I don’t know why I started this book at this time. Maybe because I was tired of seeing it sitting on my “To Read” shelf for what seems like a year. Maybe it was because I tend to start large projects in the midst of large projects. Currently I am a little behind in reading for my doctoral work, I’m writing a book, I have a paper due in April which I need to read another 1,500 pages, and I begin to start writing my dissertation this summer. Oh, and I do pastor a church. Thus it makes all the sense in the world to start a 581 page book (including indices, 535 pages of reading) at this time, right?

Christopher J. H. Wright (Ph.D. Cambridge) is the director of international ministries for the Langham Partnership International (known in the US as John Stott Ministries). He has taught Old Testament and was the principal of All Nations College in Ware, England. He and his wife also served in India as missionaries and teachers for five years.

This book is the 2007 Christianity Today Missions/Global Affairs Book winner. The description of the book is:

Most Christians would agree that the Bible provides a basis for mission. But Christopher Wright boldly maintains that mission is bigger than that–there is in fact a missional basis for the Bible! The entire Bible is generated by and is all about God’s mission.

In order to understand the Bible, we need a missional hermeneutic of the Bible, an interpretive perspective that is in tune with this great missional theme. We need to see the “big picture” of God’s mission and how the familiar bits and pieces fit into the grand narrative of Scripture.

Beginning with the Old Testament and the groundwork it lays for understanding who God is, what he has called his people to be and do, and how the nations fit into God’s mission, Wright gives us a new hermeneutical perspective on Scripture. This new perspective provides a solid and expansive basis for holistic mission. Wright emphasizes throughout a holistic mission as the proper shape of Christian mission. God’s mission is to reclaim the world–and that includes the created order–and God’s people have a designated role to play in that mission.

His objective is to “not only demonstrate …that Christian mission is fully grounded in the Scripture…but also to demonstrate that a strong theology of the mission of God provides a fruitful hermeneutical framework within which to read the whole Bible.”

The book is divided into four sections. In the first section he surveys steps that have already been taken toward a missional hermeneutic and argues that more is need to move the discussion forward. He also sketches some of what he thinks a missional hermeneutic entails.

The second section (The Mission of God) examines the “missiological implications of biblical monotheism”. Section three (The People of Mission) considers the primary agent of the missional of God - the people of God. He reflects on election and mission, redemption and mission, covenant and mission, and ethics and mission. In the final section (The Arena of Mission). Wright considers the wider canvas of the world itself - the earth, humanity, cultures and nations. He explores “the missional implications of the goodness of creation and the connections between creation care and Christian mission. He also explores the paradox of human dignity and human depravity and its implications of missions. He sees the Wisdom literature of the Old Testament as the most international of all biblical literature and gives us a “rich source for reflecting on a biblical theology and missiology of human cultures.” He also examines the eschatological vision of the nations in the OT as a missional rhetoric and traced into the New Testament mission theology and practice.

The mere size of this book is daunting; it has been, so far, quite easy to read and filled with important concepts in contextualization, bibliology, and post-modernity. It also provides a new perspective on the Old Testament, one that is welcomed by this writer.

We will start on Tuesday with a look at the introduction where he defines several words related to mission, including missions, missional, and missionary.

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