THE HISTORICAL FOUNDATION OF MISSION

International Review of Mission, 2010

This article on the mission theology of the church, a personal perspective by the vice-moderator of CWME, draws on documentation produced by the commission and also responds to the Faith and Order document, The Nature and Mission of the Church. It is based on the trinitarian paradigm of mission referred to as missio Dei, which emphasizes the priority of God's sending activity in the world, by the Son and the Spirit, and the contingency of the church and its mission activities upon that. Therefore, it is concerned with the participation of the church in God's mission to and in the world, and from this perspective, has a particular interest with the actual, empirical church rather than the ideal church, recognizing that the church exists in many different forms in particular social, cultural, economic and political contexts. The article argues that the church is “missionary by its very nature”. Both theologically and empirically, it is impossible to separate the church from mission. Indeed mission is the very life of the church and the church is missionary by its very nature the Spirit of Christ breathed into the disciples at the same time as he sent them into the world. The mission theology of the church as it has developed in ecumenical discussion over the 20th and early 21st centuries is discussed in terms of the relationship of the church to the three persons of the Trinity: as foretaste of the kingdom of God; as the body of Christ; and as a movement of the Spirit. The article shows that being in mission is to cross the usual boundaries and bring new perspectives from outside to bear, and this is a never-ending, enriching process.

The following will review in brief missiological concepts which have been part of the ecumenical strive for unity in the time since the beginning of the modern ecumenical movement since 1848. Meant as introductory paper for a seminar on Mission.

Mission Studies, 2012

International Review of Mission, 2013

This article argues that an understanding of the development of a missional ecclesiology requires we recognize three closely connected and significant matters in 20th-century mission history: first, the increasing appreciation of the interconnection of church and mission evinced at major ecumenical conferences in the mid-20th century; second, the contributions of influential missiologist Lesslie Newbigin and his theological integration of mission and church; and third, the breakthrough of the phrase “missional church” with the 1998 publication of the book Missional Church. This article traces this three-part development through both historical and theological analyses.

La Croix International, October 23, 2017, 2017

Church History, 2009

Th is review is written in memory and honor of Ogbu U. Kalu, the book's main editor, who was called home to glory in January 2009. He sets the tone for the issues dealt with by the essays by using Andrew F. Walls's observation that 'the labors of the missionary movement, and the cross-cultural process in Christian history, have borne fruit and catalyzed a shift in the center of gravity of Christianity that has immense implications for the theology of the future and for the way we tell its story' (3-4). Walls was a participant in the conference where the papers for the volume were initially read. Th e book brings together carefully selected papers that are representative of the general tenor of the July 2001 Currents in World Christianity project held in Pretoria, South Africa. As Brian Stanley, the director, points out, the conference was the last public event of the project. Th is was a Pew Charitable Trusts-sponsored initiative coordinated by the University of Cambridge. As Stanley notes in his preface to the book, the Currents in World Christianity initiative 'combined an interest in the modern history of Protestant missions with an emphasis on the religious aspects of globalization' (x). A signifi cant aspect of this volume is the amount of attention given to studies of Christianity from the global south by local scholars, including specifi c case studies located in China (chapters 8 and 10), Ghana (chapter 11), Kenya (chapter 12) and India (chapters 9 and 14). Th ese regional and contextual studies, combined with Afe Adogame's chapter on 'Globalization and African New Religions in Europe' (chapter 13) and Joel Carpenter's groundbreaking essay on New Evangelical Universities (chapter 7), most of which are located in the Th ird World, are extremely insightful. Th ey provide very useful perspectives to readers with an interest in Christianity in the non-Western world, something like a kaleidoscope of how the faith has developed as it moved from north to south in the processes of globalization. Th e book is divided into fi ve parts, with each focusing on a particular dimension of the appropriations of Christianity within local contexts, or how particular streams of Christianity such as Pentecostalism have emerged in non-Western religious practice. Ogbu U. Kalu's opening chapter helps readers appreciate the exact contributions that Africa in particular and the Th ird World in general have made to global Christianity. To that end he, like Jehu Hanciles's contribution on 'African Christianity, Globalization, and Mission', privileges the view that in spite of its missionary history African Christianity is 'a genuine African construct' and not a purveyor of 'a product made in America and exported around the world in the form of '"a new Christian fundamentalism"' (80-81). Arguing against claims by such scholars as Paul Giff ord that Pentecostalism is a North American export into regions like Africa, Kalu notes that 'scholarly concern should privilege how transnational cultural forms are appropriated, set in motion, and "domesticated", investigating the way in which local cultural lenses refract the light in global cultural processes' (9). As Christianity is experienced and translated into other cultural symbols, Kalu further notes, 'the indigenous principle blossoms' (9). Th e essays in Interpreting Contemporary Christianity were selected to refl ect this worldview, a selection that makes the subtitle Global Processes and Local Identities more than apt for the book. Th e essays take an approach to the study and understanding of Christianity

Missio Dei Journal: A Journal of Missional Theology and Praxis, 2019

Regnum Studies in Mission are born from the lived experience o f Christians and Christian communities in mission, especially but not solely in the fast growing churches among the poor o f the world. These churches have more to tell than stories o f growth. They are making significant impacts on their cultures in the cause o f Christ. They are producing 'cultural products' which express the reality o f Christian faith, hope and love in their societies.

Since a hundred of years, a large number of Orthodox Christians have emigrated to Western Europe and North America. This essay tries to explores the main features of the religious and cultural context which they have emigrated to and the main difficulties they face being a minority religious group in a culture that is post-Christian, after God, and unable to understand the fundamentally transcendent nature of the experience sought after by Orthodox believers. This essay argues that rediscovering the apostolic spirit of ancient Western Christian Saints is the only way to escape the trap of secular relativism and ethnocentrism that both betrays the universal truth of Orthodox Christianity.