Mike Barnett and Robin Martin, eds. Discovering the Mission of God: Best Missional Practices for the 21st Century (Westmont, IL: IVP Academic, 2012), 640 Pps., $22.95.
Coeditor Mike Barnett is dean of the College of Intercultural Studies at Columbia International University, where he teaches courses on church-planting movements and the history of global Christianity. He and his wife served for twelve years with the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. Coeditor Robin Martin, a graduate of Baylor University, has written for newspapers and magazines and worked as an editor for twenty-five years. She has also served with the International Mission Board in East Asia, Central Asia, London and Cyprus.
This book is divided into three major sections, each corresponding to the discovery journey: first, the mission of God in the bible is discussed; second, the mission of God in history is covered; and thirdly, the mission of God today is explicated. Each theme builds on itself and lays a foundation for understanding God’s mission and where we fit into it. The intent behind the volume is to challenge each reader to make a personal and prayerful assessment of where he fits best in God’s mission, and to thereafter commit to that task.
In the Introduction, Mike Barnett notes that we all are on a mission, whether we realize it or not – that is, a journey of discovering the mission of God. He regards the God of Israel as a missionary God. What then is the mission of God? Barnett claims that it is a sending out with a purpose or duty to perform, particularly with the task being that of blessing all people with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Just as God’s desire for Israel to worship was the reason behind the exodus from Eqypt, so too is the worship of God the “why” behind the mission of God. The reason for the mission of God, is, simply, his glory. In chapter one, “Word of God and Mission of God,” Christopher J. H. Wright avers that mission should be the very heartbeat of theology and the key hermeneutic of Scripture; in fact, the writings that now comprise our bible are themselves the product of, and witness to, the mission of God (34). In the second chapter, “The Missionary Message of the New Testament,” Joel F. Williams contends that the New Testament (NT) came into existence within a definitive missionary context, and apart from God’s heart for people and the efforts of God’s people to spread the message of God’s love, the NT would not exist (49).
Alex Luc, in chapter four – “The Kingdom of God and His Mission” – notes that God is on mission for his redemptive purpose, which amounts to a mission for the realization of his kingdom (86). In chapter five, “God’s Great Commissions for the Nations,” Jeff Lewis states that the mission of God is plainly and emphatically given in the four gospels and the book of Acts; he goes on to note that the distinctive of Matthew’s accounting of it is that it is based on making disciples, whereas Mark’s emphasis is upon the notion that it is to be preached to all the world, Luke’s emphasis in his gospel is upon the notion that Jesus is the savior of all people, John captures the beauty and intimacy of between the triune God and his disciples, and finally that Luke’s account of the early church in Acts is upon the empowerment wrought by the indwelling Spirit to achieve the mission of God. Chapter seven is written by Zane Pratt, and is entitled “The Heart of the Task;” therein Pratt argues that “missions” has become a vague concept, but Jesus had a clear idea in mind when sending out his disciples: to make disciples, a relationship between two or more people that is all-encompassing (133).
Robert L. Plummer, in the ninth chapter entitled “The Power of the Gospel,” acknowledges that when we look for methods and suggested techniques for how to conduct missions within the bible, we are struck by its silence; instead, the locus of that power, the gospel itself, is stressed (158). In “The Passion of Christ and the Martyrs,” which comprises chapter ten, Jerry Rankin notes that the mission of God will only be fulfilled when people who are called by his name are so passionate to win the lost that they are willing to suffer to make the gospel known, and even die for the sake of bringing people into the kingdom of God (171). In “The First Decades of the Mission of God,” William J. Larkin, Jr. covers the various periods of the early church, indicating how each probably advanced their mission; for example, he stipulates that in the thirties, the mission of the church is message-driven and Spirit-driven and the church expanded ethnically and geographically, whereas in the forties the church engaged in a mandate-driven mission towards the ends of the earth, in the fifties the mission was Master-driven, and from the sixties to 100 C.E. the church demonstrates that it is missional-driven by enduring suffering, but nonetheless transferring its witness to further generations.
John Mark Terry, in the twelfth chapter, which is entitled “The Ante-Nicene Church on Mission,” comments on how the history and theology of early Christianity was mission-history and mission-theology (205). Terry goes on to answer the question of why the early church grew, and it is instructive to take note of why it did for us today: the church grew because of divine blessing, the appealing nature of the gospel was another reason, the organization aided the growth of the church as well, the church grew because of its inclusiveness, and the church prospered because of the ethical standards of its members (217-218). Interestingly, R. Alton James, in chapter fifteen entitled “Post-Reformation Missions Pioneers,” acknowledges that the early Reformers were lax in their missiological zeal because of their overemphasis on the sovereignty of God, and therefore the church did not have the responsibility to commission missionaries (251). In chapter seventeen, Mike Barnett contends that whereas the nineteenth century was the “Great Century” of missions, the twentieth century was “The Global Century” of missions (287). In the nineteenth chapter, “Finishing the Task,” J. Scott Holste argues that we are not at either the end of God’s mission, or at the beginning of it, but were are somewhere in the middle of instead, and therefore have a sense of the “not yet” aspect of how things should be (323-324). Jerry Rankin, in the twentieth chapter entitled “Spiritual Warfare and the Mission of God,” argues that Satan’s best weapon is not to outright oppose the mission of God per se, but to convince Christians that it is optional instead (348). In what I perceive to be a somewhat strange admission coming from a Southern Baptist, Don Dent, in the twenty first chapter entitled “Apostles Even Now,” notes that missionaries who fulfill the task of taking the gospel into pioneer settings deserve the appellation “apostles” (359).
In chapter twenty-three, “Cultures and Worldviews,” Stan May comments on the importance of understanding culture when working with overseas missions, noting that cultures are learned, they are patterns of behavior, they are observable, and they are communicative (379-380). LaNette W. Thompson, in the twenty-fourth chapter entitled “Tell His Story So That All Might Worship,” characterizes effective storytelling as “storying,” a process that confronts a hearer’s worldview without being confrontational (395. In the twenty-fifth chapter, “Comprehensive Contextualization,” A. Scott Moreau argues that contextualization is what takes to plant the gospel message into a particular setting successfully (406). In his contribution to the text, chapter twenty-six, Kevin Greeson covers “Effective Bridging and Contextualization,” noting that Jesus modeled how to contextualize both the message and the messenger (422). Chapter twenty-eight, “Church-Planting Movements,” is written by David Garrison, and covers the change in church planting from a focus on individual churches, to plant churches that themselves plant churches in the twenty-first century. In “Breaking Bad Missiological Habits,” chapter thirty, Christopher R. Little speculates that the father of the church growth movement – Donald A. McGavran – would argue for the local sustainability of national workers, the contextualization of the Christian faith, and prioritism (i.e. placing priority on the gospel) over holism (integral mission) in the twenty-first century.
In the thirty-first chapter, “Multiplying Leaders on Mission with God,” R. Bruce Carlton argues that we see in the twenty-first century a phenomenon of “paying it forward” with respect to the intense equipping and empowering of leaders (498). Nik Ripken and Kurt Nelson, in heir contribution that comprises chapter thirty-three, entitled “Biblical Lessons from the Persecuted Church,” argue that a biblical theology of persecution creates the framework within which we can develop a proper missiology of suffering and persecution, the latter of which they identify as “the negative reactions by governments, ideologies, societies, and families to the presence of Christ, incarnated through a positive witness” by believers (535). In chapter thirty six, entitled “The Trouble with Our Jerusalems,” Ed Stetzer says that since the beginning of the church, we Christians have been much more ready to respond to the problems and realities of our own Jerusalems than our Judeas, not to mention the Samarias of the world (585). H. Al Gilbert, in chapter thirty seven entitled “The Local Church and the Mission of God,” argues that it takes every member of your local church understanding that the mission of God necessitates everyone being involved with it, in order for it to be completed. The volume closes with chapter thirty eight, “Where Do You Fit in the Mission of God?” by Clyde Meador.
Discovering the Mission of God explores the mission of God as presented in the bible, expressed throughout church history and in cutting-edge best practices being used around the world today, as well as weaving together the basic components of God’s global mission, thereby challenging readers to identify where they fit in the mission of God. Drawing from a new generation of both scholars and practitioners, this reader provides global perspective, recent missiological research, case studies, recommended further readings and relevant discussion questions at the end of each chapter. I recommend it to all who are interested in missiology broadly.