Newbigin's Gospel in a Pluralist Society: Summary

A while back I was invited to speak to a group called Theology on Tap about "The Gospel in a Post-Christian World.  The topic, it seemed to me, begged two questions.  The first is “What is the gospel?” and the second is “Where are we? What is this post-Christian world in which we live?”  Of course, putting those two questions next to each other raises a third:  Does when and where you are affect what the gospel is?  Does context matter for an understanding of the gospel?  Is the gospel different now than it used to be?  If so, how?  Or is the gospel something fixed, maybe a permanent set of doctrinal propositions or a universal set of ethical norms?

I’m going to approach each of these important questions through the work of Lesslie Newbigin who spent decades thinking and writing about each of them.  For some background on Lesslie Newbigin--missionary, bishop, and ecumenist--check out this biography and legacy post. 

Several scholars, including his authoritative biographer, have suggested that Newbigin’s most important legacy was in his call for a true “missionary encounter with Western culture,” which brings us back to the three questions I began with.  What is the gospel?  Where are we? And does context matter for our understanding of the gospel?  Most of what I will share can be found in a book Newbigin published in 1989 titled, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society.

Where are we?
We are going to begin where Newbigin does, with that second question: Where are we?  And by “we,” I mean those who live in the West--Europe, the U.S. Canada, Australia.  What kind of cultural context are we present-day Westerners in?

Hendrik Kraemer's "The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World" (1938): Summary

Hendrik Kraemer (1888-1965) was a lay Dutch missiologist and prominent figure in the ecumenical movement from Dutch Reformed Church in the Netherlands.  Kraemer worked for the Dutch Bible Society in Indonesia (1922-1937), was professor of the history and phenomenology of religion at Leiden University (1937-1947) and served as the first director of the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey (1948-1955).  Kraemer was an excellent linguist with a deep understanding of Islam, of the importance of independent churches, the role of the laity, and the encounter between God and man in the midst of social and religious crises. 

The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World (1938)
This 477 page tome was commissioned for the World Missionary Conference held in Tamram, India in 1938, and it had a wide impact on overseas mission.  Its task was to “state the fundamental position of the Christian Church as a witness-bearing body in the modern world, relating this to different conflicting views of the attitude to be taken by Christians towards other faiths, and dealing in detail with the evangelistic approach to the great non-Christian faiths” (v).

Whose Mission? What Church? Hoekendijk, Blauw, and the WCC on the Missionary Church

This post explores the way the church and mission are related and developed in three documents written between 1951 and 1967: “The Church in Missionary Thinking” by J. C. Hoekendijk (1952), The Missionary Nature of the Church by Johannes Blauw (1962), and The Church for Others, published by the World Council of Churches (1967).  In conclusion, I offer reflections on the resonant and discordant perspectives therein.

In “The Church in Missionary Thinking,” J.C. Hoekendijk lamented how ecclesiology had, in recent decades, swallowed up mission.  It had done this, he points out, by using such concise verbiage as that offered by Dr. Durr: “Mission is the road from the Church to the Church” (324).  Indeed, the church had, in his view, both eliminated the world by making it a “a sort of ecclesiastical training-ground” and dealt with the kingdom by either subsuming it within its ecclesiastical bounds or relegating it to far off in the eschatological distance (324).  Hoekendijk labeled this way of thinking church-ism, and asserted that younger churches had assimilated it to the point of expecting an independent church to be a “Church-free-from-the-Mission” (327). 

Missionary Methods: St. Paul's or Ours? by Roland Allen: Summary

In my assessment, no other early 20th century missiologist is more in vogue than Roland Allen.  His books are being widely recommended and read in missional church and church planting circles, so if you care about these things, you should get acquainted.  This post offers a brief profile of Allen himself, as well as summary of one of his most celebrated books.

Allen (1868-1947) was an Anglican minister who served as a missionary in China with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel from 1895 to 1903 and later worked in East Africa.  He was born in England as the son of an Anglican minster, but orphaned early in life.  In 1895 he was sent by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel

Viral Churches in 19th Century Missiology

In 2010, Ed Stetzer and Warren Bird published Viral Churches, sounding a call for church multiplication movements through "churches planting churches that in turn plant churches."  As trendy as the title sounds, its idea is far from original. Prominent missiologists dating back to at least the 19th century have called for the development of self-propagating churches as a key objective of mission work.  In this context, self-propagating or self-extending describes churches that after having been started by missionaries, take up their own evangelistic and mission efforts.  This brief essay will draw attention to the calls for viral churches in the work of Rufus Anderson, Henry Venn, and William Taylor.

Lesslie Newbigin (1909-1998): Biography and Legacy

Missionary, Missiologist and Ecumenist

Biography

James Edward Lesslie Newbigin was born on December 8, 1909 in Newcastle-on-Tyne, England to Annie Affleck and Edward R. Newbigin, a shipping merchant.  His earliest memories were happy ones, with a caring mother and a devout and politically radical father.  He attended a Quaker boarding school called Leighton Park in Reding, Berkshire.  By the time he headed to Queen’s College, Cambridge in 1928 he had left his religious upbringing but not dismissed it as irrational.  In the summer of 1929, at age 19, while serving the unemployed of South Wales, Lesslie’s sleep was blessed with a vision of the Cross that touched the depths of human misery and offered hope.  He was quickly drawn into evangelistic and ecumenical relationships and in 1930, at a Student Christian Movement (SCM) gathering in Stanwick, experienced a call to ordained ministry.  On completion of his degree, he moved to Glasgow to work as staff secretary for the SCM. 

Pauline Precedent in 19th Century Protestant Mission Thought

Two thirds of the New Testament was written, it appears, by a missionary named Paul.  Furthermore, a large portion of the book of Acts is devoted to chronicling his missionary endeavors.  Thus it should come as no surprise that Protestant missionaries have over the centuries appealed to his model and practices as they shaped and justified their own.  This essay considers how notable Protestant missiologists, including William Carey, William Taylor, John Nevius, and Roland Allen, employed Pauline precedent in their own literature. 

Ed Stetzer and Alan Hirsch on the Missional Manifesto

As the Father has sent me, so I send you. ~ Jesus

Ed Stetzer begins with this foundational saying of Jesus in order to launch into his discussion with Alan Hirsch. These two, along with Tim Keller, Dan Kimball, Linda Bergquist and others, are the framers of the Missional Manifesto, which they discuss in this video.

Here is the text of the Missional Manifesto:

Christianity Rediscovered by Vincent Donovan: Summary & Review

To put words in the mouth of Vincent J. Donovan:  After a futile century of missionary strategies in Africa that centered on purchasing slaves or educating Africans, I felt compelled to pursue a different, more direct approach: to simply go to the Maasai people and talk to them about Christ (13).  I was driven by one conviction:  Christianity is of value to the world and all people have a right to hear it (1, 133).   The Maasai are an elegant, polygamous, cow-herding, monotheistic people nonetheless beset by fears about evil spirits.  When I arrived, I was met repeatedly with the question “If this is why you came, why did you wait so long to bring the message?” 

I began by expressing my belief that the Maasai were very pious already knew about God (20).  From this launching point, I attempted to convey only the essential message of Christianity, removing from it not only the accretions of Western culture (54) but also elements of biblical cultures that would prove a stumbling block such as the agricultural propaganda of the creation