Saturday 31 March 2012

International Bulletin of Missionary Research 36:2 (April 2012)


The latest issue of International Bulletin of Missionary Research carries articles broadly related to ‘Korean Missions: Beyond the Obvious’.


As J. Nelson Jennings notes in the Editorial:


‘Today as never before, Jesus’ followers are found across a bewildering range of settings: multicultural, alien, postcolonial, politically oppressive, affluent, and destitute. Whatever the setting, whether rooted or on the move, the church is the deeply flawed but extraordinarily purposeful body of Christ incarnate – the Word made flesh. It exists by mission, just as a fire exists by burning, as Emil Brunner so aptly observed. The modern world order created by expanding empires is giving way to social, demographic, and ecclesiastical realities that are much less tidy than those proposed by missiological cartographers of a century ago...


‘There can be no church and mission without human beings, and there can be no human beings who are not shaped, conditioned, self-defined, animated, and limited by their cultures. Nor can there be any church and mission that will not instinctively influence and benefit their host culture. While the essays in this issue of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research are weighted toward the country of Korea, they illustrate well what is taking place worldwide.’

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