Advancing Models of Mission: Evaluating the Past and Looking to the Future
Ebook
Overview
Weighing Approaches to Finish the Task
Christians have been reflecting on best practices for as long as they have been engaging in missions. Practitioners have developed diverse strategies to promote the spread of the Gospel—such as indigenous church planting, disciple-making movements, community development, dynamically equivalent Bible translations, and chronological Bible storytelling. These models began as creative analyses of the mission endeavor, in light of the current cultural context. As that context shifts, it is also important to critically re-examine these models. Advancing Models of Mission reflects on the missionaries and models of the past and reconsiders current models, all with the aim of looking toward the future of evangelical mission.
This compendium of thirteen essays tackles such timely and difficult questions as:
- How does globalization challenge the 10/40 window model?
- How does hybridity and diaspora change the way we think about people groupsand identity formation?
- How does the colonial history in Africa affect believers’ connection with globalevangelism?
Readers can learn about the contexts of the past that shaped our current missiological models while listening to diverse voices describe how those models are experienced considering our changing realities. Through honest analysis of the past few centuries of missionary movement, Advancing Models of Mission provides hope for the future.
Preface, by Kenneth Nehrbass, Aminta Arrington, and Narry Santos
Part 1: Looking Back: Missionaries and Models from the Past
Chapter 1: “How shall they hear?” A History of the Use of Romans 10:14 among Missionaries to China, as Seen in the Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal, 1868 to 1938, by Matthew Steven Winslow
Chapter 2: Evangelicalism: A Transnational Movement in East Africa during the Twentieth Century, by Emma Wild-Wood
Chapter 3: The Future of the Evangelical Missionary Movement Must Include an Accurate Portrayal of Her Past, by Linda Saunders
Chapter 4: Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg Models Holistic Missions: Pietism in Eighteenth-Century Southern India, by Robert L. Gallagher
Chapter 5: The Proper Place for a Woman, by Xenia L. Chan and Lisa H. Pak
Part 2: Revisiting Long-Held Models
Chapter 6: Five Decades, Four Questions, and One Which Remains: Queries Concerning the Unreached People Group Movement, by Ken Baker
Chapter 7: To the Ends of the Earth through Strategic Urban Centers: Reexamining the Missions Mandate in Light of the New Testament’s Use of the Old Testament, by Michael D. Crane
Chapter 8: Missiology through the Lens of Disability: Assessing the Unreached People Group Idea, by Rochelle Scheuermann
Chapter 9: Hybridity, Borderlands, and Paul Hiebert: A Latinx Missiologist Reexamines Critical Contextualization, by Martin Rodriguez
Chapter 10: Social Action as Christian Social Apologetics Through the Lives of Pandita Ramabai and Amy Carmichael, by Allan Varghese
Part 3: Moving Forward: Missiological Models for Missions in the Future
Chapter 11: Old Questions, New Answers: Tensions of Continuity and Change in Approaches to the Missio Dei, by Annette R. Harrison
Chapter 12: Evangelical Mission in an Age of Global Christianity, by Todd M. Johnson
Appendix: Lessons in Mission Strategy from the Last Fifty Years: Thirty Mission Trends, Movements, and Models, by Luis K. Bush and Tom Steffen
About the Contributors
The goal of historical study is to gain an accurate view of the past. And when we tell the truth about the past, we are forced to rejoice and lament. Ultimately, doing history teaches us to be wise. In this volume, the authors present the people, places, and practices of historic Christian mission, inviting the church to greater humility, wisdom, and skill as we strive to be faithful servants in God’s mission.
-Edward L. Smither, PhD
- Title: Advancing Models of Mission: Evaluating the Past and Looking to the Future
- Authors: Kenneth Nehrbass, Aminta Arrington, Narry Santos
- Series: Evangelical Missiological Society Series
- Publisher: William Carey Publishing
- Print Publication Date: 2021
- Logos Release Date: 2023
- Pages: 240
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781645084105, 9781645084075, 1645084078, 1645084108
- Resource ID: LLS:9781645084105
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2025-05-19T23:38:35Z
Kenneth Nehrbass (PhD, Biola University) has taught missiology at Liberty University, Biola University, and Belhaven University. He is an anthropology and translation consultant for the Summer Institute of Linguistics in the Pacific Area. He has authored or edited over sixty missiological publications, including Advanced Missiology (Cascade), God’s Image and Global Cultures (Cascade), and Christianity and Animism in Melanesia (William Carey Library Press).
Aminta Arrington (PhD, Biola University) is an associate professor of intercultural studies at John Brown University in Siloam Springs, Arkansas. Aminta is the author of Songs of the Lisu Hills: Practicing Christianity in Southwest China.
Narry F. Santos (PhDs, Dallas Theological Seminary and University of the Philippines) is assistant professor of practical ministry and intercultural leadership at the seminary of Tyndale University and vice president of the Evangelical Missiological Society Canada. He is the author and editor of several books.