The text of the 2011 G.R. Beasley-Murray Lecture, delivered by Brian Stanley (Professor of World Christianity at the University of Edinburgh) at the 2011 Baptist Assembly in Blackpool, is available here.
Its title is ‘Renewing a Vision for Mission among British Baptists: Historical Perspectives and Theological Reflections’.
Stanley does a nice job, in my opinion, of weaving together historical discussion with theological reflection around the topic of mission, under three main points:
• Rediscovering the missionary purpose of God
• Restoring the centrality of missionary discipleship
• Re-envisioning the shape of missionary fellowship
Here are some highlights:
‘[B]y “renewing a vision for mission” I mean, not simply expanding and deepening our commitment to evangelism within Britain, but, more fundamentally, bringing into the very centre of our church life a passionate absorption with the theme of God’s missionary purposes for the world’ (1-2).
‘The mission of God is an overflowing of the incessant dance of selfgiving in relationship... which characterizes the inner life of the triune God, into the community of the people of God, and from them into the world’ (6).
‘The missionary responsibility of the church is to make not converts, but disciples whose communal life together will be a visible embodiment of “all that I have commanded you” – in other words, the mind of Christ and the values of his kingdom. Hence the church as a missionary community is called to be what Lesslie Newbigin loved to refer to as “the hermeneutic of the gospel”, an icon or exemplification of what the gospel of the kingdom is all about’ (9).
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