Lausanne Global Analysis 12, 2 (March 2023)

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.

Dave Deuel

Taking Church to People with Disabilities: A New Initiative for the Lausanne Disability Concerns Network

To complement traditional mission, vocational disability professionals can play a unique role at home, at work, and in our neighborhood, bringing the love of Christ and spiritual care to people where they are and equipping them for ministry. ‘People with disabilities whom they serve through care can grow spiritually while they receive encouragement to find their own giftedness and calling.’

Xiaoli Yang

The Transformative Power of Deep Listening: (Re)Imagining in Global Mission

In order to bring healing and transformation through incarnational mission, we need ‘to cultivate the art of listening and (re)imagining’ through three key aspects: ‘the verbal, the body, and the silence’. Xiaoli Yang uses Chinese etymology and other cultural traditions to illustrate what it means to develop ‘a holistic embodiment of listening’. As exemplified by Christ’s incarnation, ‘indigenous and contextual mission must emerge out of a deep sense of listening and imagining in the local soil, both among ourselves and with those we serve cross-culturally.’

Paul Sungro Lee

Utilising Indigenous Cultural Traits for Cross-Cultural Missions: Missiological Applications

As ‘missionaries from the Majority World increasingly join the global workforce’… it is more advantageous for them ’to connect intimately with those of similar backgrounds in other Majority World nations where they are sent to minister’. They will be able to use their common ‘indigenous cultural attributes’ in their mission strategies.

Emmanuel Oumarou

Rethinking Contextualization in Cameroon: The Context-Emergence Approach for Cultural Understanding of the Gospel

Oumarou investigates the state of contextualization in Cameroon, adopting an approach he describes as the context-emergence approach. ‘This approach highlights the incarnational emergence of the expressions, forms, and practices of Christianity from inside a context’, in contrast to the context-insertion approach, which ‘allows the adaptation of foreign Christian thoughts and practices from the culture of a missionary in a host culture’.

Evangelical Review of Theology 46, 1 (February 2022)

The latest Evangelical Review of Theology, published by The World Evangelical Alliance, is now online and available in its entirety as a pdf here.

Johannes Reimer

The Erosion of Church Growth through Patriarchal Leadership in Russia

Authoritarian patriarchal leadership has spawned abuse, scandal and controversy caused tragedies in churches and Christian ministries all over the world. This article highlights the pervasive problem of autocratic leadership among Russian evangelicals – explaining the historical reasons for the development of this pattern, analysing its components and urging a healthier way forward.

Elmer John Thiessen

In Pursuit of Intellectual Virtue

This article rigorously and insightfully examines three intellectual virtues – love of knowledge and truth, intellectual humility, and open-mindedness – that are essential to Christian maturity and powerful in overcoming strife, contention and polarization.

Richard L. Smith

Such a Heart as This: The Intellectual Implications of Deuteronomy 5:29

Contrary to the frequent Christian tendency to devalue intellectual pursuits, Richard L. Smith finds an emphasis on loving God with the mind throughout the Old Testament. This excerpt from his new book shows how God communicates this message through Deuteronomy.

Dennis P. Petri and Ronald R. Boyd-MacMillan

What Persecution To Endure, To Resist, or To Flee?

How to respond to persecution is a complex decision involving both principled and strategic considerations. In this article, two of the world’s leading experts on religious persecution draw on both Scripture and their considerable experience to discuss the options comprehensively.

Francis Jr. S. Samdao

On the Idea of Contextualization: Cultural Sensitivity and Catholic Sensibility

How do we present the Christian faith so as to be sensitive and accommodating to local cultures while not obscuring the non-negotiable truths of the gospel? This article, authored in an Asian context but with worldwide relevance, offers guidance on fulfilling both of those imperatives.

Israel Oluwole Olofinjana

Jesus’ Discipleship Model of Suffering and Sacrifice: Discipleship and Racial Justice

How to pursue racial justice has been a contentious issue in many places, particularly because of the allegedly radical views of some pro-justice organizations. This article takes a different approach, depicting racial justice as an implication of whole-life discipleship and proposing practical actions for Christians.

David A. Clark

Evangelical Identity Formation in Post-colonial Britain

Modern cultural changes have divided evangelicals in many parts of the world, with some urging progressive agendas and other resisting what they consider radical ideas. Using racial justice issues as an example, this article warns against both extremes and charts a course of sensitivity toward the aggrieved as part of building a more unified church.

Leah Farish

The ‘Sins of Equals’ and Racial Justice

Evangelicals believe that Scripture and the great confessions of faith remain relevant to our modern lives. This short essay demonstrates that relevance by applying a little- known passage from the Westminster Larger Catechism of 1648 to race relations.

Book Reviews

Themelios 44, 2 (August 2019)

The latest Themelios is online here (and available here as a single pdf), containing the below articles.

Editorial

Brian J. Tabb

Fulfill Your Ministry

Strange Times

Daniel Strange

Never Say ‘the Phones Are Quiet’

Jason DeRouchie

The Mystery Revealed: A Biblical case for Christ-Centered Old Testament Interpretation

This study provides a biblical-theological foundation for a Christ-centered hermeneutic. It overviews both Old and New Testament texts that identify how the primary audience that would receive blessing and not condemnation from OT instruction would be Christians enjoying the benefits of Christ’s eschatological, redemptive work. Jesus himself provides both the light for enabling us to see and savor what is in the OT and the necessary lens that influences and guides our reading by filling out the meaning – at times by supplying unknown interpretation and other times by clarifying, expanding, and deepening the human authors’ implications. For us to grasp the full meaning of the OT’s history, laws, poems, and prophecies, we must read them through the light and lens of Christ.

Peter R. Schemm Jr. and Andreas J. Köstenberger

The Gospel as Interpretive Key to 1 Corinthians 10:31-11:16: On Christian Worship, Head Coverings, and the Trinity

God’s good design for man and woman is to be practiced in all of life, especially in the worship of the church. Apparently, the behavior of some women in the Corinthian church was dishonoring both to God and their husbands. Whatever the exact nature of the problem, it had now become a gospel matter in public worship. Therefore, Paul seeks to apply the gospel – especially the idea of giving glory and honor to God, as Christ did – directly to the issue at hand. The purpose of the article is to show how the gospel itself is the interpretive key to this particular section of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (10:31–11:16).

Mark L. Strauss

A Review of the Christian Standard Bible

The Christian Standard Bible (CSB) is a 2017 revision and replacement of the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB), first published in 2004. The Translation Oversight Committee was co-chaired by Thomas Schreiner and David Allen. The CSB follows the same basic translation philosophy as the HCSB, a mediating approach between formal and functional equivalence, similar to versions like the NIV, the NET Bible and the CEB. The CSB removes a number of the HCSB’s idiosyncracies, such as the use of “Yahweh” for the tetragrammaton (YHWH). Most significantly, the CSB departs from its predecessor by positively embracing “gender-accurate” language, for example, by translating the Greek ἀδελφοί as “brothers and sisters” when the referent includes both men and women. In general, the CSB is a significant improvement over the HCSB in terms to both accuracy and style.

Coleman M. Ford

“Striving for Glory with God”: Humility as the Good Life in Basil of Caesarea’s Homily 20

Basil of Caesarea (c. AD 330–379) presents humility as the essence of the good life in his Homily 20. Humility was the chief virtue based on Christ’s own humility. Thus, true happiness was only possible through a life of humility. In this essay, I first assess the biblical and theological rationale for humility according to Basil in contrast with prior Greek and Roman notions of humility. Next, I analyze how Basil depicts humility in terms of “glory” in his Homily 20. The bestowal of glory is a gift of God and can only be achieved through a life of humble imitation of Christ. This notion gives Basil’s hearers the proper perspective to understand how the good life is lived in Christian perspective. I conclude with some practical implications for understanding Basil’s conception of humility as the good life.

C.J. Moore

Can We Hasten the Parousia?An Examination of Matt 24:14 and Its Implications for Missional Practice

Among the many possible motivations for mission participation, the eschatological motivation for missions has recently grown in prevalence. Many missionaries speak of their work as “hastening” or “causing” the Parousia. Because of a desire to see Christ come back “sooner,” the eschatological motivation has often led to missional malpractice, due to a lack of nuance and humility in biblical exegesis. Particularly, the eschatological motivation frequently leads to pragmatic practices that should be avoided, practices that hurt rather than help the Church’s mission. In this article, I examine Matt 24:14, the verse used most often in defense of the eschatological motivation for missions. Along the way, I offer my modified view, one that frees the missionary to simply proclaim the gospel of Christ with a proper recognition of God’s sovereignty over both salvation and the Parousia; and still – in some mysterious way – we can be sure that our gospel proclamation indeed plays some role in the second coming of Christ.

Jackson Wu

The Doctrine of Scripture and Biblical Contextualization: Inspiration, Authority, Inerrancy, and the Canon

This essay explores the relationship between contextualization and an evangelical doctrine of the Bible, with a special emphasis on biblical inspiration, biblical authority, biblical inerrancy, and the biblical canon. Readers will see how the doctrine of Scripture leads to a biblical view of contextualization. How might a robust doctrine of Scripture practically improve our approach to contextualization, both in principle and practice? This article not only affirms the importance of contextualization; it also identifies biblical boundaries for contextualization. In the process, readers consider specific ways to apply one’s doctrine of the Bible.

Zachary Breitenbach

The Insights and Shortcomings of Kantian Ethics: Signposts Signaling the Truthfulness of Christian Ethics 

Immanuel Kant proposed what he considered to be the one true ethical system – a system rooted in pure reason, without recourse to grounding morality in God, that sought to explain universal moral truth. This article argues that Kant’s ethical system, despite grounding morality purely in reason and in light of its own philosophical failures, contains significant insights that serve to illuminate the philosophical attractiveness of key biblical ethical principles. The article highlights three insightful objectives of Kant’s ethical view and compares them to three crucial ethical principles that are taught in the Bible. It then contends that Kant’s view of ethics fails to accomplish his desired objectives and makes the case that a biblical understanding of ethics succeeds. The shortcomings of Kantian ethics serve as a signpost to the truth of Christian ethics.

Drew Hunter

Hebrews and the Typology of Jonathan Edwards 

In appreciation for the recent resurgence of interest in biblical theology and typological interpretation, this article considers Jonathan Edwards’s typological interpretive practices and principles. The article examines what Jonathan Edwards’s interpretive reflections on Hebrews reveal about his typological interpretation of the Old Testament. The article then shows the unique contribution that Edwards’s principled typological method makes to current discussions about typology and the use of the Old Testament in the New Testament.

Book Reviews

Preaching in Context

The below article, written with my friend and colleague Neil Hudson, has been posted on the website of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity as a supplementary piece to the resource on whole-life preaching. It is the fifth in a projected series of six short pieces exploring different aspects of preaching in a way that is alert to the everyday lives of Christians.

Ever had one of those moments when someone thanks you for saying something in a sermon, but which you can’t recall saying, or which you never intended to be taken that way? Or ever preached a sermon that seemed very effective in one church only for it to fall flat in another church?

The difference often comes down to context.

1. Understanding the significance of context

In What Do They Hear? Building Bridges Between Pulpit and Pew (Nashville: Abingdon, 2007), Mark Allan Powell explores why what a congregation ‘hears’ is not always what the preacher ‘said’. One of the reasons is that how we read and receive Scripture is shaped by our social locations.

Describing an experiment conducted with students from different backgrounds, Powell uses the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11-32 as an example. His American students tended to overlook 15:14 (‘there was a severe famine in that whole country’), while most Eastern European students identified the famine as crucial to the story. Students from Tanzania noted 15:16 (‘no one gave him anything’), highlighting the way the people of the distant land exploited the son’s desperation instead of helping him. Powell also demonstrates how, in reading stories in the gospels, clergy tend to identify mostly with Jesus, whereas lay people are more inclined to identify with other characters, such as the disciples or the Pharisees.

Here, if we need it, is a reminder that we don’t preach biblical passages into a vacuum. We preach to particular people from particular backgrounds with particular responsibilities and concerns as they gather at a particular time in a particular place. The people in our congregations live out their identity as disciples of Jesus in particular circumstances.

Scripture itself leads us to expect nothing less. God’s word doesn’t float free in a contextless ‘ether’. It’s rooted in and flows out of particular on-the-ground situations – whether it’s the different types of Psalms arising out of multiple moments in the life of faith, Jeremiah in Jerusalem or Ezekiel in Babylon, Matthew or Mark telling the story of Jesus for early Christians, Paul writing to the Galatians or to the church in Corinth, Peter writing to Christians who, like exiles, are scattered across Northern Turkey, or John writing up his visions from Patmos for those being persecuted for their faith. God’s word addresses God’s people where they are.

So, we preach it as a word which flows out of particular contexts in the life of God’s people to be addressed back into particular contexts in the life of God’s people.

2. Taking account of contexts

This being the case, in our preparation for preaching we engage carefully with the biblical text, but we also reflect (insofar as we are able to do so) on the various contexts in which our people find themselves – the places where they live out their discipleship to Jesus.

Taking context into account allows our preaching to be timely, grounded, and personal. We sometimes think that the more we speak in general terms, the wider we’ll reach; but that doesn’t mesh with the reality of people’s lives. Preaching is for real people in real contexts, not generic people in generic contexts. We do not escape our everyday reality to hear a promise or a rebuke or a command from God’s word; we hear those in our current, concrete, and often complex circumstances – a promise or rebuke or command that addresses us where we are.

‘Context’ might be global, regional, local, or personal. Personal elements of context might include situations at home, at work, wider social activities, with family, colleagues, friends, acquaintances. Ideally, we focus on where people are. Starting globally might feel remote and overwhelming for many listeners, but we can start with the home situation or something in the neighbourhood or an item in the news, and perhaps draw wider implications for the national or international context.

We don’t take account of context in order to appear ‘relevant’, but to give our hearers an imagination for seeing their context as part of the larger world in which God is working. Sometimes our engagement with Scripture may provide a mirror that reflects something of our context back to us, helping us to understand it more deeply. On other occasions, it may engage with aspects of our context and challenge us to envision alternative possibilities. How might things be different where we are – at home or at work?

3. Preparing sermons with contexts in mind

In some respects, taking account of context is less about adding a further step to our preparation, and more an awareness that permeates the whole process. Even so, it might be helpful to reflect self-consciously on some of the specific situations of congregation members known to us and bring these to our engagement with the text. Below is a series of questions and prompts we have found helpful to consider in preparing to preach from biblical passages:

(a) What does this passage reveal about God/Jesus/the gospel?

(b) How does this passage shape our understanding of what it means to be a disciple?

(c) Knowing where at least some of the congregation have been this week, and being aware of their contexts:

• What might I want to highlight and explore from this passage?

• What might connect with their situations?

• What would offer a challenge?

• What would offer encouragement?

(d) Reflecting on this passage would lead us to pray that...

(e) Living out this passage over the next week might involve...

The order of the questions is significant. We don’t want to impose our congregation’s personal needs or their particular situations too quickly on to the passage without hearing first what God has to say through it. So, we begin with a question which asks what the passage affirms about God, Jesus, the kingdom, the gospel, and so on – these are given priority.

And then, we ask how the passage might shape our understanding of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

Only then comes a question related to context. Here now is an opportunity to reflect on the daily frontlines of the members of our congregation and ask how this passage – given what it says about who God is and what God has done in Jesus, and given what it says about discipleship – might address them, where they are.

Out of that then flows a prompt about prayer and a prompt about action.

Give the questions a go with your next sermon.

We don’t need to become professional ethnographers in order to do this task well. We learn it over time through observation and conversation – paying attention to people, asking questions, listening to stories, gathering insights – all of which can make a difference to our awareness of where people are at.

Importantly, preaching is not the only way to address a congregation’s context – the sermon is not a self-contained entity. But it takes its place in the dynamic of the gathered worship, and so is integrated with confession, praise, prayer, song, silence, communion – all of which form us as followers of Jesus for our everyday frontlines.

Word and World 2 (2016)

Word and World, published by IFES, ‘aims to promote conversation and reflection about God’s Word and God’s World’, seeking ‘to enable those involved in student ministry to be nourished by the gospel and attentive to the world that students inhabit’.

‘The theme for this issue coincides with the upcoming release of the African Study Bible, which pairs the New Living Translation with comments by authors from around Africa.. Two of the projects' leaders, John Jusu and Matthew Elliot, talk... about coordinating more than 350 authors to help us hear God's word in fresh ways, learning from how the Scriptures are received in Africa.

‘The remaining contributions explore how to read the Bible in other cultural contexts. Samuel Escobar relates what it was like to read the Bible in the early days of his ministry with IFES in Latin America as the ideologies of Marxism and right-wing totalitarianism prevailed. Charlie Hadjiev also deals with political context, demonstrating the difference that this makes when someone looks to the Bible to help them understand how to relate to authority.

‘Myrto Theocharous emphasizes the oppression that privileged contexts of interpretation have exercised over underpriviledged contexts, calling for equality and reconciliation between different communities of Bible readers. K.K. Yeo deals with the task of biblical interpretation as a Malaysian-Chinese reader, a sacred task enabled by the Holy Spirit.’

John Jusu and Matthew Elliott

The Africa Study Bible: God’s Word through African Eyes

Samuel Escobar

The Bible, Communism, and Totalitarianism in 1960s Latin America

Charlie Hadjiev

A Case Study on the Bible and Authority

Myrto Theocharous

Ethics, Context, and the Biblical Text

K.K. Yeo

The Sacred Task of the Bible Interpreter: The Method of a Chinese Christian

The entire issue is available as a pdf here.

Crucible 7, 1 (May 2016)

The latest issue of Crucible, published by the Australian Evangelical Alliance and largely produced by the faculty of the Australian College of Ministries, is now available online here, with the below articles (abstracts included, where available). This one is billed as a ‘Malyon College Special Edition’.

The Cauldron: peer reviewed articles

Donald L. Morcom

Was Peter Capable of Writing the Greek of 2 Peter? An Exploration

Among the many arguments advanced against the notion that the Apostle Peter was the author of the New Testament letters bearing his name, it is alleged that as an uneducated Galilean fisherman Peter was not capable of writing the kind of Greek found in these letters. This paper challenges that particular allegation. Utilising evidence from elsewhere in the New Testament, exploring the history of investigation into the language/s spoken by Jesus and his disciples, and harnessing some recent advances in our understanding of the extent of the Hellenisation of Peter’s Galilee, this paper explores the plausibility of Peter possessing the necessary Greek linguistic skills to be the genuine author of 2 Peter.

Peter Sondergeld

Peter: A Biblical Basis for Self-Worth

Self-esteem has been, and continues to be, a critical concern for those in the helping professions, both in an academic context and also in a popular cultural context. There have been many proponents, and many critics of the concept of self-esteem and its remedy, self-love, for many years. The continued existence of the concepts of self-esteem and self-love, in both academic and popular thought, suggests that these concepts accurately describe a particular aspect of the human experience – that a common existential struggle for humanity is a low sense of personal value.

Within Christian thought and practice there are many different approaches to self-esteem, self-love and personal value. These approaches range from those who see no value in the self-esteem construct, and are opposed to any kind of self-love, to those who think self-esteem and self-love are essential and have made them central to an understanding of the core human condition. This article will challenge the adoption of the self-esteem construct as an explanation of the core human condition, and will argue that human value will not be derived from self-love, but from a return to our original created anthropology as worshippers and imagers of God.

We will begin with a short discussion of the problem of personal value and its remedy, and then move on to an analysis of humanity’s original biblical anthropology (that humans were created in the image of God and are unceasing worshippers), and the effect that the corruption of this anthropology (idolatry of the heart) has had on personal value. We will conclude with a further discussion of self-love as a remedy for low personal value and see that it is not virtuous; in reality it is idolatry of the heart, leading to further idolatry, as created things are enlisted to shore up a lack of personal worth. The only remedy for the restoration of personal value is for humanity to return to imaging and worshipping God.

Anne Klose

Church and Mission in Redemption: Exploring Church and Mission through the Communal and Missional Priesthood of All Believers

This article proposes that any perceived contest for priority between church and mission is based on a failure to understand both as penultimate phenomena which are only comprehensible in light of God’s redemptive plan. Such redemption as it is revealed across the narrative scope of Scripture is trinitarian and, therefore, communal in nature, and in consonance with this, both church and mission must be viewed in such terms. Whilst this may already be the case within academic circles, a broader more thorough-going shift in paradigm will require richly drawn canonical narratives with the power to strengthen the imaginative and practical grasp of church communities on their being and function. One such narrative is that of communal and missional priesthood expressed through representation of both God to his world and the world to God. 

The Test-tube: ministry resources

John Sweetman

Maintaining Personal Health in Pastoral Ministry

Peter Francis

The Challenge of Contextualisation, Presence and Proclamation in Short-term Cross-cultural Mission

The Filter: book reviews

The Asbury Journal 70, 1 (2015)

The latest issue of The Asbury Journal contains several essays devoted to the theme of intercultural hermeneutics, arising out of an Advanced Research Interdisciplinary Colloquium held at the seminary last October.

Robert Danielson

From the Editor

Lalsangkima Pachuau

Intercultural Hermeneutics: A Word of Introduction

This paper introduces the theme of intercultural hermeneutics for the Advanced Research Programs interdisciplinary colloquium. By focusing on recent literature in the field of intercultural hermeneutics, this paper distinguishes this field of study from traditional cross-cultural communication and indicates its relevance to the current field of biblical studies and missiology. The importance of postcolonial studies to the field of intercultural hermeneutics is also addressed.

Craig S. Keener

Scripture and Context: An Evangelical Exploration

The first section of this paper addresses contextualization and scripture, suggesting the value of hearing texts from multiple cultural settings. The latter section offers two concrete examples where many majority world readings could help western readers to hear biblical texts more sympathetically and in ways closer to what the first audiences would have heard. In both sections, the two groups participating in the interdisciplinary colloquium – biblical studies and intercultural studies – are invited to learn from one another.

Jeremy Chew

I am Kneeling on the Outside, but I am Standing on the Inside: Another Look at the Story of Naaman through the Lenses of Kraft

The story of Naaman in 2 Kings 5 has been a popular mining ground for theological positions and missiological perspectives. How one views Elisha’s response to Naaman in verse 19 is inevitably affected by one’s view regarding the appropriateness of how Naaman intends to resolve the conflict between his new relationship with Yahweh and his former pagan practices. Based on the movement of the story, and the use of comparison and contrast of characters, Elisha’s answer should be seen as a positive affirmation, rather than a negative or indifferent response. Using Kraft’s model for conversion helps us see the positive benefits for doing so. Combining biblical studies and intercultural research methods, we discover that Elisha’s answer to Naaman is the most propitious response to a new convert returning to his former pagan culture.

Moe Moe Nyunt

Hesychasm Encounters Lectio Divina: An Intercultural Analysis of Eastern and Western Christian Contemplative Practices

Two ancient Christian spiritual practices have emerged in their appropriate cultural contexts throughout the complex history of Christianity. Various cultural contexts in hesychasm and lectio divina enlighten us 1) to be balanced in religious culture and social culture between solitude and communal spiritual practices; 2) to notice the ways people achieve spiritual fulfillment in various cultures; 3) to propose a verbal practice in meditation to those who belong to oral culture and a silent and visual practice to those who belong to a more literate culture; or to practice both if the culture is mixed; and 4) to recognize the meaning of spirituality defined by people of Eastern and Western culture.

Adrian Reynolds

Intercultural Hermeneutics: A Step Towards Its Effective Practice as a Clash of Perspectives on John’s Revelation

This paper calls Christian biblical scholars to engage in rigorous intercultural hermeneutics for the edification of the worldwide Church by careful appropriation of adverse perspectives. It proposes a method whereby scholars implement their interpretive method of choice and then, within boundaries thus set, carefully read from the perspectives of other scholars toward the enrichment of their own work. By way of illustration, the paper offers an example of such an interpretive struggle by the author with postcolonial scholar Stephen Moore. Thus the author’s approach of choice (Inductive Biblical Study) both informs, and is informed by, a postcolonial view.

Hunn Choi

Multicultural Hermeneutics and Mission

In this article, presented at the 2014 Interdisciplinary Colloquium, held at Royal Auditorium on the Kentucky Campus of Asbury Theological Seminary, October 10, 2014, the author examines multicultural hermeneutics in relation to mission and presents multicultural hermeneutics as a dialogical, hospitable, border crossing, marginal, liminal, and missional reading of the Bible in solidarity with others. He uses the well-known parable of the Good Samaritan as an interesting example for multicultural hermeneutics.

Benjamin D. Espinoza

“Pia Desideria” Reimagined for Contemporary Theological Education

Phillip Spener’s pivotal work, Pia Desideria (1675), though written hundreds of years ago, still speaks to today’s Christian contexts, and creative engagement with the text can yield fruit when seeking to form sound ministry and educational practice. The purpose of this article is to creatively engage and re-imagine Pia Desideria in such a way that allows Spener’s six proposals for church reform to speak to theological educators today in Christian colleges and seminaries, specifically in the area of pedagogy.

J. Derrick Lemons

Communitas at the Tables: Jesus, the Marginalized, and the Modern Church

The field of the anthropology of religion would be incomplete without the theory of communitas, developed by Victor Turner (1920-1983). This paper outlines the liberating communitas experience of table fellowship utilized by Jesus to include sinners, outcasts, and the marginalized in the Kingdom of God. In particular, Jesus’ invitation of communitas at Jewish cultic meals is explained in order to recapture the original understanding of the Abrahamic covenant to be a blessing to the margins of society. The paper concludes by calling Christians to invite the marginalized to the gathered table at church and the dispersed table at home.

Features

From the Archives: Ernest F. Ward: The First Free Methodist Foreign Missionary

Book Reviews

International Bulletin of Missionary Research 38:4 (October 2014)

The latest issue of International Bulletin of Missionary Research carries the feature articles noted below addressing the issue of ‘Mission and Contexts’.

Here’s the opening paragraph from J. Nelson Jennings’ Editorial:

‘A person’s understanding of Christian mission – whether as evangelism, evangelization, witness, proclamation, prophetic dialogue, service, or whatever else – is inexorably intertwined with that person’s context(s). Likewise with anyone’s practice or reception of mission. The significance of context applies also to a whole people’s understanding, practice, and reception of Christian mission. Our multifaceted settings shape how mission is conceived, conveyed, and caught.’

Volker Küster

Intercultural Theology Is a Must

Gloria S. Tseng

Revival Preaching and the Indigenization of Christianity in Republican China

Andrew M. Eason

The Strategy of a Missionary Evangelist: How William Booth Shaped the Salvation Army’s Earliest Work at Home and Abroad

Thomas Kemper

The Missio Dei in Contemporary Context

Madge Karecki

A Missiological Reflection on “Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes”

Samuel Escobar

“Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes”

Stephen B. Bevans

“Together towards Life”: Catholic Perspectives

Juan (John) Stam

My Pilgrimage in Mission

Charles W. Forman

The Legacy of Charles W. Forman

David B. Raymond

The Legacy of Samuel J. Mills Jr.

Encounters 45 (June 2013)

The latest issue of Encounters from Redcliffe College is now available.

As guest editor Hugh Kemp notes, the apparently eclectic nature of the articles and book reviews in this edition might hide the fact that ‘they represent three ways to incarnate the Gospel of Christ in innovative ways: dialogue with Buddhists, creative prayer spaces for British kids, and restorative justice as an alternative vision to conflict and punishment’.

Individual articles are available from here, or the pdf of the full issue is available here.

Orality Journal 2, 1 (2013)

The latest edition of Orality Journal, published online by the International Orality Network, is available as a pdf here; it includes a number of interesting-looking articles on different aspects of Bible storying.

Gilles Gravelle

Literacy, Orality, and the Web

What oral communication can accomplish in Bible translation projects that print communication alone cannot.

Pam Arlund

Church Planting Movements among Oral Learners

Case studies of using orality strategies in church planting movements.

W. Jay Moon

Using Rituals to Disciple Oral Learners: Part 1

What can we learn from the powerful effects of rituals from cultures and how can rituals be used for meaningful discipleship.

Clyde Taber

Contextualizing the Gospel in a Visual World
In a media saturated world, how do we contextualize Kingdom stories for the new generation?

Marlene LeFever

Inside-out Stories

When a ministry retools, what are the outcomes?

A. Steve Evans

Mind the Gap: If This Is Your Land, then Where Are Your Stories?

What and where are our stories that help us claim the land?

J.O. Terry

Ten Mistakes of a New Bible Storyteller

Wisdom from a storytelling practitioner.

Tara Rye

Story Proof: The Science behind the Startling Power of Story

Book review.

International Bulletin of Missionary Research 34:4 (October 2010)

There are some interesting-looking pieces in the latest International Bulletin of Missionary Research, including:

Jonathan J. Bonk

Missions and the Liberation of Theology

Titus Presler

Mission Is Ministry in the Dimension of Difference: A Definition for the Twenty-first Century

Stuart J. Foster

The Missiology of Old Testament Covenant

R. Daniel Shaw

Beyond Contextualization: Toward a Twenty-first-Century Model for Enabling Mission

Gregory J. Liston

Asking the Big Questions: A Statistical Analysis of Three Missiological Journals

James R. Rohrer

The Legacy of George Leslie Mackay

Wong Man Kong

The Legacy of Carl Thurman Smith

Global Missiology

Thanks to Tim Davy (over at Bible and Mission) for drawing attention to Global Missiology – ‘a quarterly publication of contributions from international researchers, practitioners and scholars who have a global perspective’ – with freely-available articles. Check through their archives for some interesting theological reflection on mission, contextualisation, and more besides.

Andrew Ryland on Driscoll and Keller on Missional Churches 2

Andrew Ryland, ‘Gospel, Church and Culture: The Vision for Missional Churches being Modelled by Driscoll and Keller and Their Networks’ (2007).

See here for an introduction to this paper outlining the relationship between…

• Gospel
• Culture, and
• Church

Ryland goes first to Mark Driscoll:

‘Reformission begins with a simple return to Jesus, who by grace saves us and sends us into mission. Jesus has called us to (1) the gospel (loving our Lord), (2) the culture (loving our neighbor), and (3) the church (loving our brother). But… various Christian traditions are faithful on only one or two of these counts. When we fail to love our Lord, neighbor, and brother simultaneously, we bury our mission in one of three holes’ (Mark Driscoll, The Radical Reformission: Reaching Out without Selling Out [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004], 20).

In terms of the relationship between the three elements, Driscoll comes up with the following equations:

Gospel + Culture – Church = Parachurch

Culture + Church – Gospel = Liberalism

Church + Gospel – Culture = Fundamentalism

• Parachurch – where Christians bypass the church and try to take the gospel directly to culture.

• Liberalism – where the desire to enculturate the gospel (using the language of therapy or success or felt needs) leads to compromise or abandonment of the gospel.

• Fundamentalism – where the church withdraws from culture, privatises faith, and reduces salvation to a personal transaction with God.

The ‘liberalism’ and ‘fundamentalism’ option can also be understood in terms of syncretism and sectarianism…

• Avoiding syncretism – the blending together of different philosophies, and the need to avoid being shaped by the culture.

• Avoiding sectarianism – seeing ourselves as an exclusive and superior group.

According to Ryland, both Keller and Driscoll adopt the label ‘missional’ to differentiate themselves from others who ‘do evangelism’ as one of their activities. A missional church is one where worship, discipleship, fellowship, and service is carried out in the light of the post-Christendom context.

In summary:

‘God’s church should embody his mission fully.

That means churches should aim to be more missional than parachurch agencies, more culturally engaged than liberal churches, and more gospel-shaped… than fundamentalist churches.

Such churches will be distinctively God’s people without being fundamentalist; they will be lovingly engaged in wider society without being liberal in theology. Such churches will be counter-cultural without being sectarian; they will be credible without being syncretistic.’

Andrew Ryland on Driscoll and Keller on Missional Churches 1

Andrew Ryland, ‘Gospel, Church and Culture: The Vision for Missional Churches being Modelled by Driscoll and Keller and Their Networks’ (2007).

This is a helpful paper summarising the thinking and practice of Mark Driscoll and Tim Keller on issues surrounding the contextualisation of the gospel in today’s world.

According to Ryland, both Driscoll and Keller assume that Christendom has passed; gone is the time when it could be assumed that everyone’s mindset was shaped in some measure by the Christian worldview… and in the post-Christendom context, evangelism and discipleship need to change… but in the right way, in line with faithfulness to Scripture and the gospel.

With a nod to Calvin’s two types of knowledge (of God and ourselves) and John Stott’s ‘double listening’ (to the Word and the world), Ryland comes at Driscoll and Keller via a brief discussion of John Frame on three dimensions of knowledge – of God, ourselves, and the world:

‘Human knowledge can be understood in three ways: as knowledge of God’s norm, as knowledge of the situation, and as knowledge of ourselves. None can be achieved adequately without the others. Each, therefore, is a perspective on the whole of human knowledge’ (John Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God [Phillipsburg: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1987], 75).

These three perspectives translate into three arenas:

1. How we relate to and know God (revealed in the gospel)
2. How we relate to and know our world (experienced as culture)
3. How we relate to and know ourselves as people called into God’s family (embodied as church)

In short – gospel, culture, and church.

More on this in a second post…