Search Phrase = Missions
There are no Main Site search results.
Click the play button below each title:
1. The Gentile Breakthrough
2. Universalism and Particularism in Mission
3. Faith and Culture: Commitment and Freedom in Mission
4. The Scope and Effects of Modern Missions
"Christ is my ‘ishta'[God], he has never left me, I will never leave him, but I would not have joined the Christian community.
I would have lived with my people and my community and been a witness to them."
Yisu Das Tiwari (1911-1997), a follower of Christ from a Brahmin family of North India, made the preceding striking statement to his son, Ravi Tiwari. I find senior Tiwari's admission effortlessly intersecting with the narrative of thousands of Hindu devotees of Christ in India today. Why did Tiwari regret joining the Christian community? What could be the causes behind such rumination?
These are the questions that prompted me to investigate the pertinent issue of religious believing in Jesus Christ vis-à-vis social belonging of the believers. The relationship of believing in Christ and belonging to the institutional church or Christian community is as old as the Christian faith in India and the issue reemerges today in the form of a missiological dilemma: Many caste-Hindus claim to believe in Christ but remain outside the institutional church and some decide to remain unbaptized.
In my ethnographic case study in India, Believing Without Belonging? Religious Beliefs and Social Belonging of Hindu Devotees of Christ (2020), I argue that this response to the gospel needs to be viewed from the theoretical perspective of World Christianity in general and Christianity's enduring encounter with Hinduism and Indian culture in particular.
I am thrilled this study is finally seeing the light of day published under the ASM Monograph Series (48). Dr. Darrel Whiteman, in his endorsement of the book, writes, "In this carefully researched and well documented study, John brilliantly tackles the issues of baptism, identity, and ecclesiology and boldly concludes that these Hindu devotees of Christ are neither anonymous Christians nor secret Christians, but rather represent an authentic expression of World Christianities."
Christian mission not only transforms the cultures it reaches, but the new inculturation of Christianity also is transformed and particularized in that process. People do not merely become adherents of Christ, but that faith becomes localized in its theology, ecclesiology, and missiology. History is replete with such models of the gospel's transformative nature through contextual hermeneutics of the Bible. My book recognizes and promotes what Lamin Sanneh terms the "translatability"1 of faith, which represents the intrinsic characteristic of the gospel it preaches because the gospel will "invigorate and transform"2 the cultures and the peoples that accept it. Through the inclusion of people's history, culture, oral traditions, and their devotional piety in each context as valid sources of contextual hermeneutics, World Christianity as a theoretical perspective has widened the scope of sources for doing theology and practice of Missions. These sources have not only been accepted as valid as the written scriptural texts for doing theology today, but they have also molded the nature of our faith and its mission, especially in the Majority World.
This process of the transformation of faith is no different in India where the gospel's interaction with various cultures and caste groups has produced distinct types of Christianities. For instance, the Syrian Orthodox Christianity of Kerala (South India) and the formation of a distinct community, because of Christians' migration from Syria and subsequent mingling with the local converts, are unequalled anywhere else in India. In northern India, during the colonial period, the ensuing Christianity was typically a replica of prevalent European Christianity. But then, the acceptance of the gospel by various aboriginal and Dalit cultures shaped distinctly indigenous forms of Christianity, with some Western structures intact. Furthermore, the dynamic interaction of the gospel with the Hindu tradition also culminated in the emergence of alternate forms of Christianity, quite dissimilar from its existing expressions in North India. One type of this emergent expression of indigenous Christianity among caste Hindus appears to exhibit the trait of believing in Jesus Christ but belonging differently to the church.
In this distinct form, some caste Hindus shift their religious allegiance to Jesus Christ but do not become formal members of an institutional church. Instead, they continue living in their communities of birth. Such a response to the gospel aptly fits as a case in point in World Christianity that "seeks to foster the study and practice of both local and trans-local ways of knowing and doing."3
The study highlights the emergent Hindu response to the gospel as a contemporary case in the transformation of Christian faith by the recipients in a multifaith context. The legitimacy, authenticity, and missiological significance of the movement of Hindu devotees of Christ are attested as an indigenous expression of World Christianity. They are negotiating a distinctive way of belonging to Christ and the church. Their beliefs and living out of their faith illustrate what it signifies to be a Hindu and yet profess the lordship of Jesus Christ today. This atypical belonging to Christ and the church challenges the notion that insists on identifying oneself as a "Christian" and joining the existing Christian community as the normative ways of being a follower of Christ.
1 Sanneh, Lamin, Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture, 2nd rev. ed. (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2009), 11, 211-37.
2 Sanneh, Lamin, Disciples of All Nations: Pillars of World Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 56.
3 Dale Irvin, "World Christianity: An Introduction," Journal of World Christianity (Online) 1 (2008), 1-26.
(adapted from January 2020 IBMR Editorial)
Leaning into the convergence of past and future has been a perennial source of reform and renewal for the church's mission, theology, and institutional life. This enduring tension at the heart of Christian faith is captured well by the New Testament word kairos, which means both an opportune moment and a time of crisis.
The present kairos for OMSC invites us to embrace a known past and an unknown future, calling on the wisdom embodied by our institutional legacy while welcoming God's new and ever-hopeful future as we prepare for the move to Princeton Theological Seminary (PTS) in July, 2020 and the celebration of our centenary in 2022. I have been thinking that this moment calls for a clear sense of identity and a discerning and playful sense of joyful expectation.
Of course, we won't know the full implications of this kairos until after we have settled into our new home at PTS, but here are three of the procedural, programmatic, and pedagogical innovations on the horizon:
1. Application process. In place of our former practice of rolling adMissions, we launched a new online application that opened on October 1 and closed on December 31, 2019 (for more information and link to online application, go to https://www.omsc.org/information-for-prospective-residents). Applicants for the 2020-21 academic year will be notified of our decision on Friday, February 14, 2020. This revised application process will allow time for us to tailor the content of seminars for the coming academic year to better suit the needs and interests of our incoming program participants.
2. Research and writing project. In light of Princeton's rich research environment and the expanded opportunities for interaction with faculty, seminarians, and others, all OMSC program participants will be required to pursue a practical or academic research and writing project in English that is relevant to their academic interests and ministry contexts. The new application for residency will include a proposal for this project. Given this new requirement, each yearlong program participant will also be asked to lead two morning seminars, one in the fall and one in the spring semester. In these seminars, they will present their work in progress and engage in dialogue with OMSC professional staff and other program participants, PTS faculty and students, and members of the broader community. Some of the best work each year may be selected for the IBMR or other OMSC publications.
3. Pedagogical strategy and outcomes. Concerning the shape of the Study Program, we do not plan to eliminate the excellent OMSC tradition of seminars facilitated by invited scholars and teachers, but we will resituate those seminars within a participant-centered pedagogical strategy that leads to the production of concrete outputs, such as books, articles, essays, op-eds, interviews, artwork, poetry, music, and so forth, which we will share with individuals, churches, and foundations who support our mission. Since each program participant will be pursuing a research and writing project on a particular topic, we plan to invite scholars from topic-relevant fields who will offer either a seminar with three morning sessions or two ninety-minute lectures for the whole group and others. We will also ask these invited scholars to give individual time to helping guide our participants' research and writing projects. While pursuing their own projects, program participants will commit in advance to attending all the OMSC-sponsored seminars and lectures. At PTS we will have the technological facility to offer some OMSC-sponsored seminars, lectures, and interviews as webinars and/or podcasts, thereby expanding our global impact.
We know that such an ambitious plan will require careful planning, execution, and management, but I believe we have a responsibility to strengthen our impact by sharing the concrete fruits of a season at OMSC with those in churches here in the United States and elsewhere who are committed to engaging in God's mission.
Postscript for ASM Colleagues: OMSC's Study Program was originally launched in 1967 as a continuing education opportunity for North American missionaries. Since taking on this responsibility in 2016, we have not hosted a single North American missionary in our program. Instead, we have had the privilege of welcoming African, Asian, and Latin American church leaders, scholars, and missionaries. Given this dramatic shift, we are being challenged to redesign our Study Program to serve the needs of these leaders and, through the two-way pedagogy gestured at above, to listen to what the Spirit may be saying through them. I want to thank the members of the ASM for your continued support, advice, and prayers as we move into God's ever-hopeful future.
With thanks and blessings,
Rev. Thomas John Hastings, PhD
OMSC Executive Director
IBMR Editor
Like many Americans, I enjoyed and appreciated the musical Hamilton and was excited when it became available to watch on Disney+, the cost of tickets to a live show being exorbitant. Although Alexander Hamilton, played by the musical's creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, is the title character of the popular musical, while watching the performance, I came to appreciate that Miranda actually puts the focus on many other characters in the story. The musical is about Hamilton, but we learn about that founding father primarily through his relationships with other people.
Occasionally, Hamilton sings about himself, but more often, we see Hamilton through the eyes of others. Aaron Burr narrates the musical and describes their parallel careers. Sister-in-law Angelica Schuyler sings of the Hamilton she knew and loved. Thomas Jefferson sings of the Hamilton he worked with and hated. Hamilton's Revolutionary friends brag that future generations will remember the story of their relationship. Notably, Hamilton's wife, Eliza, after she learns of an affair, declares she is "erasing herself from the narrative" so the story of their relationship will not be told. In the context of the musical, some of Hamilton's actions and deeds are related, some of his ideas are mentioned, and the Revolutionary context is presented, but the story told is one of relationships.
Hamilton is a work of historical fiction, but it offers an illustration of a tantalizing area of development in historiography of Christian Missions. What might the history of Christian Missions look like through the lens of actual, lived human relationships? Everyone familiar with mission history is familiar with the different forms it has taken over the years. There have been those (too often hagiographic) biographies that have told a story of deeds and actions undertaken by missionaries. Other histories focus on the missiology and theological ideas held and conveyed by missionaries and how those ideas have been received. Still other works focus on the larger cultural, political, and religious context in which Christian mission has occurred. Except for the hagiographic narratives, each of those historiographical approaches has its place, and the best examples of the genre address more than one area.
Intentionally putting actual human relationships in the foreground of mission history would offer a different view on history. To do so would require several things such as embracing a social historical approach recognizing that no two relationships are alike and that relationships change over time. It would also require an awareness that relationships often embody and sometimes subvert ideologies and power dynamics derived from the cultural and social context.
Perhaps the biggest challenge to using relationships as a way of exploring mission history is that history as a discipline must be grounded in solid source material. Unlike Miranda, historians don't have the freedom to tell historical fiction. Here, I suspect that in some instances, it is not that sources don't exist to explore different relationships, it's just that no one has looked for them. Researching my recent book on Methodist missionary William Taylor (William Taylor and the Mapping of the Methodist Missionary Tradition: The World His Parish, Lexington Books, 2019), I was able to uncover many new sources about Taylor life and work by intentionally exploring his interpersonal relationships. If Taylor mentioned a name in his writing, I searched to see if that person had left behind any published memoirs or archival material. Those that I found, I looked for and often found references to Taylor. I also researched the contexts around the world in which he worked to find other source material that might illuminate his story from a different angle, such as newspaper articles and writings of others who happened to be in those same settings at the same time. By taking seriously relationships Taylor mentioned, I was able to discover some important sources that offered insight into how those relationships shaped Taylor's ministry. For example, I discovered how the assassination of a friend in San Francisco prompted Taylor to write his first book.
Without source material, however, some gaps in the narrative cannot be overcome. Such lacunae have to stand, as is. All perceptive readers of my book will wonder what Taylor's wife, Isabelle Anne (Kimberlin) Taylor, thought of her husband's exploits around the world while he effectively abandoned her and their children to become a global evangelist and missionary. All I can say is, I wonder too. I was able to find precious few sources to document her actions, thoughts, and experience. Likewise, indigenous voices on the impact of Taylor's ministry were also hard to find and mediated through western sources. However, such gaps and problems in source material will not surprise anyone who has worked with primary sources on mission history.
My own experience leads me to suspect that relationships between different missionaries may be the most likely area to find source material. Different individuals serving in the same region with the same or different sending bodies have likely been preserved in some settings. Likewise, sources may be available on the relationships between missionaries and colonial administrators, as both church and governmental bureaucracies often generated documentation. Internal mission documents could illuminate relationships between specific missionaries and their translators, cultural intermediaries, or other people employed by Missions. Again, my own experience makes me think familial relationships will be the most opaque, because the mundane and intimate nature of daily family life rarely generates durable records. Day to day interactions of missionaries and indigenous persons would also be unlikely to generate records.
One of the benefits of this potential approach to the history of Christian mission would be that it follows the lead of other missiological reflection. The importance of relationships in missiology is nothing new. Donald McGavran famously called them "bridges of God." As the title of Dana Robert's recent book, Faithful Friendships, suggests, cross-cultural friendships offer a particular form of relationship as a way of thinking about Christian mission.
The closing song of Hamilton! is titled "Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story." In it, Eliza Hamilton declares she will, "[P]ut myself back in the narrative" by interviewing her late husband's comrades, exploring his writing, and seeking to continue his legacy. In a sense, she puts their relationship back at center of her own story. In the end, historians have the chance to do something similar and have the privilege of offering an answer to at least the third of those questions. We get to choose the stories we will tell about the history of Christian mission and how we will tell those stories. Perhaps within the rich tapestry of human relationships we can find new dimensions of historical knowledge to explore.
Recently a friend visited me. As we talked about this and that, he told me about difficulties in his missionary work. He had spent six years serving the Kurdish community in Iraq. His initial contact with the Kurds was at a Development Center where he taught English and computer skills. With continued commitment to serve, but dwindling funds, he opened a Women’s Center where women were taught various classes. Six years later his sponsoring church asked him to evaluate his ministry and send them a report. He realized that during this time no one had come to Christ! This fact prompted him to ask a fundamental question, “How should I measure my ministry outcomes with the Kurds?”
While I was listening to his story, I sympathized with him and asked myself, “If I was him, how would I measure my ministry effectiveness?” In an arena that measures success economically or spiritually, how is success being measured in Christian ministry endeavors? How can one determine when a given mission’s approach has produced a good return? For too long in Missions, financial stewardship or evangelical fruit such as the number of baptisms, and disciples have sufficed as the sole measuring tools for missional effectiveness. Increased economic pressures, however, such as the triple bottom line (e.g., financial, social, and spiritual) have pushed us to consider more than the quantifiable elements of spiritual reconciliation or financial flourishing, as well as to evaluate outcomes of social transformation, i.e., to be accountable. For effective ministry, social transformation also needs to be measured beside the use of common metrics associated with the spiritual and/or economic.
These questions and basic practices form the basis for my recent book, Faith in the Marketplace: Measuring the Impact of Church Based Entrepreneurial Approaches to Holistic Mission. This book seeks to identify key factors for holistic evaluation based on the salient characteristics that emerged in the case study of three church-based entrepreneurial ministries studied in San Francisco (Redeemer Community Church), Selma, Alabama (Blue Jean Church), and Lynch, Kentucky (Meridzo Ministries). A case study enabled me to study both the surface manifestations of the operation of church based entrepreneurial approaches to holistic mission as well as the underlying processes. This micro-level approach revealed how the leaders determined success and effectiveness. As the result of the studies, readers will note a new way of defining of success and effectiveness by exploring outcomes and impacts of holistic Christian ministries. Additionally, various paths to live out a public church and narrow the gap between the Kingdom of God and a not-yet-redeemed world will be identified.
In this book, we reveal that a true measure of success and effectiveness needs to be based on transformation of evangelical, economic, and social relationships. In other words, the ministries need to frame their ultimate goal in terms of the Triune God’s work through the Father within all creation, through Christ within the reign of God, and through the Spirit within the coming Kingdom of God. The key to these metrics is the intersection between the immanent Trinity (the inner life of the Triune God) and economic Trinity (the Triune God’s missional movement in the world).
Other books and missional practitioners may discuss how to start a missional church or public church, but fall short in providing specific end points or guidelines for assessing a church’s present state. This book provides metrics reflecting a more theological and missiological standard by which to measure a missional church’s effectiveness and success. It is my hope that this book is able to assist church leaders and practitioners to move away from the traditional numbers-based models to the use of a relational framework and from static numbers to dynamic relationships.
In this day of frequent jeremiads blasted out in tweets of 140 characters or less, sincere conversation is endangered. Yet, deep, intentional conversation in our reflections on the mission of God and the participation of Christians in it is crucial for Missions' continued relevance in the 21st century. When such conversation occurs, it is a gift; it is often a surprise.
Such is the conversation I have enjoyed with Carolyn C. Wason for the last three years. In October 2014, the Evangelical Missiological Society issued a call for papers concerning contemporary problems in mission. In my view, a critical problem is the wide disaffection of millennials toward Christianity and even of many Christian millennials toward Western Missions. They ask how Western Missions, burdened by past abuses, can possibly be a viable vehicle of God's message of grace today, and even if Missions is positively transformed, what assurance is there that its practitioners might not be as equally blind to their errors as were previous generations of missionaries?
In 2014, Carolyn happened to be a student - an exceptional one, now pursuing graduate studies in anthropology at the University of Oxford - in her final year of the Missiology and Anthropology program at Eastern University. As a Christian millennial skeptical of Christian Missions, Carolyn bravely accepted my invitation to have an extended conversation concerning this generation problem facing mission. Our paper was in the form of a dialogue between a millennial Christian and a member of the baby boomer generation, the latter convinced of the value of Christian Missions. Our consequent dialogue, which occurred in writing, was not easy. It was often hard to really hear what the other was saying, and to respond concisely and meaningfully. We couldn't see at that time; however, our real work lay ahead.
The outcome of our six-month conversation was a paper entitled, "A Cross-Generational Conversation Concerning the Future of Western Missions." First presented in the northeast regional conference of the EMS, it was subsequently chosen to be presented at the EMS national conference in Dallas, Texas in September 2015. At the conference we were assigned the unfortunate hour of eight o'clock in the morning on Sunday - the last day of the conference. I advised Carolyn who Skyped in from Maine not to be discouraged if only five or ten people attended. To our surprise the room was packed with more in the hallway! The paper generated robust discussion - even debate! Millennials expressed that ours was the only presentation in the conference they really wanted to hear! Afterward, as Carolyn and I reflected on the unusually strong reception in two missiological conferences, we concluded the topic was vital and our conversation should be continued.
And so, Millennials and the Mission of God: A Prophetic Dialogue was born. What began as a project of a few months became a two-year dialogue. As Carolyn writes in the preface:
As it turns out, writing a thoughtful critique of another author's work is considerably more difficult when that author critiques you right back. But that was the point of our paper, and it's the point of this book. This is a conversation. Not the kind of conversation that any of us normally have-the kind where I'm only silent because I'm waiting for my turn to reply and not because I'm actually listening; where I talk over you and you talk over me, and we all end up further affirming our own beliefs and denouncing that of the other. I can say with certainty that my views on Western Missions (and my views on Baby-Boomers) have changed since we began this, and I suspect Andrew could say the same. I hope, Reader, that whatever your own views are, you will enter this conversation willing to stand up for what you believe as well as being willing to change your mind.
Our conversation's focus was the validity of Christian Missions. In exploring this we discussed important related topics: can millennials find their place in the church? Is there a stream in Christian spirituality, which millennials might authentically embrace, that subsequently might facilitate the renewal of Christian Missions? What place does social justice and sabbath rest have in Christian Missions? How can evangelism separate itself from the political agenda of many conservative evangelicals?
Carolyn and I do not pretend to offer definitive answers to these questions. We are starting a conversation, and we hope readers will lend their voices to this ongoing dialogue. The future of Christian Missions is at stake!
Andrew F. Bush, DMin., is the chair of the Global Studies and Mission Department at Eastern University. He speaks widely in churches, conferences and colleges. He has served internationally for thirty years and remains active in mission service in the Philippines and Palestine.
Andrew F. Bush and Carolyn C. Wason, Millennials and the Mission of God: A Prophetic Dialogue (Wipf & Stock: Eugene, Ore., 2017) p xv.