Changing the Mind of Missions: Where Have We Gone Wrong?

The world has changed much since earlier Western missionaries set sail across the seas. And as a new millennium dawns, even greater global and cultural changes are overtaking us. Yet missions has remained much the same. In Changing the Mind of Missions James F. Engle and William A. Dyrness offer a courageous analysis of the challenges facing North American and other Western Christian missions:

• How can we work within a world context that is shifting from modernity to postmodernity?
• How can we reverse our assumption that missions means going from "here" to "there"?
• How can we recapture the vitality and comprehensiveness of the gospel for the complex plight of today's world?
• How can we reexamine our commitments to programs and strategies in light of the baseline fact that we are engaged in God's mission?

Here is a book that is sure to spark conversation among missionaries, students of missions, mission leaders and church mission committees. It points a way forward with the goal of increasing the spread of the gospel by every means possible to every corner of our world.

Engel is founder and president of Development Associates International and retired distinguished professor in the graduate programs at Eastern University, where he founded the Center for Organizational Excellence. He has ministered around the world as a consultant, trainer and leadership-development expert and is well known for his books and writings on world evangelization.

William A. Dyrness (DTheol, University of Strasbourg; Doctorandus, Free University) is professor of theology and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary. He is the author of many books, including Modern Art and the Life of a Culture (with Jonathan Anderson), Senses of the Soul: Art and the Visual in Christian Worship, Reformed Theology and Visual Culture, Changing the Mind of Missions (with James Engel), Theology Without Borders (with Oscar Garcia-Johnson), and was a general editor of the Global Dictionary of Theology.