Thoughtful and original contributions from twenty-one of the world's foremost missiologists, in a volume dedicated to Fuller Seminary's former dean Paul E. Pierson, outline an agenda for mission education that will provoke lively discussion for years to come. Fuller Theological Seminary's School of World Mission is the locus of some of the most creative thought and scholarly reflection on Christian mission in today's world. Edited by the School's dean and two professors, a score of authors respond to the question: How should missiological education be carried out to prepare men and women to work in the twenty-first century? Contributors: -Andrew F. Walls -Gerald H. Anderson -Paul G. Hiebert -Kenneth Mulholland -L. Grant McClung -Jerald D. Gort -Mary Motte -Michael James Oleksa -Tite Tienou -Samuel Escobar -Ken R. Gnanakan -Wilbert R. Shenk -Darrell Whiteman -Roger S. Greenway -Philip C. Stine -Stuart Dauermann -Ralph D. Winter -J. Dudley Woodberry -Viggo Sogaard -Charles Van Engen -Edgar J. Elliston

Utilizing resources from Martin Luther and the Lutheran tradition, this study offers an understanding of the gospel as promise as key to addressing the challenge of relating the missio Dei to a generous, constructive approach toward the religious other. In its construction of a Lutheran missiology, it retrieves and reappropriates four resources from the Lutheran tradition: the gospel as promise, the law/gospel distinction, a theology of grace as promise of mercy fulfilled, and a theology of the cross utilizing the hiddenness of God. The law of God as accusing yet webbing humanity to its Creator; the gospel as the comforting promise of mercy; and the hiddenness of God as mystifying form the overarching framework within which the Lutheran missiology presented here seeks to engage the religious other by dialectically relating gospel proclamation and dialogue. Such a view of "mission shaped by promise" offers the paradox of God being both revealed and hidden in the cross as a distinctive contribution to an interreligious dialogue centered on the ambiguity and hiddenness of God.

From Cognitive Teaching to Connected Learning Given the landscape of global Christianity and the variety of approaches to theological and missiological training today, how do we equip the global church for the mission of God? Should mission organizations or sending churches conduct their own in-house training? What is the role of Bible colleges and seminaries in equipping for mission today? What about informal approaches to theological and ministry training? Equipping for Global Mission offers insights from seasoned scholars and practitioners. Beginning with theological convictions and practical reflections, our authors make a case for what equipping for mission could look like in the present global church. Case studies from India, China, North America, and Britain further challenge the reader to reflect on this critical issue. The full scope of educating for mission is far too broad of a task for any single organization. This is why the contributors serve the church so well—by enlarging a much-needed conversation. This book is a clarion call to all who care about missions and the global church. Join world leaders in reshaping missions education today by using the practical and strategic wisdom in these pages.

Communities of Faith is a collection of essays on the multicultural Christian spirit and practices of churches around the world, with particular attention to Africa and the African diaspora. The essays span history, theology, anthropology, ecumenism, and missiology. Readers will be treated to fresh perspectives on African Pentecostal higher education, Pentecostalism and witchcraft in East Africa, Methodist camp meetings in Ghana, Ghanaian diaspora missions in Europe and North America, gender roles in South African Christian communities, HIV/AIDS ministries in Uganda, Japanese funerary rites, enculturation and contextualization principles of mission, and many other aspects of the Christian world mission. With essays from well-known scholars as well as young and emerging men and women in academia, Communities of Faith illuminates current realities of world Christianity and contributes to the scholarship of today's worldwide Christian witness.

Missionaries must know God, be able to relate well to other people, understand and engage with another culture, and be able to use the Bible in a way that informs all aspects of their lives and ministries. Missionary training must address each of these areas if it is to help Christians to be effective in taking the gospel to the ends of the earth. Effective training has been shown to prevent people from prematurely leaving the field. It also reduces the danger of cross-cultural workers uncritically exporting culturally bound forms of Christianity. This book details four key areas that every missionary training program, whatever its context, must focus on developing. It shows how these can be holistically addressed in a learning community where trainers and trainees engage in cross-cultural ministry together.

This work introduces Walls's work and explores its wide-ranging implications for the understanding of history, mission, the formative place of Africa in the Christian story, and the cross-cultural transmission of faith.

Many churches are involved in short-term mission trips. Most of these trips, however, are focused on economic or social development projects, coupled with "relational evangelism." Not many are focused on discipleship, or, more specifically, training indigenous pastors in the essential doctrines of the faith so that they can, in turn, disciple their church. In fact, reproducible models for in-depth theological education during short-term missions are rare. As a missionary presently ministering in a number of underdeveloped nations, Steve Curtis has witnessed the need for, and potential benefit of, such models. The reality is that there are countless pastors throughout the majority world who have had little to no formal training in Bible or doctrine. This book suggests a practical way that churches can use their short-term missions program--together with their adult discipleship program--to help meet this critical, global need.

Although numerous studies have examined biblical and theological rationales for using the visual arts in worship, this book by Lisa J. DeBoer fills in a piece of the picture missing so far — the social dimensions of both our churches and the various art worlds represented in our congregations. The first part of the book looks at Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Protestantism in turn — including case studies of specific congregations — showing how each tradition’s use of the visual arts reveals an underlying ecclesiology. DeBoer then focuses on six themes that emerge when Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant uses of the visual arts are examined together — the arts as expressions of the church’s local and universal character, the meanings attributed to particular styles of art for the church, the role of the arts in enculturating the gospel, and more. DeBoer’s Visual Arts in the Worshiping Church will focus and deepen the thinking of pastors, worship leaders, artists, students, and laypeople regarding what the arts might do in the midst of their congregations.

One of the important contemporary but unexplored themes for Christianity in Africa today is its ongoing connections to a broader Christian and non-Christian world. This is quite apart from the idea of mission connections or reverse mission from Africa to elsewhere, or any mission-themed global connection. In much existing scholarship, Africa seems to only have recently been drawn into the orbit of global relations, but there is a long-standing relationship with the wider world, people linking from different regions at different times for varied reasons. This volume explores the theme of two thousand years of connections—and how the global sensibility has shaped Christianity on the continent for two thousand years.