Exiles on Mission

S. Williams Paul

Description

Many Christians in the West sense that traditional Christian teaching is losing traction in the public square. What does faithful Christian witness look like in a post-Christian culture?Paul Williams, the CEO of one of the world's largest and oldest Bible societies, interprets the dissonance Christians often experience while trying to live out their faith in the 21st century. He provides constructive tools to help readers understand culture in myriad contexts and offer a missional response. Williams calls for a truly missional understanding of post-Christendom Christianity whereby local churches are reimagined as embassies of the kingdom of God and Christians serve as ambassadors in all spheres of life and work.This book invites readers to embrace the language of exile and imagine a hopeful mission of the scattered and gathered church in the post-Christian West. It shows a clear pathway for fruitful missional engagement for the whole people of God, helping Christians make sense of the world in which they live, more authentically integrate faith with everyday life, and orient all of their efforts within God's missional purpose for the world.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Christianity

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 17 mars 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781493422500
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Cover
Half Title Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2020 by Paul S. Williams
Published by Brazos Press
a division of Baker Publishing Group
PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.brazospress.com
Ebook edition created 2020
Ebook corrections 03.24.2020
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-2250-0
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™
Scripture quotations labeled ESV are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2016
Scripture quotations labeled GNT are from the Good News Translation in Today’s English Version-Second Edition. Copyright © 1992 by American Bible Society. Used by permission.
Scripture quotations labeled J. B. Phillips are from The New Testament in Modern English by J. B. Phillips copyright © 1960, 1972 J. B. Phillips. Administered by The Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England. Used by Permission.
Scripture quotations labeled KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.
Scripture quotations labeled NRSV are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Dedication
To Nigel Swinford, who set me on this course by helping me identify heroes and meet Lesslie Newbigin, and to Rodger and Carol Woods, whose encouragement and support helped me finish this book.
Contents
Cover i
Half Title Page ii
Title Page iii
Copyright Page iv
Dedication v
Acknowledgments ix
Prologue: Longing and Shame xi
Part 1: Enduring Faith: Christians and the Contemporary World 1
1. The Legacy of Modernity 3
2. Are We in Exile? 24
3. Two Temptations 41
4. Judgment and Mission 53
Part 2: Fostering Hope: From Alien to Ambassador 65
5. Learning to Lament 67
6. Calling, Citizenship, and Commission 80
7. Establish an Embassy 99
8. Know the Mission 115
Part 3: Ambassadors of Love: Exiles on Mission 135
9. Learn the Language 137
10. Stories of the West 156
11. Cultural Translation 184
12. Pilgrimage: A Way of Being 213
Bibliography 231
Back Cover 239
Acknowledgments
T he material in this book was embodied and shaped through the work of the Regent College Marketplace Institute, through live events and conferences, web resources, the creation of the ReFrame film series, and most of all through my colleagues and friends Russell Pinson, Soohwan Park, Grace Zhang, Mark Sampson, Mark Mayhew, Constance Chan, Nathan and Bronwyn McLellan, Jen Gill, Steve and Ginnie Shaw, Kathy Kwon, Graham Pritz-Bennet, Ceri Rees, and Rebecca Pousette.
I am also grateful to Michael Hodson, Gary Hewitt, Preston Manning, and John Stackhouse for their wisdom and expertise, and for the support and advice of Institute friends Jon Scott, Peter Mogan, Rodger and Carol Woods, Bob and Evie Rolston, and Rosie Perera.
Thanks especially to those students I taught and learned from during my years of full-time teaching at Regent College (2005–15), especially in Christian Thought and Culture; Mission and Vocation; Vocation, Work and Ministry; Marketplace Theology; and Gospel and Culture courses.
Thank you to Bill Reimer and Kim Boldt of the Regent College Bookstore for your advice and wisdom, and to Michael Thomson, Paul Spilsbury, and Craig Bartholomew for your support of the project at crucial moments.
Special thanks also to my TA Rachel Tweet and friends Jon Reimer, Bronwyn McLellan, Pete Lynas, and Natalie Collins, who provided much needed feedback and editing of early drafts, as well as to friends Paul Woolley and James Featherby of the British and Foreign Bible Society, who did so for later drafts.
I have been enormously privileged to have Katelyn Beaty and James Korsmo as my editors for this project. The whole team at Brazos has been remarkably professional and fun to work with: thanks also to Mason Slater, Kara Day, Brandy Scritchfield, Paula Gibson, Jean Entingh, Maureen Ruge, Alex Nieuwsma, Michael Walkup, and Shelley MacNaughton.
I remain deeply grateful to my best friend and beautiful wife, Sarah, for her constant encouragement, prayer, and insightful editing given consistently over many years.
Prologue
Longing and Shame
W hat would it be like for the church to serve the purposes of God in this generation?
I, for one, want to see this. I want to see Christians in the Western world confident of God’s presence in our midst and confident in the power of his gospel. I want to see believers experiencing the power of the Holy Spirit working through them in their workplaces and neighborhoods and in the public square. I want to see Christian communities known in our societies as communities of healing, justice, and wisdom. I want us to be known by our love for one another.
This is a book for people who share these desires. It is for those perplexed by the missional challenges of contemporary life and frustrated by the consumerism and disunity of much contemporary Western Christianity. It is for those who feel uncovered and unprotected by their leaders, and are disaffected by the apparent irrelevance of traditional Christian practice and belief. It is for those who long for humble, intelligent, anointed leadership.
These desires are not limited to Christians. There is also an inarticulate heart cry “for the children of God to be revealed” (Rom. 8:19). Despite the incredible sophistication of modern science and technology and the unprecedented wealth enjoyed in the developed world, Westerners are increasingly prone to loneliness, meaninglessness, and despair. Our culture is riven by conflict and disunity both within and between nations. We are experiencing a profound breakdown in trust and confidence. Might the church offer any kind of hope, purpose, and life?
The perspective I offer in response to these desires and questions has been shaped by my own somewhat eclectic journey. My first career after graduating from Oxford University was as a professional economist (in strategy consulting, public-policy development, and real-estate investment banking). After fifteen years working in this way, I made a significant change to move from Oxford to Vancouver and took up a position as part of the theology faculty of Regent College, an international graduate school of Christian studies affiliated with the University of British Columbia. The emphasis of my questions changed from “How do I relate my faith to my work?” to “How does the church engage missionally in contemporary culture?”
Part of my role at Regent involved launching and leading the Marketplace Institute—a think tank aiming to promote a theological vision for life in the marketplace and to equip the church to do the same. This meant that I had both the privilege of teaching young adults who came from all over the world to study theology for a few years and the experience of speaking to Christian leaders throughout North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.
I’ve heard from many church leaders who want advice on how to help their congregation better connect faith and life. At the same time, I’ve met countless Christians working in secular contexts who have a great hunger for faith-work integration and whole-life discipleship but who also hold a deep disappointment and frustration with church life. For many of these believers, there is a shocking gap of irrelevance between Sunday and Monday that for some will end in nonattendance and possibly nonbelief.
These experiences have taken place for me alongside a parallel exposure to the broadly evangelical theological academy, particularly in North America. When I put those conversations “out there” in the church and the marketplace alongside those “in here” among the faculty and “ministerial” graduates of the theological academy, I’ve been led back frequently to some troubling questions: Why aren’t the church and the Christian academy solving this critical problem of the faith-life divide, despite its growing urgency for believers and unbelievers alike? Is the sacred-secular divide connected to the missional challenges facing the church in the Western world?
Since the 1960s, most of Western Europe and the former European colonies of Australia, New Zealand, and the Americas have progressively rejected Christianity not only in terms of the formal influence of the church in public life but also in terms of any perceived positive cultural contribution of Christian faith. With vanishingly few exceptions (and these largely involving the shrinking conservative heartland of the United States), it is now not a cultural advantage to be known as a Christian or to engage in “God talk” in these societies but rather a positive hindrance to communication, likely to be misunderstood and possibly detrimental to one’s reputation.
This Western turn against Christian faith constitutes a significant change of context and is interwoven with what appears to be a seismic shift in world history that is at least as significant as the sixteenth-century Reformation. Cultural historians use words like “momentous” and “unprecedented” to describe the changes convulsing Western societies since the 1960s. The term “postmodern” signifies not just the en