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“As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (John 20:21).
With the reality of broad-scale secularization in the West and the attendant cloud of insignificance hanging over the church, is there any hope for the re-evangelization of the West?
In this comprehensive theology of mission, Ross Hastings directs the fretful gaze of the church to the trinitarian commission of John 20. There we find Jesus granting peace to his disciples by breathing his Spirit on them. He formed them into his community of shalom, the new humanity. Leaving their locked room, these “sent ones” went out to participate in God’s own ongoing mission to the world.
Hastings tackles the dual challenges of isolation from and accommodation to the surrounding culture. Building on the works of David Bosch, Lesslie Newbigin, Christopher Wright and Darrell Guder, the author offers a particularly theological defence of the missional church. He corrects numerous dichotomies that hinder the church. He is particularly concerned to emphasize that the missional church is as gathered, both the deep church, deep in its eucharistic, liturgical, preaching, and communal life, and as scattered, it is the wide church, in which the whole people of God are missional in fulfilling not just the Great Commission and Great Commandment, but through their work and domestic lives, the cultural mandate, the bringing in of the new creation. This comprehensive theology of mission opens possibilities for renewal of faithful effort as we join in Christ’s mission to the world.