The latest issue of Lausanne Global Analysis, from The Lausanne Movement, is available online from here, including pdfs of individual articles as below.
The summaries are taken from the Issue Overview by Loun Ling Lee.
Steve Moon
Innovative Integration and Collaboration on the Mission Field: A Holistic Intercultural Approach
Steve Moon reflects on the approaches and processes to evaluate what ‘new and creative ways, expressed through new cultural and technological tools’, would be appropriate, realistic, and faithful to the Word of God. Such evaluation requires much practical wisdom gained through contextualization, integration, and ‘collaboration with diverse people across disciplines, sectors, generations, and backgrounds’. This spirit of innovative integration applies also to mission financing. He recommends ‘integrating faith missions approaches and missional business approaches’ as ‘a realistic solution in many contexts’.
First Rievan
Beyond Self-Support Fundraising for Missions: Thinking, Structures, and Practices for Majority World Missionaries
Kirst Rievan addresses the question, ‘Are there ways to make international missions more sustainable and less dependent on the West?’ Although ‘the financial systems of most mission organisations are now more diverse than at their foundation’, their basic principle is still that ‘individual workers are responsible for raising their own support’. This poses great challenges especially for mission workers from the Majority World. The author revisits ‘the general models for financing international mission workers: 1) self support, 2) organisational support, and 3) a hybrid. Each has variations, strengths, and weaknesses’. He recommends changes in ‘thinking, structures, and practices’ and concludes that ‘multiple models’ are the way forward for financial sustainability for international mission organisations.
John Cheong
Islamic Economics for Christian Ministry and Mission: What We Can Learn from Zakat, Waqf, and Islamic Banking
John Cheong illustrates how we can ‘integrate the sociocultural and religious dimensions of economics into missiology’, particularly in Muslim contexts, by ‘examining three aspects of the Islamic economy: zakat (almsgiving/tithing), waqf (endowments/trusts), and Islamic banking (interest-free financing)’ and comparing them with Christian ‘life and witness in relation to the socioeconomic dimensions of life’. He hopes by doing so, we will ‘recover a more holistic gospel that is truly good news to the poor’.
Al Tizon
The Legacy of Ronald J. Sider: Five Elements Shaping Transformational Mission Today
According to Tizon, Sider’s one great impact on global mission is in catalyzing social transformation. His motivation for that ‘came not from humanist altruism, but ultimately from authentic, Christian discipleship – a deep desire to follow Jesus faithfully and radically in the world’. Since its first edition in 1977 to its sixth edition today, Sider’s book Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger has challenged ‘the church to repent and to begin living out the economics of the kingdom’, including practising an ‘economically conscious mission’. His unwavering commitment to ‘a simple lifestyle’ and nonviolence as well as his urging of Christians ‘to enter the public square with the politics of Jesus’ have significantly influenced the ‘contour of mission’ and helped ‘build the kind of society that reflects God’s peace, justice, and righteousness’.
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