Search

This article explores the role of the church in addressing the emotional and spiritual needs of individuals and communities, particularly in the context of African Pentecostalism. The article argues that the church is called to actively engage with its surrounding culture and to bring healing and restoration to those who have experienced trauma or pain. In the African Pentecostal context, this often involves addressing issues related to cultural identity, historical injustice, and social inequality. Through its emphasis on the power of the Holy Spirit and the importance of community, African Pentecostalism offers a unique perspective on how the church can facilitate the healing of memories and promote reconciliation and restoration. The use of "African Pentecostals" in this article refers to the Pentecostal churches whose doctrines align with the mainline Pentecostal theology and praxis (the classical Pentecostal Churches and the Neo-Pentecostal Churches). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article employs descriptive and explorative methods concerning father absence and missional parenting. It identifies numerous ramifications caused by father absence and the failing role of men. Father absence has been a serious social issue in South Africa, which has become more tenacious in post-colonial South Africa because of economic reasons, untold fatherhood, refused fatherhood, fatherhood accountability, divorce and dissolution of households. This social issue influenced and affected both family and society dysfunction and created a vicious cycle of poverty in many South African homes. This article aimed to lessen the predicament of fatherlessness by considering the role of missional parenting where the father and mother form a partnership and collaborate for the family’s progress and actualise God’s pre-eminent plan for families in South Africa. The literature review and methodology provided rich insights and considerable knowledge to help support families who do not have a father figure and men in their fatherly role. Missional parenting is gospel-centred and can be a detriment to father absence. Parents follow the example of Jesus Christ as saviour in missional parenting. Contribution: This article employed a descriptive and explorative modus operandi and explored a respective method to effectuate family disharmony in the context of South Africa. It endorses the journal’s focus on church and family in the field of Missiology and Practical Theology. A fatherless South Africa because of the social ill of father absence is a concerning issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language is a critical tool for communication. This article uses the autoethnographic methodology to describe the author’s experience of language acquisition, which has influenced his understanding of multilingualism in incarnational ministry. He belongs to a missional order, InnerCHANGE, that uses an incarnational approach to ministry. InnerCHANGE understands incarnational ministry as a mission to meaningfully identify with people its members live among. InnerCHANGE’s membership is of diverse backgrounds culturally. Multilingualism within the order and in ministry contexts in a way that makes communication smooth is still an ideal rather than a reality. This article asks how multilingualism could positively contribute to InnerCHANGE’s quest for a meaningful incarnational approach. It found out that multilingualism could be a tangible act of equity and justice. It could also be a way to affirm diversity in a world that is constantly on a quest for a lingua franca, a contradiction to the event of Pentecost found in Acts 2. Finally, it could be an act of solidarity towards the valorisation of languages that some people see as inferior. It concludes by stressing that black Africans should be at the forefront of valorising their native languages in proudly using them and producing knowledge that could be shared with fellow Africans and non-Africans. Contribution: This article intends to contribute to the ongoing debate on the relation of the gospel to culture. Its focus is on language, which is one of the components of a culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article demonstrates how missional churches have emphasized accompaniment as missiological foundation in the COVID‐19 pandemic season. Employing ethnographical method, interviews, and virtual church visits as the primary approach, the paper explores how NextGen Church as the embodiment of Christ's love has moved communities to solidarity and unity in the middle of global suffering. It concludes that God is on the mission of love and that the pandemic has provided an opportunity for the church to enhance its participation in missio Dei by epitomizing Christ's love. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Church in Australia finds itself pushed to the margins of society and lacking the status it once enjoyed in previous generations. The importance and role of the church in society's life is now questioned and it would seem that the church's long term survival is being challenged. How should the church respond? One response is found in the exploration of new forms of church birthed out of missional theology – a theology that sees the church partnering with the God who is actively on mission in his world. This response however, does not come without its own inherent challenges. Leaders of missional communities within the Australian context were interviewed in an attempt to decipher what those challenges might be. The results can largely be covered under the rubrics of: Ambiguity, Anxiety, Audience and Abandonment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the relation of preaching to congregational vitality, particularly in Episcopal Church congregations. Topics include the relation of preaching to Christian discipleship, the relation of preaching to mission and the idea of missional theology, and the role of preaching in congregational leadership.

In the last couple of decades, the Korean church experienced a loss of credibility as well as a decrease in membership. The premise of this contribution is that the mega-church phenomenon in Korea contributed to this state of affairs. Many Korean churches, influenced by dramatic sociopolitical and economic changes, developed a distorted understanding of its nature and mission. Korean churches began to compete against each other to grow bigger. An institutional ecclesiology and ecclesiocentric understanding of mission formed the basis of this endeavour. To counter this tendency, some churches turned to missional ecclesiology to facilitate the reformation of the Korean church. According to empirical data, Korean society rates mega-churches negatively while they evaluate missional churches positively. This provided further impetus for the current emerging missional movement in Korea.

The church is prominent in the letter to the Ephesians in the sense that the absence of the local church is highlighted with all the attention focused on the headship of Jesus Christ over everything, and therefore also over the church. The textual reference to Ephesians 4:11 refers to a range of gifts which require interpretation, especially in light of the recent appeal to the church to be a missional church as a contemporary direction for the present-day church. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Should we stop using the term 'Mission'?" asked Klauspeter Blaser in his 1987 article. The crisis in mission in the second half of the 20th century, well accounted by historians of missions, had led to what Lamin Sanneh famously called "the Western guilt complex" about missions. Reviewing the conceptual development of the missionary enterprise, this article makes some historical-theological interpretations of the missionary enterprise since the later half of the 20th century and argues that the concept and practice of mission have changed and we are in a new day of missiological renewal. Arguably, missiology can now be seen as providing a hub of global theological trends, especially in the light of the theology behind missio Dei and the emerging contextual theologies at the dawn of world Christianity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media as a new phenomenon has become a tool used by many televangelists and pastors all over the world. It is against this background that this research sought to explore the Facebook activities of some Ghanaian Pentecostal pastors from a missional perspective. The article deals with the concept of social media, Facebook and its potential for mission purposes, the Facebook phenomenon among Ghanaians and how Ghanaian Pentecostal Pastors are using Facebook for missional purposes, as well as some of concerns on the negative uses of social media. The study revealed that Ghanaian pastors are followed by people from different religious and societal backgrounds. It has also offered the pastors and their congregations the opportunity to form relationships with a wide and diverse range of people without being bound by geographical space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of transformative spirituality for missional leadership is explored. Missional leadership is defined as the transformation of people and institutions to participate, through meaningful relations and in the power of the Spirit, in God's mission. Missional spirituality is discussed in the context of the missional church, focusing on what the church is, does, how the church organizes what it does, the appropriate leadership, and missional spirituality. This article brings together ideas from the missional church movement and the World Council of Churches (Together Towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes), with its emphasis on a 'transformative spirituality' an approach that states that 'mission spirituality is always transformative'. These ideas are applied to missional leadership. The research applies the following dimensions of personal leadership virtues to transformative missional spirituality and missional leadership: transcendence (which includes appreciation of beauty, gratitude, hope, humor, and religiousness), humanity (which includes the social competencies of kindness, love, and social intelligence), wisdom and knowledge (which include the cognitive competencies of creativity, curiosity, open-mindedness, and love of learning), justice (associated with fairness, leadership, and teamwork), courage (including the personal and emotional competencies of bravery, persistence, and zest), and finally temperance (which includes the competencies of forgiveness, modesty, prudence, and self-regulation). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is much literature concerning small church groups. We are swamped with articles and blogs about what to do to make your small group succeed. Many of these are purely pragmatic, with a smattering of theology or ecclesiology. I believe it is time to take a fresh practical theological look at their place in congregational life and their ecclesiological role. One aim of the missional concept is that congregations transform the communities in the contemporary worlds in which they exist. Whilst many churches now have a dual structure of small satellite groups attached around the main larger worship meeting variously known as cell groups, life groups, etc., it would appear from research that they are not using this dual combination effectively from a missional perspective and thus are not being as effective as they could be in fulfilling the missio Dei. This article attempts to learn how this may be improved using an interdisciplinary practical theology approach combining what may be learnt about this dual structure from the sociology of groups, church history, ecclesiology, and contemporary contextual studies. It concludes by making appropriate recommendations. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article suggests how their effectiveness may be significantly improved using an intra/interdisciplinary practical theology approach combining what may be learnt about this dual structure from the sociology of groups, church history, perception theory in the area of ecclesial paradigms, missional and Trinitarian ecclesiology, and contemporary contextual studies. It concludes by making appropriate recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consultancy processes can help local churches that are plateaued or declining to revitalize. This article discusses six models of consultancies in Australian local churches or denominations: Alan Roxburgh's Future Directions used by Churches of Christ, Paul Borden and Salvation Army's Growing Health Corps, Natural Church Development with Brisbane Anglicans, Ken Morgan's Pathways for Melbourne Anglicans, 3DM adapted by Fitzroy North Church of Christ, and Neil Cole's Church Transfusion at Geelong's Central Baptist Church. The essential elements in a revitalization consultancy are to resource spiritual depth, reconnect with Biblical and congregational stories, facilitate congregational conversations, provide leadership in change, and foster creative dreaming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

August Davis (1852-1936) led a group of Swedish Free Mission Friends in America known as the Free-Free, an early branch of what is today the Evangelical Free Church of America. Davis and his followers were known for such phenomena as falling down in the Spirit, having ecstatic visions, uttering unintelligible sounds, communicating the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands, and teaching the baptism of the Holy Spirit as a second work of grace. Such activities occurred mostly in Chicago, Illinois, and throughout western Minnesota between 1885 and 1900. Davis and the Free-Free had direct organizational ties in the Scandinavian Mission Society U.S.A. to emerging Swedish-American Pentecostals in Minnesota and South Dakota such as John Thompson, Mary Johnson, and Jacob Bakken. This group known pejoratively as the Free-Free is another of several impulses that birthed a distinctly Pentecostal form of Christianity in America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the term missional is an expression of the global shift towards a theocentric (rather than ecclesiocentric) understanding of mission. A Missional Community is a concrete, local embodiment of this missional ecclesiology and it comes to be through discerning its particular and ongoing vocation in the cosmic missio Dei. It is for this reason that we argued that communal vocation discernment lies at the heart of the Missional Community's life and practice. This practice births, energises and renews the Missional Community in the wake of the boundary-breaking Spirit's work in the local neighbourhood or context. Because communal vocation discernment is central to Missional Communities it seemed prudent to ask which other communities or traditions see discernment as central to their life and practice. In Western Christianity, the Quakers stand out as a significant example of communal discernment as their normal way of making decisions. We sought to answer whether the Quaker practice of communal discernment, in the Meeting for Worship in which Business is Conducted, is a suitable model for communal vocation discernment in Missional Communities. We suggested that it was not suitable in so far as it did not express an explicit commitment to being grounded and connected to a place or neighbourhood as a prerequisite for discernment. We suggested that it was suitable in so far as it continually reminds the community that communal discernment is not simply about making decisions or finding your vocation but at its heart is an act of worship. This awareness in the Quakers is primarily achieved through naming communal discernment spaces as worship spaces and through the strategic use of silence. We also suggested that the Quaker commitment to unity and dissent creates space for belonging, agency and responsibility in the community and that this is something which Missional Communities would do well to appropriate in their own communal vocation discernment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

21st century mission, now recognized as being from "everywhere to anywhere," has increasingly focused on the concepts of mission partnerships and interdependence. However, all too often, mission partnerships in Southeastern Europe seem entrenched in narratives of dysfunctional relationships. Is the power and impact of the global Church as it participates in God's mission directly related to how we function together across the boundaries of ethnicity, tradition, and socio-economic status? If so, how can both national Christians and foreign missionaries step out of repeating negative relational patterns? In order to explore some of the foundational issues rooted in this question, this paper will first discuss a missiological reading of 1 Corinthians 11:17- 34. Secondly, this paper will critically analyze a Croatian case study, which highlights a past successful partnership between nationals and Western missionaries, focusing on three pertinent concepts that emerge: organic teams, economic paradigms, and the foundation for true power in mission. Finally, in light of both Paul's directives and the issues raised in the case study, the paper will offer missiological implications for future cross-cultural relationships in Southeastern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on the concept of missional church. Topics covered include the development of a tailored mission approach which is based in scripture and in good management practise, the stages necessary in tailoring mission to suit a church such as creating a common understanding of mission and evangelism and the confusion between the concepts of mission and evangelism. Also mentioned are exercises used to address attitudes towards evangelism.

This article argues that an understanding of the development of a missional ecclesiology requires we recognize three closely connected and significant matters in 20th-century mission history: first, the increasing appreciation of the interconnection of church and mission evinced at major ecumenical conferences in the mid-20th century; second, the contributions of influential missiologist Lesslie Newbigin and his theological integration of mission and church; and third, the breakthrough of the phrase 'missional church' with the 1998 publication of the book Missional Church. This article traces this three-part development through both historical and theological analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on what missional church theorists are advocating and on the ways that missional church practitioners go about their work. It calls for the missional church movement to go on. It hopes that those on the front line who seek to plant missional communities and working to see the missional transformation of existing churches pauses on the subject and their practice to proper theological reflection.

Two challenges facing churches in the West are how to adopt a missional posture to meaningfully engage the broader community, and how to foster genuine spirituality. Western world churches need to engage with a society that is open to spirituality and even inspired by Jesus, but less attracted to church. What does this mean for theological education and how churches train leaders? How can missional spirituality - spirituality that sustains and focuses the mission of the church - be best taught in classes and online? This article addresses these questions by expanding on Robert Banks's Reenvisioning Theological Education and investigating how spirituality is taught as reflective practice. Reenvisioning theological education and missional spirituality happens best when it cultivates inner contemplation and outer engagement, and when it relates faith to everyday life and local contexts. The article shows how these principles will be the basis of refreshed curriculum design to teach missional spirituality including a new online subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on threats to the congregations of the American Church resulting from transition from modern to postmodern culture and several flaws in Church Growth thinking. It describes how the Missional Church (MC) paradigm differs from the Attractional Church (AC) model and shows the motifs of missional ecclesiology which include sending, apostolic impulse and self-replication are contained. It offers Biblical justifications fro the MC paradigm contained in the Book of Acts.

In the first part I address the missional church and its praxis: what God in Jesus Christ together with the Holy Spirit is doing in the world to bring about healing, reconciliation, wholeness, liberation and salvation. In the second section I address the issue of healing from contextual and holistic perspectives. The third part is on reconciling mission and mission as reconciliation. Mission as reconciliation should continually seek to correspond to the specifics of a given context. In short, God's mission as praxis for healing and reconciliation means serving, healing, and reconciling a wounded and broken humanity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the highlights of the 2nd Manila International Mission Conference held in Manila, Philippines, from August 17 to 20, 2011. About 540 delegates representing 17 nations attended the conference. The event's theme was to mobilize the missional churches and leaders in the Asian context. The delegates made several declarations, including Asia as the site of the three most significant world religions.