A New Social Contract Relating Mission Societies to Ecclesiastical Structures

The Protestant mission paradigm, as conceived by Luther and Calvin and taking classic shape in the generation of Reformers that followed them, assumed that church administrative bodies should retain for themselves the authority to initiate God’s mission to all the world. However, another paradigm will be shown to be more biblical, more predictably effective as measured by an inductive study of mission history, and truer to what is “really there” in societies everywhere.
The research provides evidence-based support for the desired outcome of this thesis, that Protestant churches—modalities—should recognize the indispensable contribution of, and biblical basis for, sodalities—voluntary mission structures—thus bringing about the necessary favorable conditions to normalize a relationship between them.

Robert (Bob) Blincoe led a Frontiers' team into northern Iraq following the Gulf War in 1991. He has been US Director of Frontiers since 2000. His PhD is from William Carey International University. Bob is an ordained Presbyterian minister and author of Ethnic Realities and the Church: Lessons from Kurdistan. He and Jan have three children.