Mission and Healing

Abstract

Abstract Trauma challenges Christian approaches to suffering and healing, for the unnarratability and the unspeakability of trauma fundamentally disrupt our understanding of witness and its relationship with healing. Although missiological reflection on healing and reconciliation has not adequately grappled with trauma’s implications for the theology and practice of mission, historical examples of women’s healing mission practice show the capacity for trauma healing embedded in the Christian tradition and afford resources for developing a trauma-centered account of healing mission for the twenty-first century. Reading the story of the hemorrhaging woman (Mark 5:25–34) from a trauma-centered perspective alongside case studies from Indonesia reveals healing as an ongoing, multidimensional process known and witnessed through embodied experience. The chapter proposes an aftermath model of mission centered on “poetic witnessing” as a model of healing mission capable of addressing trauma’s physical, psychological, social, and spiritual effects.