Category: Bible and Mission

In order to understand God’s Word we need to understand God’s mission.

In order to understand God’s mission we need to understand God’s Word.

In this series of posts I have been setting out our approach to teaching the Bible from a missional perspective here at Redcliffe College.

• Part one gave a basic overview of the approach. 
• Part two looked at the Biblical modules in the first year of our Applied Theology in Intercultural Contexts Degree programme (the CertHE stage)
• Part three looked at the Biblical modules in the second year of the degree (the DipHE stage).

In today’s post I’ll talk about the final year of the degree. As well as a placement and a personal development report, in their final year of the degree students must take four modules from the following list and also submit a dissertation. 

• Story, song and social networks: Bible engagement and oral culture
• Missional texts: Isaiah
• The Christian encounters with postmodernism and globalisation
• Global philosophies and theologies of religion
• The Kingdom of God: mission on the edge
• Just mission: Justice and transformation in a complex world
• Between the global and the local: missional theologies in context
• The art of Christian Soulcare and companionship
• Leadership, leaders and the global context
• Communicating Christ to a complex world II

The two main ‘Bible’ modules are Story, Song and Social Networks’ and ‘Missional Texts: Isaiah’. (The Kingdom of God has loads of biblical material in it as well, especially from the NT).

The Isaiah module aims to equip students with a more in-depth understanding of the content of Isaiah and engage with a number of important issues concerning the book’s background, theology, interpretation and significance for the thinking and practice of mission. It covers: The function of the book of Isaiah as part of a missional reading of the Bible; Prophets and prophecy in Israel and the Ancient Near East; Key issues in understanding and interpreting Isaiah, including historical and cultural contexts, genre, structure, intertextuality, literary features and theological themes; Case-studies in exegeting passages from Isaiah; The contemporary application of Isaiah, especially in relation to the thinking and practice of mission.

Story, Song and Social Networks aims to equip students with an understanding of the thinking and practice of communicating the Bible to individuals and communities of oral learners in a variety of cultural contexts. It covers: The nature of orality and the challenges and opportunities of engaging oral learners with the Bible; The increasing use of Bible storying, song and other creative approaches in Bible Engagement; Case studies in Bible Engagement (sometimes called Scripture Engagement or Scripture Use) in a variety of contexts (both traditional oral cultures and in cultures where people prefer to engage with information in more creative ways than reading books); The role of web-based social networks in Bible Engagement.

So, students get to grips with both mission in the Bible and the Bible in mission. By this stage of their training it is vital that they are thinking not only about the richness and complexities of the content of the Word of God. They should also be thinking through the richness and complexities of communicating that Word to others. Orality seems to be a very helpful angle for this because it is so central a part of how most of the world communicates; the Cape Town Commitment did a good job of highlighting this. Indeed, in the CTC they call on colleges ‘to provide curricula that will train pastors and missionaries in oral methodologies.’ For more on this see this post.

Next in the series I will look at the MA in Bible and Mission.

One of our aims as a centre is to provide or make people aware of material on the Bible and mission. You will find a link to our resources section here: Bible and Mission resources.

In particular I’d like to highlight the mountain of material available through our Bible and Mission Books and Articles section. If you are preparing to study, teach or preach on the Bible and mission over the next few months I hope it will be of much use to you.

In one of his regular round-ups of Bible and Mission blog activity, Wycliffe Bible Translators’ Eddie Arthur described our resourcing section as ‘exhaustive’ and keeping ‘anyone in reading material for the next decade or two.’ We’ll keep adding to the list and, in time, will look to differentiate it so that it doesn’t become unwieldy.

Happy studying!

The World Evangelical Alliance have made available Thomas Shcirrmacher’s collection of essays, World Mission: Heart of Christianity, which touches on a number of important Bible and Mission themes, as illustrated by the blurb: ‘One of the leading evangelical professors of mission and mission activist in Germany shows in a fascinating way, how the essence of God, of the Bible and of Christian faith is centered in World Mission.’

You can download the book as a pdf file here: World Mission: Heart of Christianity

Here is the contents

Romans as a Charter of World Mission: A Lesson in the Relation of Systematic Theology and Missiology (1993)

Paul: Theologian and missionary; The forgotten frame of Romans; Dogmatics and world Mission; World mission the fulfillment of the Old Testament; Reaching the unreached

‘Missio Dei’ – God, the First Missionary (1994)

Biblical Texts on Mission – Seven Lessons

Missions in the Old Testament Prophets; Missions in the Book of Jonah; Missions in Book of Joel; Missions in the Book of Daniel; Daniel as missionary to the Heathen; God’s worldwide kingdom is coming; Old Testament Arguments for New Testament Missions; Missions in the Gospel of John; Missions in the Gospel of Matthew

Biblical Reasons for Evangelical Missions: 31 Propositions

Part I: World Missions are an essential part of Christianity; Part II. Missions and Cultural Diversity; Part III. Conversion and Social Change

An Evangelical View of Missions – A Summary (1995)

Jesus as Master Educator

1. Teaching and Life; 2. The Training of the Twelve Apostles; 3. Paul and his COLLEAGUES; 4. Having a role model, being a role model

Social Responsibility in the New Testament Church according to Acts 6

The Trinity in the Old Testament and Dialogue with Jews and Muslims (1991)

1. The problem; 2. The Trinity in the Old Testament; 3. Ethics and trinitarian monotheism versus monistic monotheism

Postmillennialism and Missions

Great Missiologists

Gisbertus Voetius; Aurelius Augustinus; Theodor Christlieb; Missions in Martin Luthers Thinking; Martin Bucer – The German Who Gave England its Liturgy

Great Commission

The Great Commission as climax of the four Gospels; The Great Commission and the OT; The content; History; Bibliography

The Gospels as Evidence of the Necessity for Cultural Adaptation in the Missionary Proclamation (Together with Frank Koppelin)

Missions in light of cultural diversity; A Comparison with the Koran; The Recipients of the Four Gospels; The Gospel of Matthew

 

Thanks to LICC’s ever-informative Antony Billington who highlighted this.

We recently had an intensive Hebrew Week here at Redcliffe. There were two tracks: a group of beginners getting to grips with the language for the first time, and a group of intermediates who were wanting to consolidate and take on their prior learning.

I was struck once again as the week went on by the outrageous privilege we English speakers have when it comes to the resources we have at our disposal. If you don’t get on with one Hebrew Grammar book there are plenty of others to choose from. But it’s not just the abundance of textbooks that we enjoy.

Inevitably on a week like that the question comes up, ‘So why do we need so many versions of the Bible?’. My response of late is to say, ‘We don’t!!’ Of course I then qualify this by saying it is a wonderful privilege to have different versions appropriate for different types of reading (study, devotional, public reading, etc). It is really nice to have these but we don’t need them in the same way that a third of a billion people still need the Scriptures in their own languages.

Thanks to Scripture Engagement for highlighting this story. The Jesus Film Project are working on how they can make the film available in ways that will engage users of mobile and digital technology.

As revolutionary as Bill Bright’s original vision was to reach the world through the university campus, so the new Digital Media app* could have just as much potential to transform the world. Tens of millions of people in closed nations will be able to see and hear the gospel on their smartphones or video tablets in their heart language─no matter where they live or how dangerous it may be for Christians there. And people can link anyone to the app through Facebook, a blog or a Tweet with Twitter.

The Jesus Film is not without its challenges (see some of the articles discussing the issue of the ‘visual predicament of the film in our Bible and Orality resources section) but, particularly in certain contexts, it is still a wonderful tool for the Gospel. It is great to see it being used in increasingly innovative ways.

In my previous post on the GOCN forum on missional hermeneutics at SBL, I included the forum’s self description, which included their framework for a missional reading of Scripture.

I think the framework deserves a post in its own right. The discipline of missional hermeneutics is still in its infancy and many ‘missional’ questions could be asked of any text. So it is helpful that the group is providing a way forward on this by delineating several helpful (though not exhaustive) questions. I paraphrase the questions below (students take note!).

To really get where these questions are coming from it would be useful to read the background to the forum’s work which can be most usefully found in George Hunsberger’s 2009 paper, ’Proposals for a Missional Hermeneutic: Mapping a Conversation‘,Gospel and Our Culture Newsletter eSeries, 2 (January 2009). [Subsequently published as G. ‘Proposals for a Missional Hermeneutic: Mapping a Conversation’, Missiology, 39:3 (July 2011), 309-321.]

Anyway, here is there framework, which I have put in the form of questions. What do you think about them? What would you change or add?

(1) how does the biblical text renders the identity of the missio Dei, the God who is engaged in mission to the whole creation?;

(2) how has the biblical text been shaped for the purpose of forming a people of God who are called to participate in God’s mission to the creation?

(3) how does the biblical text evoke and challenge a missionally located community’s interpretive readings and questions?;

(4) how does biblical text relate the received tradition to a particular context in light of the good news of the reign of God in Jesus Christ?;

(5) how does the biblical text discloses its fullest meaning only when read together with the culturally and socially ‘other’?

One of the main catalysts in the development of a missional reading of the Bible has been the annual gathering at the Society of Biblical Literature of the Gospel and Our Culture Network forum on missional hermeneutics.

This forum describes itself as exploring:

intersections of missiology, ecclesiology, and biblical interpretation, focusing on hermeneutical issues that arise in view of the Church’s missional character. In particular, presenters and participants at the Forum explore how faithful interpretation of Scripture needs to pay attention to a number of interlocking realities in the text: (1) the ways in which the biblical text renders the identity of the missio Dei, the God who is engaged in mission to the whole creation; (2) the ways in which the biblical text is shaped for the purpose of forming a people of God who are called to participate in God’s mission to the creation; (3) the ways in which the biblical text evokes and challenges a missionally located community’s interpretive readings and questions; (4) the ways in which the biblical text relates the received tradition to a particular context in light of the good news of the reign of God in Jesus Christ; and (5) the ways in which the biblical text discloses its fullest meaning only when read together with the culturally and socially ‘other.’

For this year’s forum the theme is ‘Reading Genesis 1-11 Missionally’. On this the forum states:

These foundational texts from Genesis disclose important truths about the nature of God and God’s mission to the world, and about the identity and vocation of the people of God, who are called to participate in this gracious mission. Proposals for papers are invited (in the form of one-page abstracts) which engage a specific passage or set of passages within Genesis 1-11—in view of the hermeneutical framework identified above—and which explore the extent to which such a missional approach to the biblical text illuminates important dimensions of the text.

It is great to see the forum tackling and OT text, especially one so foundational as Genesis 1-11. At Redliffe we have a 2nd year undergraduate module called, ‘Missional Texts: Psalms and Genesis 1-11’. I hope that the results of the forum will be published in one form or another so that we can benefit from reflections of this exciting group.

The Henry Martyn Centre in Cambridge has some fantastic resources available for the study of mission, including a number of papers related to the Bible and Mission.

One excellent example is Chris Wright’s 2000 paper on ‘Christian Mission and the Old Testament: Matrix or Mismatch’. Although he has written at more length and more recently on the subject it is helpful to have such resources freely available. Just as a taste, in his paper Wright responds the the paucity of reflection on mission in the OT (most famously by Bosch) by saying:

A more fully biblical understanding needs to show how the missionary mandate of the NT had its roots in the OT scriptures. This task requires careful attention to the rich texture of OT themes and texts that shaped, justified and motivated that NT mission through Israel’s self-understanding of their own mission as the elect people of God in the midst of the nations. What follows is a brief survey of some of the themes that might be included in such a task.

His survey works through several headings:

– The uniqueness and universality of Yahweh
– The purpose of Yahweh: blessing the nations
– Yahweh’s election of Israel for the purpose of blessing the nations
– The interaction of Israel and the nations, historically, culturally, religious
– The ethical dimension of Israel’s ‘visibility’
– Eschatological vision; ingathering of nations
– Models of ‘mission’ (key events, institutions, individuals)

No-one has done more to put the OT on the agenda of Bible and Mission scholarship than Wright. Although the paper will have been supeceded by his more recent and more substantial writings (see a list in our Bible and Mission books and articles section) it is great to have a record of the developing thinking of Wright as part of the wider conversation.

Asbury Seminary has a nicely produced series of videos called ‘Seven Minute Seminary‘ .

Two videos are presented by Brian Russell on the theme of ‘The Bible as Mission Document’. Check them out!

If you enjoy these check out Brian’s Catalyst journal article on What is a Missional Hermeneutic? as well as his blog as well.