Today the language of mission is in disarray. Where do the language and idea of 'mission' come from? Do they truly have precedence in the early centuries of the church? Michael Stroope investigates these questions and shows how the language of mission is a modern phenomenon that shaped a 'grand narrative' of mission. He then offers a way forward. Prologue Acknowledgements Introduction: the enigma of mission Part 1: Justifying mission 1. Partisans and apologists 2. Reading Scripture as mission 3. Presenting history as mission 4. Rhetoric and trope Part 2: Innovating mission 5. Holy conquest 6. Latin occupation 7. Mission vow 8. Ignatian mission Part 3: Revising mission 9. Protestant reception 10. Missionary problems Epilogue: towards pilgrim witness Works cited

Many churches actively seek to welcome migrants through various church-based activities such as language lessons, cooking, or gardening clubs. These and similar activities often aim to be missional or evangelistic, seeking to communicate the love of God and neighbor. The author explores how the love of God and neighbor can be expressed effectively through the implementation of pastoral care principles and practices. These include expressing love through empathy, hospitality, group prayer, and spiritual formation. When the functions of pastoral care are evident, mission and evangelism occur naturally and at the appropriate time. This book is the result of the author’s PhD study of four church-based intercultural initiatives aimed at welcoming migrants. Two churches offering English conversation classes, a sewing club, and employment training classes were observed. Volunteers and pastoral staff were interviewed, and church documents were examined. This empirical research demonstrates that when volunteers are trained in principles and practices of pastoral care, when church systems and supervision support them in their tasks, and when group planning and reflection occur, the love of God and neighbor will be effectively expressed to migrants attending these initiatives.

A leading expert in the field of Christian missions encourages the church to recover the apostolic imagination that fueled the multiplication of disciples in the first century. J. D. Payne examines the contemporary practice of Western missions and advocates a more central place for Scripture in defining missionary language, identity, purpose, function, and strategy. He shows that an apostolic understanding of the church's disciple-making commission requires rethinking every aspect of missionary engagement. The book includes end-of-chapter discussion questions and action steps to help pastors and church leaders develop an apostolic imagination.

This study aims to read Jesus's foot washing narrative missionally (John 13:1-38). A missional reading is identical to a missional hermeneutics based on the literary-theological interpretation of the text. John uses sending language and formulae, and the frame of "as . . ., so . . ." throughout the whole Gospel, which clarifies Jesus's and his disciples' mission as integrated witness. In this literary context, the foot washing narrative signifies the integrated witness of Jesus and the disciples. The narrative consists of two parts: one, Jesus's symbolic action for his death, and the other, for its interpretation for the disciple community. Jesus's death, as his unique mission, results in purifying both his disciples and the world so that they might dwell in the holy union with the triune God. The disciples are sent into the world. Just as Jesus did, so must they proclaim Jesus and his teachings. Also, they should bear witness to him by living Jesus's life-pattern of self-giving, sacrificial love, and humble service. Their verbal proclamation as evangelism and life-witness cannot be separated to testify to Jesus and their identity. Finally, today's Christians, specifically Evangelicals, are invited to participate in the Johannine mission as the integrated witness of evangelism and life-witness.

The Oxford Handbook of Mission Studies represents more than a century of scholarship related to the theology, history, and methodology of the propagation of Christian faith and the engagement of Christians with cultures, religions, and societies worldwide. It contains more than 40 articles by experts from different disciplinary and ecclesial perspectives, who are from all continents. It not only offers a broad overview of key approaches and issues in mission studies but it also highlights current trends and suggests future developments. The Handbook builds on renewed interest in mission studies this century generated by recent key statements on mission from ecumenical, evangelical, Catholic, and Orthodox sources, and by a spate of academic works on the topic. Western church leaders now apply insights from foreign missions (such as, inculturation, liberation, interfaith work, and power encounter) to today's multicultural societies. Meanwhile, there are new initiatives in mission from the Majority World, where most Christians live, so that sending is not only 'from the west to the rest' but 'from everywhere to everywhere'. Therefore, this volume aims to reflect the voices of the receivers of mission as well as its protagonists and to raise awareness of new movements. In a time of growing recognition of 'religions' more generally, this work examines and theorizes the missional dimensions of the world's largest religion: its agendas, growth, outreach, role in public life, effect on cultures, relevance for development, and its approaches to other communities.

Hate is unveiled on our streets. Politics is polarized and the cohesion of communities is under stress and threat. Religious and theological leaders appear compromised or paralyzed. Robert S. Heaney grew up in a Northern Ireland where enmity paraded itself and policed the boundaries between segregated identities and aspirations. Such conflict, with deep historic roots, is inextricably linked to religion and colonization. The theologizing of colonialism, and the ongoing implications of colonialism, cannot be ignored by those who wish to understand the most intractable of human conflicts. Religious adherents and scholars are increasingly seeking to understand colonialism and decolonization in theological terms. The field of post-colonial studies, across a range of contexts and in a complex network of inter-disciplinary analyses, has emerged as a major scholarly movement seeking to provide resources for such a task. Theologians have increasingly seen the field as a resource and have made their own contributions to its development. However, depending as it does on a series of theoretical and technical commitments, post-colonialism remains inaccessible to the uninitiated. Beginning with his own particular context of formation, in this book Heaney provides an accessible introduction to post-colonial theology.

A Fervent Crusade for the National Soul examines the implementation of cultural policies in relation to the contested configuration of citizenship in Colombia between 1930 and 1946. At a time when national identities were re-imagined all over the Americas, progressive artists and intellectuals affiliated with the liberal governments that ruled Colombia established an unprecedented bureaucratic apparatus for cultural intervention that celebrated so-called “popular culture” and rendered culture a social right. This book challenges pervasive narratives of state failure in Colombia, attending to the confrontations, negotiations, and entanglements of bureaucrats with everyday citizens that shaped the relationship between the ruler and the ruled. Catalina Muñoz argues that while culture became an instrument of inclusion, the liberal definition of popular culture as authentic and static was also a tool for domination that reinforced enduring structures of inequality founded on region, race, and gender. Liberals crafted the state as the paternalistic protector of acquiescent citizens, instead of a warden of political participation. Muñoz suggests that this form of governance allowed the elites to rule without making the structural changes required to craft a more equal society.

A veteran Baptist pastor and ministry professor offers a distinctive free church vision for pastoral leadership, attending to voices from the past four centuries as they speak about the practice of ministry. The book contains theological reflection on current ministry issues among Baptists based on biblical and historical foundations and reflects a diversity of Baptist life across time and around the world, including many different voices. Each chapter contains reflection questions to help readers consider the implications of Baptist thinking.

Bringing Pentecostal theology into the Bible and mission conversation, Amos Yong identifies the role of the divine spirit in God's mission to redeem the world. As he works through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, Yong emphasizes the global missiological imperative: "People of all nations reaching out to people of all nations." Sidebars include voices from around the globe who help the author put the biblical text into conversation with twenty-first-century questions, offering the church a fresh understanding of its mission and how to pursue it in the decades to come.