timjdavy Bible and Mission

A missional hermeneutics blog

Through Eddie Arthur’s excellent kouya chronicles blog I came across another exciting resource for Bible and Mission. Brian Russell’s realmealministries blog has a wealth of material on reading the Bible missionally.

Here’s Brian’s bio from the blog:

Brian Russell is a thinker, teacher, and writer.

He serves a Professor of Biblical Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary on the Orlando campus.

He is an expert on biblical interpretation focusing his research issues broadly on developing a missional hermeneutic and specifically on the books of Exodus and Psalms.

At heart, Brian is a passionate practitioner committed to unleashing men and women to live as the people whom God created them to be. Mission is the reason for the existence of God’s people. Brian and his family seek to serve as voices of hope in and for the world.

There really is a broad range of interesting looking stuff on there, so check it out. The other day our Jesus, the Kingdom of God, and Christian Mission class spent a double lecture discussing the first two chapters of Chris Wright’s The Mission of God. I’ll be recommending Brian’s site to them next week.

PS. I’ll do a post on Eddie’s blog soon…

timjdavy Bible and Mission

Bible, Mission and the Environment in a Finite World

Encounters issue 28Issue 28 of Encounters, Redcliffe College’s missions E-journal, is now out. The theme is Mission and the Environment in a Finite World and contains papers from the 2009 Environment Day held at Redcliffe in January in partnership with the John Ray Initiative.

Of particular note for Bible and Mission enthusiasts are two articles by Dewi Hughes, Theological Advisor for Tearfund, who writes on True Wealth from the perspectives of the Old and New Testaments: True Wealth (Part One: Old Testament) – God’s blueprint for justice-based living and True Wealth (Part Two: New Testament) – Jesus’ radical Kingdom-ethics message.

I also contribute a book review of Ruth Valerio’s revised edition of her ‘L’ is for Lifestyle.

Please read, enjoy, reflect, and respond: Go to Issue 28 of Encounters

timjdavy Bible and Mission

Jesus, the Kingdom of God, and Christian Mission

This is the name of a brand new module Dr Kang-San Tan and I began teaching this morning at Redcliffe. A good crowd of our final year Applied Theology degree students came along and they are going to be treated to a course full of Bible and Mission!

I’ll be taking them for three double sessions relating to mission and the Kingdom of God in the Old Testament. We’ll be working with books by Graeme Goldsworthy, Walter Brueggemann, Chris Wright, and Arthur Glasser. Next week we’re looking at the ‘Yahweh is king’ metaphor in the Old Testament, and then discussing Goldsworthy’s use of ‘kingdom’ as a way of framing the whole biblical story.

It is a Brueggemann filled week as I am also using his Theology of the Old Testament as the jumping off point for an MA group on our Global Issues in Contemporary Mission programme. One of the modules is a critique of Prosperity Theology teaching (a huge issue globally), and I spend a double session with them looking at what the Bible has to say about suffering.

I don’t agree with everything Brueggemann says, but I love reading his stuff, which can be thought-provoking to say the least.

timjdavy Bible and Mission

Biblical basis of business as mission

‘Business as Mission’ is a growing trend in mission that encourages the use of business to further the kingdom of God.

I think many are put off the idea of mixing the two, which is a real shame. Just read these affirmations and recommendations from the Business as Mission Manifesto written by the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelisation 2004 Forum Business as Mission Issue Group: 

  • We believe that God has created all men & women in His image with the ability to be creative, creating good things for themselves and for others – this includes business.
  • We believe in following in the footsteps of Jesus, who constantly and consistently met the needs of the people he encountered, thus demonstrating the love of God and the rule of His kingdom.
  • We believe that the Holy Spirit empowers all members of the Body of Christ to serve, to meet the real spiritual and physical needs of others, demonstrating the kingdom of God.
  • We believe that God has called and equipped business people to make a Kingdom difference in and through their businesses.
  • We believe that the Gospel has the power to transform individuals, communities and societies. Christians in business should therefore be a part of this holistic transformation through business.
  • We recognise the fact that poverty and unemployment are often rampant in areas where the name of Jesus is rarely heard and understood.
  • We recognise both the dire need for and the importance of business development. However it is more than just business per se. Business as Mission is about business with a Kingdom of God perspective, purpose and impact.
  • We recognise that there is a need for job creation and for multiplication of businesses all over the world, aiming at the quadruple bottom line: spiritual, economical, social and environmental transformation.
  • We recognise the fact that the church has a huge and largely untapped resource in the Christian business community to meet needs of the world – in and through business – and bring glory to God in the market place and beyond.

Recommendations

  • We call upon the Church world wide to identify, affirm, pray for, commission and release business people and entrepreneurs to exercise their gifts and calling as business people in the world – among all peoples and to the ends of the earth.
  • We call upon business people globally to receive this affirmation and to consider how their gifts and experience might be used to help meet the world’s most pressing spiritual and physical need through Business as Mission.

I came across this on the website www.businessasmission.com, which has a wealth of material on the subject. Another very helpful site is the Business as Mission blog.

From the perspective of Bible and Mission, one of the things I like about the Business as Mission movement is the way in which it engages with Scripture from the very beginning, appealing to Genesis 1-3 to illustrate the holistic nature of God’s creation and redemption purposes.

timjdavy Bible and Mission

Mission and Hosea

Mission in Hosea articleIt is always good to discover the work of others who share an interest in the crossover field of Bible and Mission. I recently came across a blog entry that reflected on the missional significance of the book of Hosea, written by Stephen Murray on his blog, ‘Daylight’. You can read it in its entirety here: Mission in Hosea.

I’d encourage you to read the whole article; here is his concluding paragraph to whet your appetite:

Hosea is a prophetic book against a stark historical background that gives us good insight into the workings and desires of a missionary God. The book shows us that God is a passionately loving God, even to the most undeserving of people, it shows us that God is a God who longs for reconciliation from our rebellious ways and finally it also shows that God is a God who will judge all rebellion once and for all. As we contemplate mission we cannot look past these three fundamental truths and so it is helpful to consider Hosea as making an important contribution to the canonical discussion of mission.

timjdavy Bible and Mission

Chris Wright to give lecture on Bible and Mission at Redcliffe College

chris-wrightmissionofgod

Exciting news! On Tuesday 12 May 2009 Rev Dr Chris Wright will be delivering Redcliffe College’s Annual Lecture in World Christianity on the subject of The Bible and Mission.

I would argue that Chris is perhaps the most influential writer on the subject of Bible and mission around today, as evidenced by his magesterial volume, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative. He writes and speaks with passion and persuasion.

We are thrilled that he has accepted Redcliffe’s invitation and are very much looking forward to the event. I’ll post more details in due course; it is a public lecture so why not come along?

To whet your appetite have a look at this interview I did with Chris last year for Encounters Mission Ezine: Mission: What the Bible is All About – An Interview with Chris Wright