Missionary Books, Missionary Enterprise, and Workings of the Mind

I remember when Alan R. Tippett came to study at the fledgling Church Growth Institute, which was then meeting on the campus of my alma mater, Northwest Christian College (now University) in Eugene, Oregon. Donald McGavran had only recently founded the institute that was to grow into the prestigious School of World Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. Later Tippett, anthropologist and Australian, became his associate there, and a dynamic duo they were.

Through a lifetime of ministry I have given thanks for my early association with McGavran. He championed an objective sociological perspective in the often too idealistic (read “unrealistic”) practices of missions. It was a much-needed corrective. His invitation to anthropologist Alan Tippett to join him in his reforming movement was an especially keen move.

Doug Priest

I didn”t get to know Tippett as well, so I greeted the news that Doug Priest, executive director of Christian Missionary Fellowship, is honoring him with a series of volumes of his thoughtful writings with a sense of expectancy.

The Jesus Documents is the first of the series (while Priest is serving as series editor, Shawn Redford is editor of this first book). Based on this first Tippett book, I”ll want to read the subsequent volumes.

The Jesus Documents is what Tippett calls the four Gospels, which he reads not so much as a theologian but as a missiologist. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were written to interpret facts of Jesus” life and teachings in a way that would persuade nonbelievers or prebelievers to a faith in Christ. To be fully understood today, then, a reader must take into account their immediate cultural context, as would a missionary learning to communicate across cultural barriers.

The four Gospels are different from each other because the cultures for which they are designed were different. “The Jesus Documents emerged as a result of the cross-cultural mission for communities which did not know or remember Jesus in the flesh or understand the language he probably spoke,” he writes.

Tippett”s approach could not differ more from those who take the Bible to be “a database for twentieth century literary and biblical critics.” Such studies miss the missionary impulse that brought them into being.

Since you and I live in a society as alien to the Gospels as did their first readers, our preaching and teaching would be more relevant and more readily received if we would heed Tippett”s commonsensical counsel, including his repeated advice that we should read each Gospel whole and be done with proof-texting and nit-picking. He does not disparage literary criticism, but calls for “a functional/cultural view of the Gospels” that won”t pull them to pieces. Since The Jesus Documents have come to us “as whole units,” we would profit by studying them””and communicating them””in their wholeness.

Think About Missions

A blurb on the back cover of River of God: An Introduction to World Mission“”also edited by Doug Priest, with Stephen Burris””pretty much captures my initial reaction to the book:

River of God is not like the text I remember from my introduction to missions class in college. This one is interesting. Inspiring, even. Here personal tales told by seasoned missionaries are juxtaposed with the solid research of expert missiologists. They are convinced that the Scriptures focus on the mission of God””and so should we. River of God makes the case that even now the kingdom can come and God”s will can be done.

Right. I agree with every word. I wrote the blurb. The editors asked the publisher to send a prepublication copy so that, if I liked the book, I could say something positive about it.

I liked it then and like it even more now after a second reading.

I hope its use won”t be limited to the classroom. As the modern missions enterprise grows ever more complex, western churches simply can”t be satisfied with sending off their monthly support checks and hoping for the best. We need to know what our missionaries and mission agencies are doing””and why. This text can help donors and leaders of church missions reappraise their missions” strategies.

My enthusiasm stems from my acquaintance with the authors of the various chapters. I know 12 of the 17 contributors and trust their judgment. These people are not just hearers (and writers) of the Word, but doers also. They have done their research in libraries and frontline trenches.

You may want to read the book straight through, as I did, because I was interested in every subject. On the other hand, you may want to study more randomly. Here are some of your choices: short-term missions, for better or for worse; where modern missions came from””and where they are headed; the relentless challenge of urban missions (including the burgeoning worldwide slum populations); the West”s confrontation with Islam and how to take the message of Christ where it”s not wanted; what to do about missionary culture shock and burnout; how a missions mind-set opens up the Scriptures; and as Doug Priest has written in another of his books, why we need to “get our hands dirty.”

After reading this far you may accuse me of bias, since this book speaks to a lifelong passion of mine. OK, I”m biased.

Think About Thinking

My wife, Joy, and I have often laughed about an early argument. Neither of us can remember the subject we were disputing, but we both remember the heat of the moment when, in exasperation, I vigorously (and loudly) exploded, “Woman, be reasonable.” To which she equally vigorously, but more sensibly, replied, “You know I can”t be reasonable when I”m mad.”

And she couldn”t. Neither can I. And neither can you.

We aren”t alone. Daniel Kahneman, emeritus professor of psychology at Princeton University, argues most persuasively in Thinking, Fast and Slow that the compliment we humans pay ourselves (homo sapiens”””wise humans”) is simply undeserved. We are, rather, mostly a bundle of emotions, reacting intuitively and viscerally to stimuli, who then, after responding without thought, summon our thinking to justify and rationalize why we decided what we just emotionally decided.

I began to catch on to what the professor is talking about fairly soon in dealing with the knotty relational problems facing a pastor or administrator. That”s when I decided I wouldn”t hold people to their first thoughts. It is more sensible to wait for their second thoughts, when passions have cooled and reasonableness has a chance.

We have two basic operating systems. Kahneman unimaginatively calls the first System 1, which makes snap judgments, depending on emotion and memory and genetic hardwiring to cope with the crisis of the moment. If there”s time, then System 2 can kick in. This is our reasoning, the part that calculates, weighs options, checks the data, and comes to a more logical conclusion. It does the heavy lifting, but since it is naturally lazy, it defers most of the time to System 1. And that gets us into trouble.

As you can see, Kahneman challenges just about everything we like to think about our thinking.

A lot of readers, probably no more rational than the rest of us, like what the professor has to say. The New York Times called Thinking, Fast and Slow one of the best books of 2011. The Wall Street Journal went almost as far, naming it one of the best nonfiction books of 2011. From the Los Angeles Times came the Book Prize for Current Interest. All these accolades to an author who had already been awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.

I suspect what he thinks about thinking is worth thinking about.

LeRoy Lawson is professor of Christian ministries at Emmanuel Christian Seminary in Johnson City, Tennessee, and an international consultant with CMF International. He also serves as a CHRISTIAN STANDARD contributing editor and member of Standard Publishing”s Publishing Committee.