Christian mission in the twenty-first century has emphasized endeavors that address poverty alleviation, business as mission, marketplace ministry, rural/urban development, microeconomics, and Christian attitudes toward money and consumerism. However, neither the macroeconomic circumstances in which the church does such ministry nor the assumptions that believers have absorbed from the larger economy have been adequately explored. Christian Mission & Economic Systems gathers scholars, experts, and practitioners to address the relationship of Christians to the economic systems in which they are embedded and do ministry, and to evaluate the different cultural and religious dimensions of both micro- and macroeconomic systems around the world from a kingdom perspective. Practitioners doing business as mission will grow in their understanding of the significance of local economic practices. Students and academics will benefit from the critical assessment of the intersection between micro- and macroeconomic systems in the contexts of specific ethnographic circumstances. Missionaries and churches will glean new insights on the difference that being a Christian makes to economic life. NGOs, nonprofits, or other Christian organizations doing work related to markets will benefit from a challenge to their previous understandings. Since work for the kingdom always takes place in some kind of an economic environment, this book will equip Christians in a variety of capacities to be more effective in their ministries.

This major statement by a leading missiologist represents a lifetime of wrestling with a topic every cross-cultural leader must address: how to adapt the universal gospel to particular settings. This comprehensive yet accessible textbook organizes contextualization, which includes "everything the church is and does," into seven dimensions. Filled with examples, case studies, and diagrams and conversant with contemporary arguments and debates, it offers the author's unique take on the challenge of adapting the faith in local cultures.

Wealth, Health, and Hope in African Christian Religion offers a portrait of how contending narratives of modernity in both church and society play out in Africa today through the agency of African Christian religion. It explores the identity and features of African Christian religion and the cultural forces driving the momentum of Christian expansion in Africa, as well as how these factors are shaping a new African social imagination, especially in providing answers to the most challenging questions about poverty, wealth, health, human, and cosmic flourishing. It offers the academy a good road map for interpreting African Christian religious beliefs and practices today and into the future.

Following the Communist Revolution of 1949, missionaries were kicked out of China and proselytizing was outlawed. However, since the beginning of the reform era, China has witnessed a massive return of missionary workers. Today there are more Christians in church on a given Sunday in China than anywhere else on the globe. This book investigates the interaction of Western missionaries, ethnic minorities, and Han Chinese converts with the Chinese state in an increasingly globalized China. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Yunnan, it tries to make sense of the disparity between official state rhetoric and everyday reality. Examining morality in the context of the free-market system, spatial practices, linguistic activity, and Christian welfare organizations, Gideon Elazar reveals the ways in which the previously conflicting Communist Party and Christian “civilizing projects” have reached a measure of convergence, enabling local authorities to treat missionaries with a degree of tolerance. Elazar shows how this unofficial arrangement relates to the social realities and challenges of the reform era, including ethnic culture and identity, Yunnan’s many social problems, and the integration of ethnic minorities into the state system. By exploring the continuously shifting social and religious borders negotiated by converts, missionaries, and state authorities in Southwest China, this book sheds light on the larger issue of contemporary religion in China’s global era. It will be of interest to researchers of religion, Christianity, and minority groups in the People’s Republic of China.

While a number of secular philosophers have written on global poverty, theologians have either steered clear entirely or simply mimicked the political analysis currently on offer. Christian authors have argued either for a free market solution to global poverty or for a radical reform of global capitalism as the best approach, but the theological underpinnings of such conclusions are noticeable by their absence. Justin Thacker offers a new way forward. He suggests deeply theological answers to questions around the effect of capitalism on global poverty and whether aid is really a sustainable long term solution for the world’s poor. This book will challenge theologians, church leaders and congregations to consider much more seriously the huge implications of faith and theology on our attitude to those who live in extreme poverty.

We are pleased to offer this fifth title in our APTS Press Monograph Series. This is the publication of the author’s doctoral dissertation done through the Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA. The purpose of this series is to give our readers broader access to good scholarship that would otherwise be unavailable outside of the academic community. This is part of our ongoing commitment to discipleship through publishing. Christian mission organizations have enthusiastically embraced “business” as a means of entry for Christian workers who might not otherwise be able to get into these nations, especially MMNs. However, the embracing of business raises some immediate concerns. In light of existing tensions between business and Islam, won’t missions-connected businesses be under the same cloud of conflict? More importantly, isn’t the Gospel put under this cloud, thereby negatively impacting the spread of the kingdom of God? Also, if the business-and-mission companies’ expatriate owners and employees are western (especially American) won’t the conflicts inevitably intensify? And if so, are there ways such entities can be operated in order to minimize the conflict with Islamic sensitivities? This book will address these and other related questions.

Using the genetic code as a model, this provocative book will provide you with theological analysis, biblical principles, and practical applications for understanding the structure and mission of today's church and how it can transform the world

The Lord’s Prayer unites Christians throughout history, speaking across the divides of language, place, and tradition. The oldest prayer of the church, it continues to speak to the lived reality of believers around the world, while inviting the body of Christ into a deeper understanding of the nature of God, discipleship, and the calling to holistic mission. Ama Namin brings together the voices of Filipino evangelical scholars in a profound work of contextual and biblical theology. Each chapter explores a portion of the Lord’s Prayer against the backdrop of Scripture and the foreground of Philippine life and spirituality. Contributors examine the rich history of the Lord’s Prayer in the Philippines – a history dating back to the first printed translation in 1593 – as well as its implications for the Philippines’ future, providing the church a foundation for public engagement and social transformation. Ama Namin provides a valuable teaching resource for the Philippine church and for all those longing to deepen their understanding of prayer, the contextualization of Scripture, and the love of the heavenly Father.

Magisterial in scope and scrupulous in its investigation and attribution of sources, Church and Ethical Responsibility in the Midst of World Economy will take its place as an important document that contributes much in terms of prophetic praxis--it challenges those who are comfortably complacent and unwilling to be disturbed.

The field of anthropology provides rich insights into the world of people and cultures. But it also presents challenges for Christians in the areas of cultural relativism, evolutionary theory, race and ethnicity, forms of the family, governments and war, life in the global economy, the morality of art, and religious pluralism. Most significantly it raises questions regarding the truth and how we can know it. This book provides the opportunity to investigate such questions with both the informed understanding of anthropological theory and ethnography, and the larger framework and commitment of Christian biblical and theological studies. So equipped, readers are encouraged to investigate for themselves the depths and intricacies of topics in anthropology that are especially relevant for Christians.