I teach and research on (1) the Bible and mission and (2) children-at-risk in the Bible and contemporary society. I am Lecturer and Head of Research and Consultancy at All Nations Christian College in the UK. You can find out what I'm up to on the Bible and Mission website and also my weekly newsletter: https://timjdavy.substack.com/
The ever-eagle-eyed Antony Billington recently noted that Wright’s essay has now been published in the Summer 2011 volume of the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, and is freely available on their website under the slightly changed title: Truth with a Mission: Reading All Scripture Missiologically. It is in an essay format rather than a study booklet and doesn’t have the questions for reflection that are in the Grove booklet, but otherwise it is exactly the same.
P.S. And do check out Antony’s blog if you’ve not done so before. He writes most days and is particularly good at spotting when journals are published, often noting when there are freely accessible articles.
an interface between socially engaged biblical and theological scholars, organic intellectuals, and local communities of the poor, working-class, and marginalised. Together we use biblical and theological resources for individual and social transformation.
In particular, check out two pages in the resources section: Academic Resources and Practical Resources. I’ve listed the contents below for each but you’ll need to go to their website to access the links:
John 9 and HIV
Matthew 20 and Day Labourers
Esther and Contextual Bible Study method.
1. Other academic resources
James, G.L. Tell it like it is! The case to include the story of the rape of Tamar in children’s Bibles as an awareness tool.
Kumalo, S. “THE PEOPLE SHALL GOVERN”: NOW THEY HAVE ONLY THE POSSIBILITY TO VOTE
Kumalo, S. The palace, the parish and the power: Church-State relations in Rwanda and the genocide
Kumalo, S.Transforming South African Methodism: The”Journey to the New Land” Programme 1992-1997.
West, G. O. (1997). Reading on the Boundaries: reading 2 Samuel 21: 1-14 with Rizpah. Scriptura, 63, 527-537.
West, G. O. (2006a). Contextual Bible reading: a South African case study. Analecta Bruxellensia, 11, 131-148.
West, G. O., & Zondi-Mabizela, P. (2004). The Bible story that became a campaign: the Tamar Campaign in South Africa (and beyond). Ministerial Formation, 103, 4-12.
West, G. O., Zondi-Mabizela, P., Maluleke, M., Khumalo, H., Matsepe, P. S., & Naidoo, M. (2004).Rape in the House of David: the biblical story of Tamar as a resource for transformation Agenda, 61, 36-41.
West, G. O. (2007). Thabo Mbek’s Bible: the role of religion in the South African public realm after liberation October, draft paper.
3. Tamar Campaign: Contextual Bible Study Manual on Gender-based Violence
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
4. “Economic Matters” Contextual Bible Studies series
5. “Redemptive Masculinity” Contextual Bible Studies series
6. Workshop presentations of Contextual Bible Study methodology
“Mark 12″ Contextual Bible Study
“Redemptive Masculinities” Contextual Bible Study
7. Contextual Bible Studies on “Land”
8. Bible studies by Prof Tinyiko Maluleke (Unisa) published in Challenge Magazine
Reconciliation: its Beneficiaries and its Victims
Behold and Beware! The Poor are Standing at the Gates!
Beyond the Politics of the Stomach
Three Models of Manhood: In Search of Real Men
Crowd Control or Compassionate Ministry? Aspects of a New Model of Ministry
Christmas: What’s Love Got to Do with It?
Defenseless Baby Jesus in the Midst of the Defenseless Children of the World
Maids, Madams and Adams: the Unfinished Story of Martha and Mary
9. An Indian contextual Bible study on state land acquisition
Tyndale House recently posted a page highlighting a video made by the BBC during one of the discussions of the ESV translation committee in Cambridge last year. It is only four minutes long but illustrates very nicely some of the complexities of translating terms from one language to another (in this case the term, ‘slave’).
What are the different terms for ‘slave’ in the Bible, and the connotations each had?
What are the connotations of the different ways we could translate these terms, especially when you consider the sociocultural, political and historical, and metaphorical associations of slavery? Should they be rendered ‘slave’, ‘servant’, ‘bondservant’, etc?
Slavery is the particular case study here but the same could be said about many other terms.
All the links given there are for freely available, online reviews of the book.
I am inferring from this recent trend that a lot of classes in Bible Colleges, seminaries and other training programmes are starting around now and they have Wright’s important book on the curriculum. This is great news!
While there is a growing body of literature on the missional interpretation (see our Bible and Mission resources section for details), Wright’s The Mission of God is still, I think, the most significant work on the subject and, as such, is essential reading. It is on the reading lists for undergrads and postgrads at Redcliffe and is a core text in the ‘Reading the Bible Missionally’ module on our MA in Bible and Mission programme (indeed we read it cover to cover, alongside other important works).
So, if you are reading The Mission of God in a class this year, whether here at Redcliffe or anywhere else in the world, may you be informed, inspired and changed as a result. May you be more encouraged and engaged in your participation in the mission of God.
P.S. I’d love to know what type of courses are using Wright’s book in different places. Let us know by leaving a comment below.
While looking through the excellent oralstrategies website in preparation for a new module on the Bible and orality I came across an item highlighting the way believers are using henna to communicate the biblical stories. The item linked to the website for South Asian Peoples, which said the following about the ministry:
Henna, a temporary artwork drawn on hands and other parts of the body, is a popular beauty technique in parts of Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Christian women use henna to illustrate Bible stories and share the Gospel in a non-threatening manner.
These pages describe how you can host a henna party in your home or church. Learn how to make henna and draw Bible story illustrations, and how to prepare traditional foods served in henna cultures. Then spend time praying for the women of the world who use henna and the missionaries who serve them.
They highlight links to videos explaining more (see one below), story sets and henna patterns, a guide to making your own henna, and a booklet entitled, ‘Henna and the Gospel’.
Please do check out the website. Even if it is not your thing, or you are unlikely ever to use this particular strategy yourself, just drink in the creativity and be inspired to do something appropriate and imaginative in your own context.
We’ll be looking at this fantastic ministry, along with many others, on Redcliffe’s new module, ‘Story, Song and Social Networks: Bible Engagement and Oral Culture’, which is available to final year students on Redcliffe College’s BA(Hons) Degree in Applied Theology in Intercultural Contexts.
The 1999 essay was presented in Cambridge as a Currents in World Christianity Position Paper. There are some very interesting points, which he expands on in the later book. I ask my students on the Reading the Bible Missionally module of Redcliffe’s MA in Bible and Mission to read both. At some points he differs from people such as Chris Wright, though at others he compliments them well.
Here are a couple of quotes to give you a flavour:
The title that was suggested to me for this lecture could be read in at least two ways, which are certainly not mutually exclusive. One could take it to mean that the church’s practice of mission is a form of scriptural interpretation. The Bible is the sort of text that calls for interpretation not only by means of more text but also by the practice of what it preaches. Could anyone really understand what it means to love enemies without doing it, or at least seeing it done? That the church’s mission in and to the world is the practice of the biblical text in which the text is constantly being interpreted is important, and we shall return to it at the end of the lecture. But it depends, I think, on the other possible meaning of my title. In this case the title refers to a missionary hermeneutic of Scripture, in other words a way of reading the Bible for which mission is the hermeneutical key, much as, for example, liberation is the hermeneutical key for the way of reading the Bible that liberation theology advocates. A missionary hermeneutic of this kind would not be simply a study of the theme of mission in the biblical writings, but a way of reading the whole of Scripture with mission as its central interest and goal. Of course, such a missionary hermeneutic could and should only be one way of reading Scripture among others, since mission itself is not the comprehensive subject of the whole Bible. But a missionary hermeneutic would be a way of reading Scripture which sought to understand what the church’s mission really is in the world as Scripture depicts it and thereby to inspire and to inform the church’s missionary praxis. Such a hermeneutic that reads the Bible with a view to mission should properly be developed in reciprocal relationship with the practice of mission as itself a practice of interpreting Scripture…
The biblical particularity of God’s own narrative identity is non-negotiable. But the effect of its encounter with other narratives is not uniform or predictable since they each have their own particularity. This is where the element of contextualization in a missionary hermeneutic is required. It is also the point at which missionary praxis turns out to be itself a necessary part of a missionary hermeneutic.
the exciting new way for adults to grasp the Bible in it’s entirety, chapter by chapter, and remember it. Unlike anything else, it uses contextual, patterned and linear graphics to help virtually anyone understand the Bible better.
Check out their website for further explanation and samples of their work.
In Richard Bauckham’s excellent Bible and Mission: Christian Witness in a Postmodern World he outlines four different ‘strands’ in the big story or metanarrative of the Bible, which illustrate the idea of movement in the Bible ‘From the One to the Many’:
(1) From Abraham to all the families of the earth
(2) From Israel to all the nations
(3) The king who rules from Zion to the ends of the earth
(4) To all by way of the least
I’ve been listening to Luke’s Gospel on my way home from work recently, which reminded me of this fourth strand (though, of course, each are important themes for Luke).
Here I just want to quote something Bauckham says about the theme, and then point out what this looks like in the early chapters of Luke:
This fourth of our thematic trajectories through the biblical story is a necessary reminder that the church’s mission cannot be indifferent to the inequalities and injustices of the world into which it is sent. The gospel does not come to each person only in terms of some abstracted generality of human nature, but in the realities and differences of their social and economic situations. It engages with the injustices of the world on its way to the kingdom of God. This means that as well as the outward movement of the church’s mission in geographical extension and numerical increase, there must also be this (in the Bible’s imagery) downward movement of solidarity with the people at the bottom of the social scale of importance and wealth. It is to these – the poorest, those with no power or influence, the wretched, the neglected – to whom God has given priority in the kingdom, not only for their own sake, but also for all the rest of us who can enter the kingdom only alongside them. (pp.53-54)
Consider the broken conditions into which the Gospel was announced and Jesus was born; a tiny pocket of a vast and domineering empire
Consider the barren couple to whom John the Baptist was born
Consider young, unmarried Mary
Consider the scorn and scandal
Consider the fragility of human life, of God becoming an embryo
Consider the future task of the baby in Mary’s song, to bring down rulers and raise the humble
Consider the early witnesses of Jesus: marginalised shepherds, frail but hopeful Simeon, and ancient Anna, who had known grief after only seven years of marriage.
When God became flesh he stepped into this broken world. But what Luke expertly portrays in what he says and in what he implies is the brokenness, fragility, grief and oppression endured and caused by real people in space and time.
How did a first-generation Jewish messianic movement develop the momentum to become a dominant religious force in the Western world? The essays here first investigate the roots of God’s mission and the mission of his people in the Old Testament and Second Temple Judaism, specifically in the Psalms, Isaiah, and Daniel. The contributions then discuss the mission of Jesus, and how it continued into the mission of the Twelve, other Jewish believers (in the Gospels, General Epistles, and Revelation), and finally into Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles documented in the book of Acts and his epistles. These essays reach backward into the background of what was to become the Christian mission and forward through the New Testament to the continuing Christian mission and missions today.
Contents
Introduction: Christian Mission: Old Testament Foundations and New Testament Developments – Stanley E. Porter and Cynthia Long Westfall
“Declare His Glory Among the Nations”: The Psalter as Missional Collection – Mark J. Boda
The Book of Daniel and the Roots of New Testament Mission – Brian P. Irwin
Mark, Matthew, and Mission: Faith, Failure, and the Fidelity of Jesus – Michael P. Knowles
A Light to the Nations: Isaiah and Mission in Luke – Craig A. Evans
A Cord of Three Strands: Mission in Acts – Stanley E. Porter and Cynthia Long Westfall
The Content and Message of Paul’s Missionary Teaching – Stanley E. Porter
Paul’s Missionary Strategy: Goals, Methods, and Realities – Eckhard J. Schnabel
The Hebrew Mission: Voices from the Margin? – Cynthia Long Westfall
Bible and Mission: Missiology and Biblical Scholarship in Dialogue – Michael W. Goheen
Endorsements
“For too long now biblical scholarship and missiology have been progressing in splendid isolation with little reference to each other. This sparkling collection of essays not only demonstrates the interdependence of these disciplines but also takes seriously the Hebrew Scriptures and Second Temple Judaism as fertile soil in which the seeds for Christian mission were sown, came to flower in the New Testament, and continue to bear fruit in the ongoing global mission of the church at the beginning of the twenty-first century.”
—Trevor J. Burke
author of Adopted into God’s Family: Exploring a Pauline Metaphor
“Biblical scholars and missiologists have much to learn from each other. This work, with contributions from notable scholars, offers some fresh biblical insights for thinking about Christian mission.”
—Craig Keener
author of Romans: A New Covenant Commentary (Cascade 2009)
“We have needed a work that presents the development of Mission from Israel to the early church. These essays, written by leading scholars in both fields, admirably accomplish that goal. Here is a work that covers the field, presents missional roots as well as strategy, is very readable, and would serve as a fine textbook both for courses and personal study. I highly recommend this book.”
—Grant Osborne
author of The Hermeneutical Spiral: A Comprehensive Introduction to Biblical Interpretation
Lately, we’ve been developing the Bible and Mission resources section of the microsite. Last week Wycliffe Bible Translators’ Eddie Arthur suggested that this section would “keep anyone in reading material for the next decade or two.” We are working on it Eddie!!
Here are some blogs we’ve come across that have dealt in some way with the themes of the Bible and mission, and missional hermeneutics. Let us know if there are more:
I’ve noticed in the last few days that we have had a lot of hits on a post a I wrote back in February giving 
In Richard Bauckham’s excellent 
Thanks to 
Lately, we’ve been developing the 
Centre for the Study of Bible & Mission 