Mission and Contexts

Abstract

A person's understanding of Christian mission-whether as evangelism, evangelization, witness, proclamation, prophetic dialogue, service, or whatever else-is inexorably intertwined with that person's context(s). Likewise with anyone's practice or reception of mission. The significance of context applies also to a whole people's understanding, practice, and reception of Christian mission. Our multifaceted settings shape how mission is conceived, conveyed, and caught.I do not anticipate much pushback from readers of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research on this claim. I would not be surprised, however, to find a range of viewpoints about the relative importance of the universal meaning of Christian mission versus contextually particular sensibilities about what mission involves.David Bosch persuasively demonstrated the point about mission's contextual particularity through tracing the way the church's understanding and practice of mission have been shaped by the various milieus in which it has carried out mission. In this issue of the IBMR, Volker Küster advocates "intercultural theology" as necessary to avoid truncated, contextually confined views of mission (or of anything else). Gloria Tseng brings to light "the historical peculiarities of the indigenization of Christianity in China during the early decades of the twentieth century."

Chapter Five of Evangelii Gaudium: Spirit‐Filled Evangelizers

“…It speaks from the heart of the human experience and engages the multifaceted contexts of contemporary mission. Not surprisingly, in his discussion on recent important Christian statements on the interrelated character of mission and contexts, Nelson Jennings points to Evangelii Gaudium as “paradoxically both the most comprehensive and the most specific of all the recent statements” in terms of its engagement of the human contexts for mission, for example, the global economy.…”