Category: Lesslie Newbigin

  • Two different definitions of missional: Guder and Newbigin

    Go read Brad Brisco's post: Lesslie Newbigin and the GOCN if you want to get at a more nuanced understanding of the divisions within the missional conversation at a scholarly level. 

    Brisco excerpts a few paragraphs from Trinity Western University professor Michael W. Goheen 500 page dissertation on Newbigin:
     “As the Father Has Sent Me, I Am Sending You”: J.E. Lesslie Newbigin’s Missionary Ecclesiology.

    Goheen points out differences between the work of Darrell Guder and The Gospel and Our Culture Network who produced the famous book The Missional Church and the work of Lesslie Newbigin who was a big influence on them. 

    In the comments, D.Min. student at Fuller Josh Rowley and I both remark that the work of Guder bears striking similarities to Stanley Hauerwas here at Duke (who I am taking a class with starting January 7 "HAPPINESS, THE LIFE OF VIRTUE, AND FRIENDSHIP"), and John Howard Yoder.  And that they all diverge in some ways from Newbigin. 

    At Duke Divinity School, we like all of those folks and read them.  I personally recommend them as well. 

    See also Laceye Warner (one of my advisors) and Paul Wesley Chilcote outstanding new set of schoarly readings on this topic:
    The Study of Evangelism: Exploring a Missional Practice of the Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008).  They include selections from both Newbigin and Hauerwas.

    If you are interested in seeing what all the fuss is about–"what this really means on the ground"–you can look through some of the debate about the term "missional" which I have chronicled at this post.
    Following Dan Kimball's Missional vs. Megachurch conversation If you think the megachurch is terrible, then you will probably be on the side of Guder, Hauerwas and Yoder.  If you are not so sure it is that bad, you will appreciate Newbigin.