Advancing Models of Mission : Evaluating the Past and Looking to the Future

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 groups and identity formation?

· How does the colonial history in Africa affect believers' connection with global evangelism?

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.

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 Santos (PhD, Dallas Theological Seminary; PhD, University of the Philippines) is assistant professor of practical theology and intercultural leadership at the seminary of Tyndale University, Toronto, Canada. His books include Slave of All (Sheffield Academic Press), Turning Our Shame into Honor (Life-Change), and Family Relations in the Gospel of Mark (Peter Lang).