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Editorial:
"There's Nothing New About Change"
Anna Rankin
Comment:
Embracing the Stranger
Denise Wright
From
the Director: Change and Decay – so what's new?
David W Porter
Alwyn
Thomson
Ethel White
A
Changing Church
Chris Easton
Women,
the Church and Change
Lesley Carroll
Interview
with Noel Fallows: Multi-cultural Church Life
Anna Rankin
Urban
Grit
Ken Groves
Higher
Throne
Keith
Getty & Kristyn Lennox
2003
Conference: Reconciliation – Illusion or Elusive?
What's
Jesus got to do with Forgiveness?
Stuart Noble
Review:
Lost in Translation
Gareth Higgins
Review:
The Church Beyond the Congregation by James Thwaites
Claire Martin
Review:
A Time for Mission by Samuel Escobar
Ben
Walker
Review:
Against the Stream by David W Smith
Cheryl
Reid
Review:
Evangelicalism and National Identity in Ulster, 1921-1998 by Patrick
Mitchel
David Hewitt
Review:
I was a teenage Catholic by Malachi O'Doherty
Fran
Porter
reviews:
A TIME FOR MISSION
by Samuel Escobar
Reviewed by Ben Walker
JUDGING BY THIS book, Samuel Escobar would be a great person to help creosote your fence. By that I mean that he is skilful at painting with a broad brush and doing so even-handedly.
A Time for Mission is a self-confessed 'introductory book on Christian Mission' with a concern for the reader to understand mission in our time and world. Admittedly, Samuel Escobar eventually acknowledges that he is a Latin American Baptist and has a few well-placed selfdeprecatory remarks about his own prejudices and limitations. But this book has a global, appealing and attractive voice demonstrating the author's vast knowledge, understanding, experience and sensitivity.
In 160 pages, Escobar covers a brief history of mission, an analysis of the new world-order and the influential post-Christian atmosphere. Great theological themes are explored: our missionary God, His missionary Son, the Holy Spirit and mission, Scripture and mission and the transformative nature of mission. Big issues in missiology are touched upon: globalisation, poverty, partnership, the "West" learning from the "rest", fresh biblical understanding from different contexts, social justice.
Escobar has a rolling style where historical, sociological and personal material is underpinned by solid biblical reflection, which he works from and works in without awkwardness but with freshness and insight. Those who know something of the evangelical approach to mission will expect the Lausanne Covenant, Lesslie Newbigin and John Stott to feature highly and won't be surprised that they do. But this does not mean that A Time for Mission is just another standard report about standard evangelical concerns. It is punctuated with personal experience and application and at those moments at which Escobar feels the need to give critical comment, he highlights his own conviction that 'when missionaries reflect on their experience they become the best theologians.'
With so much to write about and to consider, all of such great importance and potential complexity, reading Escobar's book is not an escapist, no-brainer activity. Clearly written, it still demands that you engage with it. But it can only achieve a certain depth on big issues given the understandable parameters of an introductory book. If you're looking for a tome on mission or to dig deep into certain issues, then you may find that A Time for Mission, whilst being a great summary and hitting many of the right buttons, provides most fruit in the final chapter where Escobar suggests further study. Indeed, it is here that Escobar identifies the book's aim as he sees it:
'an effort to inform those interested in questions posed by the practice of mission and contemporary trends in reflection in that practice. It suggests but cannot go too far . . .'
So if that's what you're looking for – to begin to think about mission and what it involves in this time and world-order – then I recommend it. And if you have little interest in mission, then, well . . . shame on you! You really must read this book and find out what on earth the church is for . . .
BEN WALKER is volunteer Learning Assistant with ECONI and has recently completed a MTh. in mission in the Old Testament.
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