Mission in the 21st Century (Photo: © Darton, Longman and Todd) Rowan Williams commends
Mission in the 21st Century for its insights into “the new pattern of theological and missional migration” -- one in which “we have to recognise that the ‘West’ is the destination, not the point of origin”.
In the Foreword, he makes it clear such recognition does not require us to judge the classical missionary movement, from the 16th to the 20th century, of Europeans to other regions of the world as just ‘a deeply compromised phenomenon’ and write off its achievements.
The Archbishop of Canterbury(Photo: © CMS)Rather it obliges us to acknowledge that in the modern world we cannot take it for granted that there is a natural centre, or a natural ‘flow’ of resource and information and wisdom from one part to another.
So, as far-sighted mission thinkers have concluded before, “…mission must now be from all and to all”.
“Mission,” the archbishop points out, “is not only the carrying of good news; it is the willingness to hear good news as the Word goes abroad and is embedded in culture after culture. We see more and more of its depths as we see more and more of what it does in diverse lives and worlds.”
Cathy Ross(Photo: © CMS)Cathy Ross, who oversees CMS’ Crowther Centre for Mission Education, jointly edited the book with ‘mission doyen’ Andrew Walls as she describes him.
A disparate set of authors from around the world, including Dr Beverley Haddad, Dr Jehu Hanciles, Professor Lamin Sanneh, Dr Ken Miyamoto and CMS General Secretary Tim Dakin, was invited to contribute.
Professor Andrew Walls himself concludes the collection with an overview of the context and some of the surprises of the last five hundred years of mission, “the Spirit blowing where it will”.
Professor Andrew Walls(Photo: © CMS)The book contains a series of pairs of articles unpacking mission thinking and praxis that put the Five Marks of Mission into perspective.
The Five Marks are: to proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom; to teach, baptise and nurture new believers; to respond to human need by loving service; to seek to transform unjust structures of society; to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth.
Cathy explains, “The first article of each pair is a more reflective, theological article, which explores the mark [in question] in some depth. The second article is more descriptive and has more of a praxis orientation. So together these articles explore how a particular mark is worked out on the ground in the writers’ particular contexts.”
The hope, she writes, is to draw out the missiological depth and practical engagement that each mark implies.
She asks the reader to consider the collection a taonga, ‘a treasured thing’, because it grants a glimpse into “how other people follow Jesus in their contexts and to listen and learn from other travellers along the Way”.
Making much the same point, the archbishop quotes 2 Corinthians: “We give what we have been given so that those to whom we give may become givers to us.”
He emphasises that the book “…is a summons to serious, hopeful and humble engagement with what God is doing and saying in the growth of faith outside Europe and the North Atlantic, and in the new mobility of populations as boundaries come down.”
However, as he notes succinctly: “…the greatest positive thing in all this…is that…the Bible hasn’t finished with us.”
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