The Practice of Mission in Global Methodism: Emerging Trends from Everywhere to Everywhere

Abstract

The study of Christian missions in the past centuries has focused on missions from the West to the rest of the world. This has been for a variety of reasons, including the significant presence of Western missionaries worldwide, the predominance of Western scholars, and the failure of those scholars to recognize the efforts of non-Western agencies. However, David W. Scott, Darryl W. Stephens, and seventeen other authors who are scholars, missionaries, and pastors challenge this Western-centric and limited view of Christian mission. Rather than focusing exclusively on the mission of Western churches, this collection of articles offers indigenous and global perspectives in understanding twenty-first-century Methodist mission, with the recognition that the Methodist missionaries today are sent from ‘from everywhere to everywhere’.Part 1, ‘Cultivating Global Relationships’, focuses on the challenges that the Methodist mission faces. The authors think carefully about theological development, the decolonization of missiological thinking, and the economics of international mission, and call for transformation and rethinking in intercultural theology, partnership, and finance for twenty-first-century Methodist mission. Parts 2 and 3 explore forms, patterns, ideas, and agencies that became a critical part of twenty-first-century Methodist mission. In part 2, ‘Practicing Contextual Engagement’, eight authors interrogate different forms and understandings of missions led by non-Western agencies in and from different contexts and regions, including Oceania, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Post-colonial thinking and its engagement with Methodist theology helped authors to decolonize theology, reclaim traditional culture, and differentiate their understanding of mission from the West. The authors introduce ecological mission in Fiji, the role of women in Korea and Latin America, holistic mission and the importance of education in Africa, and diaspora mission as distinct forms, theologies, and practices of Methodist mission today.Part 3, ‘Educating for Missional Formation’, discusses how Methodists should engage with education and Wesleyan tradition. It argues that Methodist mission should be holistic, encompassing the understanding of mission as partnership, evangelism, and service and outreach, aim for reconciliation with all creatures through zero-emission mission, continue to empower women through education, and build a good relationship with Muslims and converts as a way of revealing God’s holiness.The last part of the volume, ‘Discerning the Future of Mission Together’, offers suggestions for twenty-first-century Methodist mission such as peacemaking work, solidarity in suffering, recognizing the importance of lay-led and young people’s initiatives, and careful attention to inequities within global Methodist churches and changing relationships between churches in the global South and the global North.This edited volume is an insightful and helpful work for the study of Christian mission, world Christianity, and Methodism. Several scholarly works over the past decades have successfully demonstrated the shift of the centre of Christian presence from the global North to the global South. However, the changing atmosphere in Christian missions has not been widely recognized despite the growth of non-Western missionary populations from countries in the global South. This book pays needed attention to the diversified patterns of mission escaping from normative forms of mission introduced by the West. Also, it does not stop at introducing the role of theologies, practices, and churches of the global South in Methodist mission, but offers a space to think about the future of twenty-first-century Methodist mission.On the other hand, the book would have benefited from showing how Western Methodism and its mission connect and engage with theologies, practices, and agencies in and from the global South. Where should we locate Western Methodist mission in global Methodism? How should the West engage with twenty-first-century global Methodist mission? A certain level of engagement with the West in exploring the development of Methodist missiology may have added value to their discussion here, since Methodism in the West is also a part of global Methodism.This book, which discusses theologies and practices of mission in global Methodism, contributes significantly to the scholarship on Christian mission, world Christianity, and Methodism. This collection of nineteen articles highlights successfully the changing patterns and practices of mission in global Methodism. I recommend it to scholars and students studying Christian mission, world Christianity, and Wesleyan and Methodist traditions. It would also benefit missionaries and all Methodists interested in learning more about twenty-first-century Methodist mission.