Experience from the Mission to Cuba: Related to Together towards Life

The mission that God has given is one of proclamation, liturgy, deaconry, education, and stewardship. This is why it is necessary to develop new models for mission based on national work, where we review our biblical and theological discourse, our ecclesiology, the structures that limit our missionary activity, the models of theological education, our traditions and creation of liturgy, and our conceptual models and practice in ministry. Considering this, the World Council of Churches' document Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes offers interesting guidelines for teaching and practicing mission, which the author analyzes in the ecumenical Cuban context, and in particular in that of the Evangelical Theological Seminary of Matanzas, Cuba.     

Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes

The Commission on World Mission and Evangelism (CWME) has, since the WCC Porto Alegre Assembly in 2006, been working toward and contributing to the construction of a new ecumenical mission affirmation. The new statement will be presented to the WCC 10th assembly at Busan, Republic of Korea, in 2013. Since the integration of the International Missionary Council (IMC) and the World Council of Churches (WCC) in New Delhi in 1961, there has been only one official WCC position statement on mission and evangelism which was approved by the central committee in 1982, Mission and Evangelism: An Ecumenical Affirmation. This new mission affirmation was unanimously approved by the WCC central committee on 5 September 2012 at its meeting on the island of Crete, Greece. It is the aim of this new ecumenical discernment to seek vision, concepts and directions for a renewed understanding and practice of mission and evangelism in changing landscapes. It seeks a broad appeal, even wider than WCC member churches and affiliated mission bodies, so that we can commit ourselves together to fullness of life for all, led by the God of Life!     

God's Mission as Word Event in an Age of World Christianity: An Asian Linguistic‐Transcultural Model

Christian community lives according to the Word of God, inspiring the church to be in ecumenical fellowship and to be amenable to the act of God's speech in an age of world Christianity. The Word of God is able to be translated transculturally in different times and places, while keeping the transversal, irregular horizon of God's discourse. In view of the rise of world Christianity much has been said about the indigenization of the Christian narrative that challenges the western concept of missio Dei. To renew God's mission in an East Asian configuration, a linguistic‐transcultural model is proposed for a public theology of mission that promotes the full humanity of those on the underside of history and acknowledges religious outsiders. A public mission of God's narrative takes seriously the project of interculturation and emancipation in the post‐western Christian era.     

Mission and Theology: Teaching Missiology on the Basis of Together towards Life

Theological education and Christian mission have a history of mutual relations of only a century or so – from the time when missiology as a distinctive course was introduced into the curricula of certain theological schools and seminaries. For almost a generation, I have been involved both in global theological education, through the World Conference of Associations of Theological Institutions, and in global Christian mission, through the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism, trying to analyze the viability and effectiveness of a missiological formation of future religious leaders.     

God's Mission and the Christian Assembly: The Search for an Alternative Practice of Worship

Abstract : The search for something alternative characterizes the practice of worship in many contemporary Christian assemblies. Although “alternative” is often set in opposition to “traditional,” it is better understood in response to “conventional” worship. Five such alternative movements are described here: liturgical movement, contemporary worship movement, liberation perspectives, Pentecostalism, and postmodern approaches. The alternative impulse in all of these perspectives has to do with a fuller realization of the Christian assembly in relation to God's mission.     

Engaging God's Mission and Diakonia in Life of Public Spheres: Justification and Economic Justice

Abstract : This article approaches the theology of mission from the point of view of God's mission and diakonia, seeking a missional model of the grace of justification and economic justice in an age of World Christianity. The author engages a hermeneutical‐prophetic side of evangelization—viva vox evangelii—in the public sphere, and demonstrates the intrinsic connection between missio and diakonia Dei in Jesus Christ using a trinitarian‐hermeneutical perspective. The article shows that evangelization as God's mission occupies a central place by taking into account challenges from the postcolonial emancipation in the context of Empire.     

War in Christ's World: Bonhoeffer and Just Peacemaking on War and Christology

Abstract : In this paper, I apply Dietrich Bonhoeffer's exposition of the nature of war as found in his unfinished magnum opus, Ethics, to the contemporary peacemaking movement known as “just peacemaking.” Using Bonhoeffer, I argue that the just‐peacemaking approach accomplishes tactical peace, but only by undermining its stated purposes of bringing theology to bear on war. By assuming theological reasoning as secondary to historical conditions, just peacemaking has, by Bonhoeffer's logic, already abandoned the world to itself and severed it from theological resources.     

To the Apple of God's Eye: Christian Zionist Travel to Israel

This article examines a case of travel to Israel which might further complicate the already blurry line between tourism and pilgrimage: evangelical, Christian Zionist visits to Israel. The Israeli Ministry of Tourism estimates that evangelical Christians account for one third of American visitors to Israel. My research investigates how Christian Zionist travel to Israel is both ‘touristic’ and ‘pilgrimage-like’ and how this case can serve to question some thinking about pilgrimage. Finally, I offer yet another definition of what constitutes pilgrimage, which avoids at least some of the particular hazards. A primary goal of the research is to provide more empirical data and deeper analysis for our understanding of Christian Zionist travel to Israel and thus to contribute additional nuance to discussions of pilgrimage and tourism more generally.