E. Stanley Jones
Eli Stanley Jones was born in Clarksville, Maryland, on January 3, 1884, at the height of the American Holiness Movement. Even though as a Christian Jones was shaped by this movement, his years as a...
View ArticleThe Death of Jesus in Islam and Christianity
In 2001 at the University of Cambridge, I met Thomas McElwain, a Muslim anthropologist from a Scandinavian university. A native West Virginian, he had gone to Russia as a Baptist missionary where he...
View ArticleWhat Is a Missional Hermeneutic?
A missional hermeneutic is an interpretive approach that privileges mission as the key to reading the Scriptures. Missional hermeneutics works across the spectrum of approaches to the biblical text. It...
View ArticleMissional Musings on Paul
This is a time of much exciting activity in two fields of theological study that are of special interest to me and, I suspect, also to many Catalyst readers: Pauline studies (particularly the meaning...
View ArticleWorldview and the Missional Task
Scholars differ in their understanding of worldview. They do not differ in their agreement that worldview is—that is, it exists. Naturalists and biologists, psychologists, anthropologists and...
View ArticleWhat Is the Gospel?
We have all heard that the word gospel means “good news.” What we may not fully appreciate are the layers of good news in the NT — the rich, multiple nuances and dimensions the word “gospel” took on in...
View ArticleExploring New Language for Proclaiming the Gospel: Examples from Scripture
“The Western world has lost its faith in the shadow of church steeples.” (Alex McManus) A few years ago I wrote the essay, “What Is a Missional Hermeneutic?” for Catalyst. Over the next year, I want to...
View ArticleA House of Prayer for All Nations: Four Hallmarks of Contemplative Ecclesiology
We were sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a cup of coffee as we had done so many times. Our conversation was unhurried, punctuated by stretches of easy silence. We had been talking about the Holy...
View ArticleThe Only Way
The Five Practices, the Four Foci, Three Simple Rules – Methodists love numbering things. Of course, the people of God have a long history of makings lists: Ten Commandments, seven gifts of the Spirit,...
View ArticleReferring Jesus
Your phone rings. It is the receptionist at the front desk. She says there is a lady there who is asking for food. You glance out your office window and observe an unfamiliar car parked in the church...
View ArticleNotes toward an Evangelical Theology of Religions in an Interfaith World
What does an evangelical theology of religions look like? As, if not more, important, what is an evangelical missiology of religions like? There are many reasons why I pose both question together. One...
View ArticleCritical Shifts for Embracing God’s 21st Century Mission: (1) From Preaching...
“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter – it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” (Mark Twain) As Christendom continues to...
View ArticleA Modest Proposal for Missional Evangelists in North America and throughout...
Let me acknowledge from the onset that I am writing with a focus on The United Methodist Church today in North America. United Methodists in Africa and Asia, in my opinion, have much to teach us in the...
View ArticleCritical Shifts for Embracing God’s 21st Century Mission (Part 2)
In part one of my series on Critical Shifts for Embracing God’s 21st Century Mission, we discussed the need for moving From Preaching to the Choir to Communicating with Cultural Clarity. In this new...
View ArticleMissional Discipleship in the Wesleyan Spirit
There have been a number of unfolding and overlapping shifts in Western missiological thinking in recent years. First, the dominant understanding of mission as sending people overseas to pre-Christian...
View ArticleGreat Commandment Evangelism
Evangelism today is often described as done in obedience to the Great Commission of Matt 28:16–20. This passage is widely appealed to as our motivation for evangelism, and analyzed in depth for clues...
View ArticleCritical Shifts for Embracing God’s 21st Century Mission (3)
In my first two installments of “Critical Shifts for Embracing God’s 21st Century Mission,” we explored the need to move “From Preaching to the Choir to Communicating with Cultural Clarity” and “From...
View ArticleTheology after the Missional Turn (1)
The emergence of missional theology has been epoch making. For many who have self-identified with the term missional, that’s the idea, anyway — a paradigm shift, a radical turn. Call our context...
View ArticleTheology after the Missional Turn (2)
In the first part of this essay I began with this key question: Why does the missional turn matter? Specifically, how has missional theology addressed the seismic cultural shifts that have shaken the...
View ArticleTheology after the Missional Turn (3)
The first two parts of this essay dealt with two reasons the missional turn matters: the mainstreaming of missiology and theological innovation. After the missional turn, local churches have begun to...
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