missiology matters!

i have come across a new (to me )blog, it’s called missiology matters!  my two passions are the Bible and cross-cultural mission – this is a blog I have subscribed to so I will be following it!  If you have similar interests you may want to do the same.

The author of the blog is Robert Priest, a missiology professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

You might wonder what is missiology?  Very simply is it the study of missions.  Here is a brief statement from the blog:

Missiology is an interdisciplinary discipline which, through research, writing, and teaching, furthers the acquisition, development, and transmission of theologically-informed, contextually-grounded, and ministry-oriented knowledge and understanding, with the goal of helping and correcting Christians, and Christian institutions, involved in the doing of Christian mission.

For more read the blog and give it a follow (and this post too)!

Even so, I think these kinds of things are important for pastors to be reading up on.  You’d be surprised how much of missiological thinking and praxis can be applied to local church life and contexts, especially given the increasingly diverse (even pluralistic) our congregations and communities become.  Good pastors and exegetes of the Bible need to be well read in a broad area of issues, missiology is one of those.  That is, in my personal opinion!

Blessings!

Book Notice: Flourishing Churches and Communities

My Church history and Christian Ethics professor and chair of the PhD in BIble and Theology department at the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary has a new book out that I think is gonna be good and well worth the purchase!

Description from the site:

Pentecostal Christianity is just over a century old, and yet its impact in that time as an evangelistic force for Christ has been astonishing. One foundational scriptural understanding of the Pentecostal movement is that the Spirit empowers us to carry out the work of the gospel. Without a dependence on the work of the Spirit, we are mere humans.

Dr. Self provides here a vivid picture of what it looks like for followers of Jesus to take the Great Commandment and the Great Commission seriously in the context of their own local communities. His concern is that our view of discipleship is lacking a clear integration of faith, work, and economics. Christians have the means to bless their local economies in unique ways that can transform coworkers and neighbors alike as Christ is glorified. This primer aims at wholehearted discipleship that extends beyond our Sundays at church and into our workplaces the rest of the week.

With a strong biblical understanding of the all-encompassing nature of true discipleship as integral to the kingdom of God, combined with a unified view of church history and an appreciation for all members of the church body, Flourishing Churches and Communities presents a vision for Christians that is as beautiful as it is challenging.

Like I said, I think it gonna be a good one!