Concordia Seminary - Saint Louis Scholarly Resources from Concordia Seminary Edinburgh Centenary Series Resources for Ministry 1-1-2012 Life-Widening Mission Global Perspectives from the Anglican Communion Cathy Ross University of Edinburgh, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholar.csl.edu/edinburghcentenary Part of the Missions and World Christianity Commons Recommended Citation Ross, Cathy, "Life-Widening Mission Global Perspectives from the Anglican Communion" (2012). Edinburgh Centenary Series. Book 11. http://scholar.csl.edu/edinburghcentenary/11 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Resources for Ministry at Scholarly Resources from Concordia Seminary. It has been accepted for inclusion in Edinburgh Centenary Series by an authorized administrator of Scholarly Resources from Concordia Seminary. For more information, please contact [email protected]. REGNUM EDINBURGH CENTENARY SERIES Life-Widening Mission Global Perspectives from the Anglican Communion REGNUM EDINBURGH CENTENARY SERIES The Centenary of the World Missionary Conference of 1910, held in Edinburgh, was a suggestive moment for many people seeking direction for Christian mission in the twenty-first century. Several different constituencies within world Christianity held significant events around 2010. From 2005, an international group worked collaboratively to develop an intercontinental and multi-denominational project, known as Edinburgh 2010, and based at New College, University of Edinburgh. This initiative brought together representatives of twenty different global Christian bodies, representing all major Christian denominations and confessions, and many different strands of mission and church life, to mark the Centenary. Essential to the work of the Edinburgh 1910 Conference, and of abiding value, were the findings of the eight think-tanks or ‘commissions’. These inspired the idea of a new round of collaborative reflection on Christian mission – but now focused on nine themes identified as being key to mission in the twenty-first century. The study process was polycentric, open-ended, and as inclusive as possible of the different genders, regions of the world, and theological and confessional perspectives in today’s church. It was overseen by the Study Process Monitoring Group: Miss Maria Aranzazu Aguado (Spain, The Vatican), Dr Daryl Balia (South Africa, Edinburgh 2010), Mrs Rosemary Dowsett (UK, World Evangelical Alliance), Dr Knud Jørgensen (Norway, Areopagos), Rev. John Kafwanka (Zambia, Anglican Communion), Rev. Dr Jooseop Keum (Korea, World Council of Churches), Dr Wonsuk Ma (Korea, Oxford Centre for Mission Studies), Rev. Dr Kenneth R. Ross (UK, Church of Scotland), Dr Petros Vassiliadis (Greece, Aristotle University of Thessalonikki), and coordinated by Dr Kirsteen Kim (UK, Edinburgh 2010). These publications reflect the ethos of Edinburgh 2010 and will make a significant contribution to ongoing studies in mission. It should be clear that material published in this series will inevitably reflect a diverse range of views and positions. These will not necessarily represent those of the series’ editors or of the Edinburgh 2010 General Council, but in publishing them the leadership of Edinburgh 2010 hopes to encourage conversation between Christians and collaboration in mission. All the series’ volumes are commended for study and reflection in both church and academy. Series Editors Knud Jørgensen Areopagos, Norway, MF Norwegian School of Theology & the Lutheran School of Theology, Hong Kong. Former Chair of Edinburgh 2010 Study Process Monitoring Group Kirsteen Kim Leeds Trinity University College and former Edinburgh 2010 Research Coordinator, UK Wonsuk Ma Oxford Centre for Mission Studies, Oxford, UK Tony Gray Words by Design, Bicester, UK REGNUM EDINBURGH CENTENARY SERIES Life-Widening Mission Global Perspectives from the Anglican Communion Edited by Cathy Ross Copyright © Cathy Ross, 2012 First published 2012 by Regnum Books International Regnum is an imprint of the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies St. Philip and St. James Church Woodstock Road Oxford OX2 6HR, UK www.ocms.ac.uk/regnum 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The right of Cathy Ross to be identified as the Editors of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electric, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying. In the UK such licences are issued by the Copyright Licencing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9HE. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-908355-00-3 Cover photo by kind permission of Oddmund Køhn Typeset by Words by Design Printed and bound in Great Britain for Regnum Books International by TJ International LTD, Padstow, Cornwall The publication of this title is made possible through the generous financial assistance of The Commission on Theological Education of Evangelisches Missionswerk in Deutschland (EMW, Dr. Verena Grüter), Hamburg, Germany CONTENTS Foreword The Archbishop of Canterbury vii Preface Cathy Ross x INTRODUCTION The Story of this Book Janice Price 3 THE FIVE MARKS OF MISSION The First Mark of Mission: To Proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom of God Kwok Keung Chan 13 The Second Mark of Mission: To Teach, Baptise and Nurture New Believers Andrew Thompson 31 The Third Mark of Mission: To Respond to Human Need by Loving Service Vicentia Kgabe 47 The Fourth Mark of Mission: To Seek to Transform Unjust Structures of Society Irene Ayallo 57 The Fifth Mark of Mission: To Strive to Safeguard the Integrity of Creation and Sustain and Renew the Life of the Earth Kapya John Kaoma 75 OTHER THEMES Gender: Representation and Presence at Edinburgh 2010 Caitlin Beck 95 A Visual Gospel: Imagery as Mission Luiz Coelho 113 CONCLUSION Receiving a New Day of Mission Mark McDonald 137 vi Life-Widening Mission: Global Perspectives from the Anglican Communion Appendix: The Five Marks of Mission and the Anglican Communion John Kafwanka 143 Bibliography 153 List of Contributors 161 FOREWORD The Archbishop of Canterbury, The Most Revd Dr Rowan Williams It is clear from the essays collected here that the experience of the 2010 World Mission Conference in Edinburgh was both affirming and frustrating for those taking part – affirming because of its recognition of how the centre of gravity has moved in global Christianity; frustrating because of the relative slowness of so many global Christian bodies to catch up with this and to embody it in the way they do business and in the way they represent themselves. This remarkably gifted and creative Anglican delegation at least had some claim to embody the ethnic, gender and age balance of the Communion. But what they write here gives us no cause for complacency, and these reflections will – or should – provide plenty of food for thought in the various councils of the Communion in the coming years. Rather than attempt a response to each of the papers here – though they all deserve detailed and grateful study – I shall try to pick out a few general themes that seem to be surfacing. The first of these is both simple and very wide-ranging. We have unprecedented opportunities and channels for communicating with each other in the twenty-first century, but we have not yet worked out how to meet each other honestly and effectively. So many of our global bodies (Anglican and other) are set in ways that represent a post-war North Atlantic style – driven by carefully calibrated procedures, resolutions, working groups, ‘platform’ positions. They are about negotiation, about the painstaking work that has to be done in order to find a common language and a common policy. I don’t believe this is a waste of time. But it increasingly feels sterile; and it hands effective power to those who know how to use the procedures. When – as in the 2008 Lambeth Conference and some subsequent meetings – we try to find other ways of doing things, we often hear the accusation of avoiding decisions on the real issues and of falling between two or more stools, producing talking shops that don’t do enough either to foster honest relationships or to resource better discussion. This may not be fair (I would say that, of course!), but it is a real set of perceptions. We have not yet found how to meet at this level. And there are plenty of people (not only Europeans or Americans) who do not specially want to see new ways of meeting develop because that would open the door to new questions about power. The challenge that is expressed in some of what follows is to show what friendship might mean in the Body of Christ; the way we have normally done things doesn’t shape itself easily to such terms, yet the viii Life-Widening Mission: Global Perspectives from the Anglican Communion category of friendship, in the Bible and in the spiritual tradition, from the Quakers to St Teresa of Avila, is so potent and distinctively gospel related that we can hardly write it off. And this focuses the issue of the language we use when we meet, including the language of worship. The questions of gender sensitivity are among the obvious ones here, and they are well treated in this book; but they are only the most acute of a number of questions about how we each genuinely seek to give room to voices that are not ours. Much has been said about the danger of importing liturgical forms from the Middle Ages or Reformation Europe into other cultures. But that danger is not much lessened by replacing those either with synthetic ‘globalized’ modern music and devotional rhetoric (American fundamentalism reproduced in African or Asian dress) or with ready-made emancipationist language representing what we in the North or West like to think of as ‘progressive’ faith.