Saturday, April 29, 2006
emerging AD:missions introduction
I am beginning a series of posts called emerging AD:missions; reflecting on the emerging church in light of mission thinking. I will be using the book, Readings in World Mission, by Norman Thomas (sadly out of print). It is a companion to David Bosch’s Transforming Mission. As a companion it offers 170 short excerpts of mission. From Augustine to Mother Teresa; Luther to Leonardo Boff, we catch insight into mission thinking in 6 continents over the last 2000 years (ie AD Jesus). Each excerpt is a page or 2, so it’s easy to dip into and easy to blog in response to. There are 170 excerpts, so it will be a regular, but not necessarily rapid process. I will blog about lessons for emerging church and emerging mission; my emerging church ad:missions in light of the mission insights gifted to us by our history.
I have been stimulated to do this by Don Carson. In his book Becoming conversant with the emerging church (ie some books of Steve Chalke and Brian McLaren) he concludes his first chapter by noting that issues of gospel and culture are central to understanding the emerging church. Ahh, I thought, surely having discerned this, he will critically read the emerging church by using the gospel and culture insights of mission history. Sadly the answer was no. Hence these series of posts; emerging AD:missions; using the insights of mission history to “read” the emerging church. I’m looking forward to the stimulation.
For the archive of all the posts; go here.
Bosch’s “Transfroming Mission” was a “milestone” of a book for most of us in our ordination training. Looking forward to the series, thanks for taking the time to do it.
Comment by Nigel — April 30, 2006 @ 7:34 am