Outline : Explore twelve key points in the growth of Christianity. Alice Ott tells the story of pivotal turning points in the expansion of Christianity, helping readers grasp the big picture of missional trends and critical developments.
Outline: Let the Nations Be Glad! is an eloquent plea for the church to catch a God-centered vision for engaging in world evangelization. In this sequel to The Supremacy of God in Preaching John Piper draws on key biblical texts to show that worship is the ultimate goal of the church, and that proper worship fuels missions. The author addresses the role of prayer, universalism and annihilationi…
Outline : How is it that a first-generation Jewish messianic movement undertook a mission to the pagan world and rapidly achieved a momentum that would have a lasting impact on world history? In this monumental study, Eckhard Schnabel provides a unified and detailed picture of the rise and growth of early Christian mission. He begins with a search for a missionary impulse in the Old Testament a…
Outline : How is it that a first-generation Jewish messianic movement undertook a mission to the pagan world and rapidly achieved a momentum that would have a lasting and significant impact on world history? This momentous question has surprisingly eluded the concentrated focus of historians and New Testament scholars. Perhaps it is because the story of early Christian mission encompasses so mu…
Outline: "Required reading for every current and future cross-cultural worker" Drawing on decades of teaching and mission experience, leading missiologist Darrell Whiteman helps people in ministry learn how to explore and understand their social, cultural, and religious context so they can more effectively witness to people in cultural different from their own.
Outline: Cross-cultural evangelists historically have attempted to transplant Western church culture in their work with other peoples. More recent efforts protect the culture of native believers, helping them live as Christians within their own milieus. Anthropologist and missiologist Sherwood Lingenfelter maintains that Western-style churches often remain irrelevant, and indigienization brings…
Outline: Most Christians would agree that the Bible provides a basis for mission. But Christopher Wright boldly maintains that there is a missional basis for the Bible! The entire Bible is generated by and all about God's mission. In order to understand the Bible, we need a missional hermeneutic, an interpretive perspective in tune with this great missional theme. We need to see how the familia…
Outline; Ministry training often emphasizes expanding on the work of existing ministries to the neglect of addressing the difficulties of planting new churches in North America and across the world. This volume provides a practical, thorough, biblical, and inspirational corrective. Incorporating relevant sociological, anthropological, and historical insights, Hesselgrave extrapolates ten phases…
Outline: Do you long to embrace Muslim women as sisters in Christ? Can you envision hands of henna around His throne? In this book, you will discover - the needs of Muslim women - efforts that are bringing Muslim women to Christ - tactics to help cross-cultural workers cope with life in the Muslim world The contributions to this volume -- all active in Muslim ministries -- share their conce…
Outline: How people behave and think is largely determined by the social structure in which they live. Evangelism and church planting strategies, if they are to succeed, must take that group action into account. Incarnational Ministry describes the social-cultural settings of bands, tribes, peasantry, and urbanites. While urging planners not to use these general categories as simplistic pigeonh…
Outline: This original work of scholarship clarifies how, in light of Matthew's Gospel, the first Christians understood and claimed Israel's messianic mission to people of every ethnic group immediately after Jesus' death and resurrection. In Part 1 James LaGrand examines the Hebrew Bible and other ancient documents to uncover the meaning in Matthew's time of the terms 'Israel' and 'the nations…
A collection of sermons by John Piper, compiled by Desiring God, which challenge the reader to consider and cultivate a holy ambition to preach Christ where he has not yet been named.
Aimed at bringing contemporary concerns in mission theology to a wide-reading public, this volume flows from Newbigin's extensive experience in the mission field and from lectures developed especially to prepare men and women for missionary service. Newbigin describes the Christian mission as the declaration of an open secret—open in that it is preached to all nations, secret in that it is ma…
Highly respected New Testament scholar Craig Keener is known for his meticulous and comprehensive research. This commentary on Acts, his magnum opus, may be the largest and most thoroughly documented Acts commentary available. Useful not only for the study of Acts but also early Christianity, this work sets Acts in its first-century context. In this volume, the first of four, Keener introduces…
Outline: The extraordinary story of how, among the Masai in Tanzania, an American missioner "rediscovers" the gospel message. Dear Bishop, ...Suddenly I feel the urgent need to cast aside all theories and discussions, all efforts at strategy - and simply to to these people and do the work among them for which I came to Africa. ... just go and talk to them about God and the Christian messag…
Outline: Those who have come to expect expert analysis of contextualization from David Hesselgrave will not be disappointed with his newest work. "His expertise," writes George Peters, "shines through in this book." Teaming up with Hesselgrave is Ed Rommen, who, according to Peters, is "becoming an authority in practical contextualization." Together they skillfully bring the labyrinth of meanin…
Outline: Rapid urbanization and globalization processes worldwide have changed the landscape of our times. In Asia and Africa the number of urban dwellers increases by an average of one million per week, according to the United Nations. More than half of the globe's seven billion human beings now live in cities. These realities have far reaching implications for mission in urban contexts at the…
Outline: How is the missionary force for the twenty-first Century to be trained? This is the challenge that emerges from this provocative book as it focuses on the task of effective missionary training. Western missions have tended to place most of their training emphasis on schooling and formal education - witness the number of Bible schools, Christian colleges and theological seminaries that …
Outline: "Ecumenism" comes from the Greek oikos, "household," and in The Good News of the Kingdom members of God's household offer spirited assessments of how the family is doing in the business God gave them. In this path-breaking work, leading representatives of the major groups of conciliar and evangelical Protestants join with Catholics to reflect on basic issues in mission and evangelism. …
Outline: Each person who leaves the cultural isolation of his own community has to learn the significance of cultural interrelatedness, how to respect the cultural heritage of the community to which he is moving, and how coomunication takes place across cultural differences. Here is a wealth on insight and discussion on these complex problems, especially as related to questions of culture and C…
Outline: Thoroughly updated and revised - with half of the chapters new to the second edition - Missiology equips the reader with a vast resource on contemporary missions. This graduate-level introduction is divided into five sections (Introduction to the Study of Missions, Biblical Basic of Missions, Theology of Missions, History of Missions, and Applied Missiology) and offers essays on modern…
Outline: The twenty-first century is marked by a renewed emphasis on the missional responsibility of individual Christians and local churches. Churches on Mission : God's Grace Abounding to the Nations is an attempt to explore the relationship between the local church and its missionary responsibilities. Through history, theology, case studies, and actual ministry practices, each author in this…
Outline: Today many pastors are struggling to adapt to a post-Christian culture without abandoing orthodox theology. How do we communicate the concepts of grace and substitutionary atonement in our globalized culture and context? In Center Church, Timothy Keller offers challenging insights and provocative questions based on over twenty years of ministry in New York City. This book outlines a th…
Outline : The Lord's commitment to make himself known throughout the nations is the overarching missionary theme of the Bible and the central theological concern of Exodus. Countering scholarly tendencies to fragment the text over theological difficulties, Ross Blackburn contends that Exodus should be read as a unified whole, and that an appreciation of its missionary theme in its canonical con…
Outline: We have long been aware of the challenge of reaching the unreached peoples of the world. For many this seemed a daunting and almost impossible task.
Outline: Perspectives on the World Christian Movement presents a multi-faceted collection of readings exploring the biblical, historical, cultural and strategic dimensions of world evangelization. Writings from more than 150 mission scholars and practitioners (over 60 of them new to this edition) portray the history and anticipate the potential of the global Christian movement. Every one of the…
Outline: One hundred years ago Roland Allen authored his landmark study Missionary Methods: St. Paul's or Ours? The 2012 annual conference of the Evangelical Missiological Society celebrated this centennial by addressing this ever relevant topic. The present volume brings to readers insights from that conference examining the theological foundations, historical predence, and practical challenge…
Outline: Appropriate Christianity consists of 28 chapters by 18 authors approaching contextualization in three dimensions: truth, allegiance and spiritual power. Over the years, there have been quite a number of helpful discussions of the contextualization of theological truth. Though we have been helped greatly by them, it is high time we began to deal also with allegiance and spiritual power,…
Outline: In recent decades, a "certainty trap" has sprung up within both Islam and Christianity, resulting in a world struggling with the fallout from extremist and violent interpretations of what "the word of God" might mean. The Certainty Trap asks whether Christians and Muslims - equally - can any longer afford the luxury of fundamentalism. Musk looks at the phenomenon of fundamentalism in C…
Outline: Given the unique religious climate of the twenty-first century and the challenges to Christian mission it poses, Christianity Encountering World Religions proposes a new model for interacting with people of other faiths. The authors term this model "giftive mission," since it is based on the metaphor of free gift. They suggest that seeing mission activity as giving the greatest gift po…
Outline: Explaining The Trinity to Muslims. This book is a culturally relevant presentation of the truth of the Trinity to the Muslim mindset. Originally it was issued through a Turkish secular publishing house and had a countrywide repercussion, even in Islamic circles. It is a useful presentation for both Muslim and Christian readers, providing fundamental keys for understanding and explainin…
Outline: How can we Christians make sure we are presenting the good news of Christ truly, and in a way that the Lord's claims are understood? How do we steer clear of ideas that Convery something other than God's truth? Culture clings to the message and the messenger; tradition and the "old way" don't go away; and our own innate short-comings work against us. The result: "a distorted message, …
Outline: Imagine enjoying a feast with bowls full of food at your end of the table while your brothers and sisters sit hungry at the other end with empty or nearly empty bowls before them. This scenario is an apt metaphor to describe a world where 2.7 billion people survive on less than $2 day while others are well fed and prosperous. In the face of just such a global reality, Westerners have b…
Outline: Encountering the World of Islam guides you on a journey into the lives of Muslims around the world and in your neighborhood. Through this comprehensive collection, you will learn about Muhammad and the history of Islam, gain insight into today's conflicts, and dispel fears and myths. You will also discover the frustrations and desires of Muslims and learn how to pray for and befriend t…
Outline: Millions of Muslims have migrated to Europe and North America in the last fifty years. Their arrival has ignited fierce public debates on both series of the Atlantic about religious freedom and tolerance, terrorism and security, gender and race, and much more. How can Christians best respond to this situation? In this book theologians and ethicist Matthew Kaemingk offers a thought-prov…