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“We must be global Christians with a global vision because our God is a global God.”
– John Stott

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Last week, I posted on the importance of understanding that God’s mission is a global mission. I promised you some brand new and soon-to-be-released books that will help you put the “mission” back in “missional.”

Recently released:

Paul Hiebert: The Gospel in Human Contexts: Anthropological Explorations for Contemporary Missions

Product Description:

While the gospel is timeless truth, it enters into ever-changing and widely varied human contexts. In order to meaningfully communicate the gospel to particular humans, those involved in cross-cultural ministry need to understand people and the particular influences–social, cultural, psychological, and ecological–that shape them. Further, we must understand ourselves and the influences that have shaped us, since our own contexts influence how we understand and transmit the gospel message. Therefore, we must master not only the skill of biblical interpretation but also the skill of human interpretation. That task is the topic of this book, the summation of a lifetime of experience and thinking by a world-renowned missiologist and anthropologist, the late Paul Hiebert.

Timothy Tennent: Invitation to World Missions: A Trinitarian Missiology for the Twenty-first Century (Invitation to Theological Studies Series)

Product Description:

This unique text is arranged in three parts according to the Trinity’s roles, relationships, and activity. Tennent questions whether missions as currently conceptualized is adequate and he challenges the reader by building the book around key theological foundations such as “missio Dei” and the “new creation” vision for the global church. This volume will call and enable the reader to understand how missions is biblically and theologically basic to Christianity, and how missions is essential to living out an abundant and impassioned life.

Coming soon:

David Hesselgrave + Ed Stetzer: MissionShift: Global Mission Issues in the Third Millennium (July 2010)

Product Description:

Veteran missionary David Hesselgrave and rising missional expert Ed Stetzer edit this engaging set of conversational essays addressing global mission issues in the third millennium. Key contributors are Charles E. Van Engen (“Mission Described and Defined”), the late Paul Hiebert (“The Gospel in Human Contexts: Changing Perspectives on Contextualization”), and the late Ralph Winter (“The Future of Evangelicals in Mission”). Those offering written responses to these essays include: Van Engen, Keith Eitel, Enoch Wan, Darrell Guder, Andreas J. Köstenberger, Hiebert, Michael Pocock, Darrell Whiteman, Norman L. Geisler, Avery Willis, Winter, Scott Moreau, Christopher Little, Michael Barnett, and Mark Terry.

Craig Ott + Stephen Strauss with Timothy Tennent: Encountering Theology of Mission: Biblical Foundations, Historical Developments, and Contemporary Issues (Encountering Mission) (May 2010)

Product Description:

This fresh, comprehensive text fills a need for an up-to-date theology of mission. It offers creative approaches to answering some of the most pressing questions in theology of mission and missionary practice today. The authors, who are leading mission experts, discuss biblical theology of mission, provide historical overviews of the development of various viewpoints, and address theologically current issues in global mission from an evangelical perspective. This readable yet thorough text integrates current views of the kingdom of God and holistic mission with traditional views of evangelism and church planting. It also brings theology of mission into conversation with ecclesiology and eschatology. Topics covered include contextualization, the missionary vocation, church and mission, and theology of religions. Sidebars and case studies enable readers to see how theology of mission touches real-life mission practice.


Must-watch videos for missional conspirators:



On Monday, I posted Jonathan Dodson’s thoughts re: the “mission” of work:

We can’t plant a missional churches that don’t address work. Most people spend the lion’s share of their time in their field of work. That field of work is not only a mission field, but it is a city field. It is an urban domain.

As I was going through my RSS reader, I found a few other helpful things related to this very important issue.

The first comes from Dorothy Sayers’s essay, “Why Work?” in Creed or Chaos (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1949):

The Church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours, and to come to church on Sundays. What the Church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables.

. . . Let the Church remember this: that every maker and worker is called to serve God in his profession or trade—not outside of it. The Apostles complained rightly when they said it was not meant they should leave the word of God and serve tables; their vocation was to preach the word. But the person whose vocation it is to prepare the meals beautifully might with equal justice protest: It is not meant for us to leave the service of our tables to preach the word.

The official Church wastes time and energy, and moreover, commits sacrilege, in demanding that secular workers should neglect their proper vocation in order to do Christian work—by which she means ecclesiastical work. The only Christian work is good work well done. Let the Church see to it that the workers are Christian people and do their work well, as to God: then all the work will be Christian work, whether it is Church embroidery or sewage-farming.

(HT: Justin Taylor)

The second comes from Leadership Journal managing editor and Skyebox blogger Skye Jethani, including a quote from Martin Luther:

It seems like people in the church are often celebrated for what they do within the church or through the church or for the church, but we offer little attention or affirmation for the labor done outside the institutional structures of the church. The message we subtly communicate is that the 2 or 4 percent of a person’s time spent engaged in activities related to the church are what matter to God–they “count”–but the 95+ percent of the time they spend at work, with family, preparing meals, changing diapers, or mowing the lawn don’t really matter to God unless they incorporate church/missionary actions into those times.

Here’s a…quote…from Martin Luther, that unpacks a more accurate understanding of work and vocation:

“Therefore I advise no one to enter any religious order or the priesthood, indeed, I advise everyone against it – unless he is forearmed with this knowledge and understands that the works of monks and priests, however holy and arduous they may be, do not differ one whit in the sight of God from the works of the rustic laborer in the field or the woman going about her household tasks, but that all works are measured before God by faith alone.”

– Martin Luther, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520)

And finally, a quote from Dallas Willard and his book, The Spirit of Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Live (1990):

Holy people must stop going into ‘church work’ as their natural course of action and take up holy orders in farming, industry, law, education, banking, and journalism with the same zeal previously given to evangelism or to pastoral and missionary work.

…The truth of calling means that for followers of Christ, “everyone, everywhere, and in everything” lives the whole of life as a response to God’s call. Yet, this holistic character of calling has often been distorted to become a form of dualism that elevates the spiritual at the expense of the secular.

…Ponder for example, the fallacy of the contemporary Protestant term “full-time Christian service” – as if those not working for churches or Christian organizations are only part-time in the service of Christ. For another thing, Protestant confusion about calling has led to a “Protestant distortion” that is even worse. This is a form of dualism in a secular direction that not only elevates the secular at the expense of the spiritual, but also cuts it off from the spiritual altogether.

(HT: Skye Jethani)


Over the weeks to come, Ed Stetzer will be introducing the people who will be serving as framers for The Missional Manifesto, as well as speakers for missionSHIFT (the conference that I am working with him on) which takes place July 12-15 in Ridgecrest, NC. I will be re-posting Ed’s introductions in their entirety here on transformission each Monday.

Here is Ed’s next introduction:

Today I want to introduce you to Linda Bergquist. She will be speaking at the missionSHIFT conference this summer. We are also excited to have her voice as a part of framing the Missional Manifesto.

Linda and her husband Eric live in San Francisco, California. She is a New Church Starting Strategist and the co-author of Church Turned Inside Out: A Guide for Designers, Refiners, and Re-Aligners from Leadership Network (2009).

I have known Linda (Dr. Bergquist ) for many years. When I was a professor (oh so long ago) she took several of us on a tour of the marginalized communities where God was at work in the Bay area. She has a passion for people on the edge of society and the change that the gospel brings. You can find out more about her work in San Francisco at her site Plant Churches with Us.

To introduce her to you, I asked Linda to answer a few questions about herself:

You work as a new church starting strategist in San Francisco. Tell us briefly how you came to do that work in that place.

Linda: I’ve been involved in missional activity since the week I became a follower of Christ, and in church planting since a few months after that. Five years and four churches later, with a seminary degree in hand, my home church invited me to join their staff and help them start churches. Ten years later, the senior pastor left for the Bay Area [and I took] the church planting strategist job in San Francisco. That was fourteen years ago.

What do I see that gives you hope for the church in America?

Linda: I see Dave and Brook Maturo who moved from a 4 bedroom house they owned in Florida to a small rented space in San Francisco, with no guarantee of jobs, to assist our church planting team become more effective. I see a church of poor Mongolian refugees, all new Christians, who sent the school supplies we gave them back to Mongolia where children are glad for even one pencil. I see business entrepreneur Ken McCord intentionally translating kingdom values into the workplace; notifying the utility company that his bill was too low, extending medical benefits to employees at the expense of his own salary, and caring enough to utilize more costly earth friendly processes. I see Marian Engelland planting churches, mentoring other women and running a nonprofit that serves the poor, even with twin baby girls and two other preschoolers. I see Jason Williams helping local churches collaborate with Afghan business owners to raise money to repair windows in a girl’s school in Afghnistan. I see really good DNA that’s worth reproducing.

You recently published Church Turned Inside Out. Tell us about the book.

Linda: Church Turned Inside Out is a design book for churches. My friend, Allan Karr and I wrote it because we wanted to introduce Christian leaders to the world of design thinking. Over the decades, church became algorithmic. We discovered a formula, and a set of rules that helped us find ways to get from here to there more efficiently and more effectively. But the present algorithm is not as reliable as it once was. New information has come into the equation, and it requires a more experimental posture. Some people experiment in ways that improve the results of the present algorithm (refiners and re-aligners), and others step into the mystery and discover new ways of thinking and being in the world. Awareness of both is needed for a good design process, and both are necessary concepts to carry the church into the future.

Obviously, the word “missional” is spoken of, used by, and claimed by many groups. Instead of giving another definition for the word, can you tell the readers an example of where you and your family are seeking to live missionally?

Linda: Sometimes I tell people that in the suburbs it’s easier to be nice, but in cities it’s easier to be good. So many things rub against us in a dense city– crazy driving, difficult parking, close proximity to every kind of noise and smell. It’s a different pace of life. Serenity, patience, and “nice people attitudes” seem distant and even extravagant. But in cities, the decision for goodness is ever-present. Will we waste the food from our large portion meal, or cut some off before we eat, and wrap it to give to that hungry person we will surely encounter on the way home? Do we follow the trail of blood that leads down the street and into a park to see who may need help or do we ignore it? Do we acknowledge the beggar on the sidewalk who is asking for money, or do we look away because seeing is too costly? Do we treat the Russian pizza delivery driver with respect and kindness? In Russia, he was a classical musician, but here, his limited English prevents him from being well employed. Every time I treat him more like a delivery driver than a classical musician, I rob him of his identity.

In terms of missionSHIFT and the Missional Manifesto, what would be a great end-game in your mind for this event and process?

Linda: There have been times and places in history that mobilize great movements. For example, I love the story of the Harlem Renaissance. African American poets and preachers, artists and educators showed up in Harlem at the same time in the 1920s and 30s. Together they imagined what it might be like to be black in America some day. Communication was more difficult then, but what happened in Harlem sparked the Civil Rights Movement. Today I imagine a new, decentralized, and wonderfully diverse movement of God’s people who respond to the urgent call of a missional manifesto and walk together in a revitalized kingdom direction.

Are you registered for the missionSHIFT conference? Head over to the website and sign up.


Tim Chester:

Mission is not one thing we do among others. Mission is central to the Bible story and central to our identity. We are missionary people. We are communities on mission.

Creation: God made humanity with a mission: (1) to fill and govern the earth, and (2) to be his image in the world, reflecting his glory. We create, we explore, we investigate, we cook, we clean, we repair, we do science and culture and art – all to the glory of God.

Fall: After our rebellion our mission distorts and turns inwards. At Babel humanity (1) comes together instead of being scattered (2) to a name for themselves instead of glorifying God (Genesis 11:4).

Abraham: ‘All peoples on earth will be blessed through you.’ (Genesis 12:3) God chooses Abraham for the nations. The Saviour will come from Abraham’s descendants. See Genesis 18:18-19. The nations will be blessed as God’s people walk in his ways and ‘do’ justice. People will look on and see it is good to know God.

Continue to read how Chester traces “mission” through the metanarrative of the Exodus, Israel, the Prophets, Jesus, the church, the new creation, and God’s coming kingdom here.


Dr. Ed Stetzer takes 30 seconds to explain what it is to be missional:

What Does It Mean to Be Missional? from The Resurgence on Vimeo.


One of my favorite authors, Marva Dawn, on sabbath. By way of The Work of the People:


If you are a pastor, this is a must see.

Darrin Patrick, lead pastor of The Journey (my home church and where I intern) interviews my friend Ed Stetzer, President of Lifeway Research and Lifeway’s Missiologist in Residence, on what he sees as the pressing issues within evangelicalism today.

I believe this is Ed at his best, bringing prophetic insight to a wide variety of topics that should be of interest to those who love the church and the Gospel. Enjoy:



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