Missional Nature The important term Missio Dei (Mission of God) needs a biblical foundation. The sending of God by God is a foundational motive in the New Testament. Even at the very beginning of salvation history, shortly after creation, God became the first missionary. In Jesus, God is the missionary par excellence, and in the Holy Spirit, God is the most successful missionary. Mission is part of the nature of God, and therefore mission can only be described holistically and in a manner that transforms human mission into the image of God's mission.

Several theses and dissertations have been written about the religious, political and cultural effects of the American missionary enterprise in the Middle East. This study lists the theses and dissertations which examine the missionary activities of the several American denominations and organizations including Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Pentecostals, Mormons, Quakers and Methodists in the Middle East throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

This doctoral dissertation is a historiographical examination of the missionary encounter in Ottoman Syria (modern Syria and Lebanon) during the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Nahda, or Arab renaissance. It begins in 1870, when the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions transferred its Syria Mission to the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. It ends in 1915 with the escalating effects of World War I in the Ottoman Arab provinces. Building upon Middle East mission historiographies, studies in world Christianity, and postcolonial critiques of missions, this study approaches the story of Syrian Protestantism as an enmeshed history in which Syrian and American lives became inextricably entwined. Moving beyond the traditional narrative, which presents American missionary men as the primary actors, this research points to the complex relationship of Syrians with American, British, and other missionaries in Ottoman Syria. It uses rare Arabic publications from the late Ottoman period and archival sources from the US, UK, and Lebanon to underline the agency of Syrian Protestant women and men who built the Syrian Evangelical Church and contributed to the socio-cultural currents of the Nahda alongside other Syrian Christians and Muslims.
This dissertation demonstrates that Syrian Protestants challenged missionary authority in subtle and overt ways, while at the same time employing the resources of mission schools and the American Mission Press in Beirut to engage in the Arabic production of the Nahda. It argues that Syrian Protestant women played a significant, yet largely unrecognized, role in church and society as journalists, novelists, public speakers, and evangelistic preachers. Chapter 1 compares Syrian Protestant conversion narratives to missionary accounts of evangelical conversion. Chapter 2 investigates the American-Syrian Protestant relationship in light of a major schism within the Beirut Protestant community in the 1890s. Chapters 3 and 4 use Arabic books, periodicals, and pamphlets published at the American Mission Press to demonstrate the depth of Syrian Protestant participation in the cultural and religious discussions of the Nahda. Chapter 5 pieces together the stories of Syrian Biblewomen who worked as evangelists for American missionaries and for the female-led British Syrian Mission.

Effective gospel mission requires both faithful exegesis of Scripture coupled with unbiased exegesis of the culture and its products. Dr. Gailyn Van Rheenen's missional helix provides a framework to help Christians do both so their ministry practices yield true spiritual formation.

[Abstract] The church is missionary by nature because it originates in the missio trinitatis Dei. This missionary nature (broadly understood) has two important theological and practical implications. First, the author clarifies the relation of the church's missionary nature to its various core functions so that the church is not reduced to its missionary function. Second, he examines the interrelation between missionary faithfulness and ecclesial Christian existence, drawing on the Johannine and Pauline corpora, explaining that the church (and the Christian) is vivified in missional obedience and, conversely, can lose its ecclesial identity by decisively abandoning its missionary vocation.

In this article Joerg Rieger writes about the historical connection between colonialism and mission, and the connection between neocolonialism and mission in the present situation of globalization. Thinking on mission today, he argues, does not always see the subtle connection between mission and neocolonialism, even though it has recognized and renounced the former colonialism. While mission as "outreach" and "relationship" have some positive aspects, they can easily be tainted with neocolonial attitudes. In contrast, Rieger advocates an understanding of mission as "inreach," by which one approaches the other as truly other, and opens oneself to be changed in the encounter. A dialogical approach to mission -indeed a "multilogical" approach is "no longer optional but essential to the future of both mission and theology." KEYWORDS Neocolonialism, Postcolonialism, Mission Theology "To missionize is to colonize and to colonize is to missionize." 1 Ever since the conquest of the Americas, Christian mission and colonialism have been inextricably related. And while the forms of both colonialism and mission have changed over the centuries, they have continued their alliance.

This article argues that an understanding of the development of a missional ecclesiology requires we recognize three closely connected and significant matters in 20th-century mission history: first, the increasing appreciation of the interconnection of church and mission evinced at major ecumenical conferences in the mid-20th century; second, the contributions of influential missiologist Lesslie Newbigin and his theological integration of mission and church; and third, the breakthrough of the phrase “missional church” with the 1998 publication of the book Missional Church. This article traces this three-part development through both historical and theological analyses.

For better or for worse, Christians look back longingly at the early church and from it strive to establish principles for contemporary Christian living. This is also true of evangelism. What was the nature of evangelism in those early years of the church's existence? What can we learn from how the first Christians evangelized? How can their evangelistic efforts shape our efforts today? There are many who have undertaken the task of exploring evangelism in the early church.٦ This essay, however, focuses specifically on the dual nature of these evangelistic efforts. The contention is that evangelism in the first three centuries was, for the most part, able to balance between adaptability and conservation.2 These characteristics are often respectively associated with malleability and rigidity, variety and homogeneity, as well as "ad-hocracy" and ٤٤bureaucracy,''3 unplanned spontaneity and strategic structure.4 This contention is relevant for the church today because of its implications for addressing the fabricated, but all too common, dichotomy between spreading the gospel and preserving the gospel. To explore this thesis, we will briefly survey three aspects of evangelism in the early church: (1) The message which was communicated2) ‫)؛‬ the missionaries who carried the message‫؛‬ and (3) the methodology used by early church evangelists. Much of our attention will focus on the biblical records, but we will also draw on extra-biblical sources during the first three centuries of the church's existence^ while also taking into account key secondaty sources considered reliable for this period of histoty.