Andy Rowell

Category: Missiology

  • Separation between poor neighborhoods and rich neighborhoods is occurring

    Many of us are putting a lot of stress on communicating Jesus' way in a way that is contextualized to that local culture like a missionary. However, it is sobering to see that so many of our locales are becoming homogeneous. They have either expensive housing with good schools or more affordable housing with schools with poor test scores. So, we need to both minister locally but also be aware that we may need to partner with a church in a poor area. 

     

     Andy Rowell Retweeted

    Ominous Milestone: 51% public school students now attend schools where most of their classmates r poor or low-income http://njour.nl/s/92412?oref=t.co …

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  • John Howard Yoder, at age 30, on Newbigin and the church as missionary

    I thought John Howard Yoder's reference to Lesslie Newbigin was amusing in the quote below. This reference to Newbigin is the only reference to an individual contemporary in the pamphlet.  Yoder (1927-1997) age 30, not only takes a little shot at Newbigin while agreeing with him fundamentally, he misspells both his first and last name.  One book on Yoder is entitled: A Mind Patient and Untamed–untamed indeed.

    John Howard Yoder, Ecumenical Movement and the Faithful Church (Scottdale, Pa: Mennonite Pub House, 1958), 32.  "The content of this pamphlet . . . appeared serially in the Gospel Herald during January and February 1957." p. 44

    "Alone of all the churches of the Reformation, they [the Anabaptists] insisted that the church is essentially missionary, and that she must be separate from the world, even if that world be Christianized; this is an idea which Leslie [sic. Lesslie] Newbiggin [sic. Newbigin], one of the bishops of the United Church of South India, thinks is a new discovery, and which is gradually becoming one of the accepted principles of ecumenical discussion."

    Interesting background:

    Both Yoder and Newbigin knew Karl Barth in the 1950's when he was articulating his ecclesiology.   

    Newbigin and Barth worked together regularly from 1951-1953 on the "Committee of Twenty-Five" theologians in preparation for the 1954 World Council of Churches conference.  Newbigin (1909-1998) was 48 in 1957 and had published The Household of God–his most systematic book on the church–in 1953.

    Yoder took courses with Karl Barth (1886-1968, age 71 in 1957) and others in Basel from 1950-1957. 

    Barth wrote his three ecclesiological paragraphs in the 1950's: § 62 The Holy Spirit and the Gathering of the Christian Community in Church Dogmatics volume IV.1 in 1953; § 67 The Holy Spirit and the Upbuilding of the Christian Community in CD IV.2 in 1955; and § 72 The Holy Spirit and the Sending of the Christian Community of the Church Dogmatics in CD IV.2 in 1959. 

    See also my:

    Celebrating Lesslie Newbigin's 100th Birthday Today with 10 Things You Probably Did Not Know About Him

    Advice about exploring Karl Barth's ecclesiology in Church Dogmatics IV.2 67.4 "The Order of the Community”

  • Stanley Hauerwas on “The Church as Mission”

    Stanley Hauerwas has recently published his most sophisticated treatment of mission and evangelism.

    Stanley Hauerwas, "Beyond the Boundaries: The Church as Mission" in Walk Humbly with the Lord: Church and Mission Engaging Plurality (ed. Viggo Mortensen and Andreas Østerlund Nielsen; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 53-69.

    Read it at Google Books. 

    Hauerwas is one of my main advisors in my doctoral work here at Duke and I approach the topic similar to the way he does here.  He draws heavily on John Howard Yoder, responds to Nathan Kerr, and cites Karl Barth, Lesslie Newbigin, and Bryan Stone approvingly. 

    (Note also the reference to former Duke students Derek Woodard-Lehmann (now at Princeton) and Dan Barber).

    This is not easy reading.  It is part of a broader conversation in theology, political theology, and ethics.