WALK HUMBLY WITH THE LORD

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Contents

Acknowledgments.............................................................................................................................................................viiiChurch and Mission Engaging Plurality: Edinburgh 1910-Aarhus 2010 Viggo Mortensen and Andreas Østerlund Nielsen.......................................................1The World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh 1910: Sifting History from Myth Brian Stanley...................................................................................15Mapping Ecclesiology and Mission: Trends Revealed by the Atlas of Global Christianity Kenneth R. Ross......................................................................271910-2010: From Foreign Missions to the Home Policies of a World Religion Werner Ustorf....................................................................................35Strategic Reflections Coming Out of the Present Predicament for Christian Mission Birger Nygaard...........................................................................43Beyond the Boundaries: The Church Is Mission Stanley Hauerwas..............................................................................................................53Mission: Invitation to Community Jan-Olav Henriksen........................................................................................................................70The Fluid Mission of the Church Niels Henrik Gregersen.....................................................................................................................74The Church in a Multireligious Europe Friedrich W. Graf....................................................................................................................85On Good Manners and Hospitality: Protestant Liberalism and a Multireligious Europe Arne Rasmusson..........................................................................97The Ecclesiality of Mission in the Context of Empire Bryan Stone...........................................................................................................105Emerging from the Dark Age Ahead: The Canadian Church in the Third Millennium Charles J. Fensham...........................................................................113Transforming Ecclesiologies in a Multireligious World F. LeRon Shults......................................................................................................135Resisting McDonaldization: Will "Fresh Expressions" of Church Inevitably Go Stale? John Drane..............................................................................150The Missional Church and "Homo Areligiosus" Martin Reppenhagen.............................................................................................................167A Minority Community of Equality and Difference Helene Egnell..............................................................................................................184Pro me in the Age of Authenticity: The Missiological Significance of "Christ in Us" and "We in Christ" Hans Raun Iversen...................................................191The Mission of the Church: To Be a Christian Minority in Muslim Lands, Wishing for an Embrace Munawar K. Rumalshah.........................................................205The Future of Missiologies Mika Vähäkangas.......................................................................................................................217Missiology as Vocation Andrew F. Walls.....................................................................................................................................230Mission: Understanding Reality Ulrich Dehn.................................................................................................................................238Missional Spirituality in the Contemporary World Jacques Matthey...........................................................................................................247Out of the Abundance of the Heart: A Missiology for the Future Viggo Mortensen.............................................................................................265The Futures of Missiology: Imaginative Practices and the Transformation of Rupture Darrell Jackson.........................................................................278Attending to Local and Diverse Communities: Toward a Theological Learning Community for a Missional Era Patricia Taylor Ellison and Patrick R. Keifert.....................300Theological Formation for Missional Practice Darrell L. Guder..............................................................................................................307Contributors................................................................................................................................................................313

Chapter One

Brian Stanley

The centenary of the World Missionary Conference, held in Edinburgh from 14 to 23 June 1910, has been marked by various commemorative events organized in different parts of the globe in the course of 2010. These have included the official centennial conference held in Edinburgh in June, and of course the conference at the University of Aarhus on "Church and Mission in a Multi-religious Millennium," which has given birth to this volume. While many of these events have manifested a proper concern to discern in what ways the shape, and even the goals, of Christian mission have changed in the century since 1910, the fact that so many missiological conferences have been convened in 2010 indicates the reverence in which the World Missionary Conference is still held. All sections of the global Protestant family, from the most committed of ecumenists to the most conservative of evangelicals, have been keen to pay their acts of homage to the memory of "Edinburgh 1910" and to display their apostolic credentials as the true heirs of this historic assembly. The Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches have also been eager to be involved in the commemoration of an event that forms no part of their own histories. At the time of writing, it seems probable that 2010 will add a new chapter to the ongoing narrative of reinterpretation of the conference, a narrative that began even before it reached its conclusion. There can be few other episodes in modern church history that have been burdened with such a weighty cargo of symbolic meaning, and as a result, have been so liable to the distorting effect of selective remembrance. In this essay I shall attempt to begin to disentangle history from myth and assess the true significance of the conference. I shall do so by questioning four of the most common ascriptions of significance attached to the 1910 conference, and seeking to assess how far each of these ascriptions is justified by the evidence of history.

The First International and Ecumenical Missionary Conference?

Contrary to what is often alleged, Edinburgh 1910 was neither the first international missionary conference, nor was it an "ecumenical" conference, except in a strictly limited sense of the word. Its original title was indeed the "Third Ecumenical Missionary Conference," since it followed two earlier (and now generally forgotten) large Protestant missionary gatherings held in London in 1888 and New York in 1900. The first...