"The Japanese and the Jesuits" examines the attempt by sixteenth-century Jesuits to convert Japan to Christianity. Directing the Jesuits was the Italian Alessandro Valignano, whose own magisterial writings, many of them not previously translated or published, are the principal source material for this account of one of the most remarkable of all meetings between East and West.
Valignano arrived in Japan in 1579. In promoting Christianity, he always sought the support of the ruling classes. He taught the missionaries to adapt themselves thoroughly to Japanese customs, etiquette, and culture, and insisted that they master the Japanese language. He brought a European printing press to Japan, turning out grammars and dictionaries of Japanese for the missionaries, as well as works of instruction and devotion for the Japanese Christians.
Following Valignano's death, Christianity was proscribed and missionaries banished from Japan. This does not detract from his remarkable achievements, however. He understood perfectly well that foreign missionaries by themselves were not capable of converting Japan to Christianity. One of his principal concerns was the training of Japanese Jesuits and priests, and breaking down the barriers between them and the Europeans. Few people have been more acutely aware of the tensions or grappled more determinedly with the problems in Japanese-Western relationships than Valignano.

What is the value of medical research? With contributions from anthropologists, sociologists and activists, this approach brings into focus the forms of value - social, epistemic, and economic - that are involved in medical research practices and how these values intersect with everyday living. Though their work covers wide empirical ground -from HIV trials in Kenya and drug donation programs in Tanzania to industry-academic collaborations in the British National Health Service - the authors share a commitment to understanding the practices of medical research as embedded in both local social worlds and global markets. Their collective concern is to rethink the conventional ethical demarcations betwweenpaid and unpaid research services in light of the social and material organisation of medical research practices. . Rather than warn against economic incursions into medical knowledge and health practice, or, alternatively, the reduction of local experience to the standards of bioethics, we hope to illuminate the array of practices, knowledges, and techniques through which the value of medical research is brought into being. This book was originally published as a special issue of Journal of Cultural Economy.

This work, first published in 1980, breaks new ground as concerns caste in India. It first examines the nature of caste and its relation to Hinduism and questions in what sense it is possible to speak of Christianity as an egalitarian faith. It then considers some Hindu egalitarian movements and traces the development of ideas on caste among Christian missionaries, examining the relationship between these views and the Revolt of 1857. Close attention is given to changing attitudes on caste, both by missionaries and by Indian Christians, while the influence of nationalism on Christian attitudes to caste and other social questions is further examined. Finally, there is a review of the contemporary state of the question and of the specifically Christian contribution to modern views on caste.

Business as mission has emerged as a significant new model for mission in the twenty-first century. Today's globalized economy has created strategic opportunities for Christian business enterprises in some of the most unlikely corners of the world. In this landmark book, economist Steve Rundle and missiologist Tom Steffen offer their paradigm for the convergence of business and missions--the Great Commission Company. Such companies intentionally create businesses in strategic locations, pursuing profits while remaining unabashedly Christian in their purpose. By establishing authentic businesses that employ local workers among the least-reached peoples of the world, they contribute to the economic health of the immediate community and also provide avenues for both physical and spiritual ministry. In an era where multinational corporations have global influence and impact, the Great Commission Company opens up new possibilities for missions-minded entrepreneurs and businesspeople who want to change the world to the glory of God. This revised and expanded edition provides new and updated case studies of Great Commission Companies in diverse contexts around the world.

Pastor Mark Dever seeks to help readers understand the biblical foundations of evangelism and challenge them to develop a culture of evangelism in their lives and their local churches.

A True-Life Thriller That Will Leave You Breathless! In the anniversary edition of this electrifying real-life story, readers are gripped from the first page by the harrowing account of a young man who risked his life to smuggle Bibles through the borders of closed nations. Now, sixty years after Brother Andrew first prayed for God's miracle protection, this expanded edition of a classic work encourages new readers to meet this remarkable man and his mission for the first time. Working undercover for God, a mission that continues to this day, has made Brother Andrew one of the all-time heroes of the faith. His narrow escapes from danger to share the love of Jesus will encourage and embolden believers in their own walks of faith.

This title, first published in 1995, explores the history of the American Missionary Association (AMA) - an abolitionist group founded in New York in 1846, whose primary focus was to abolish slavery, to promote racial equality and Christian values and to educate African Americans. This title will be of interest to students of history and education.

This book offers a historical assessment and balanced critique of contemporary church movements, especially in light of missional ecclesiology. An expert on Lesslie Newbigin and an expert on contemporary church models show how Newbigin's ideas have been developed and contextualized in three popular contemporary church movements: missional, emergent, and center church. In addition, the authors explain that some of Newbigin's insights have been neglected and need to be retrieved for the present day. This book calls for the recovery of the missionary nature of the church and commends church practices applicable to any congregation.

We live in a multicultural society. But Christians often do not know how to engage those of other faiths. As a result, many Christians hesitate to talk about Christianity with others in any kind of evangelistic way. Jay Moon and Bud Simon unpack the intercultural dynamics that Christians need to understand when encountering people from different communities and cultural backgrounds. Regarding evangelism from the perspective of four major worldviews (guilt/justice, shame/honor, fear/power, and indifference/belonging with purpose), this book demonstrates contextual evangelism approaches that are relevant, biblical, and practical. The authors draw on new research conducted with hundreds of participants that reveal concrete ways to communicate the gospel effectively across cultures. Sharing one's faith does not require attacking other religions; rather, we can engage at the worldview level in order to address people's deepest concerns. Greater understanding provides us with better skills for relational connection, empathy, and effective witness.

A guide that shows that yoga and Christian faith can be harmonious. As church membership nationwide continues to decline, the number of yoga practitioners continues to steadily increase. What's at the meeting place where the trajectories cross? What can the church learn from the popular success of yoga, and is it problematic to offer yoga in the church? How can churches offer yoga in a way that observes, appreciates, and builds upon the commonalities but which does not conflate the two traditions, each of which has its own integrity? Making the decision to offer yoga in the church requires humility: a confession that Christians do not hold the exclusive pathway to communion with the divine.

Weighs the use of mission and missions language today

This volume is the first attempt at a comprehensive history of how the Bible has fared in the Third World, from precolonial days to the postcolonial period. It closely examines the works of biblical interpreters from Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe and North America, bringing to the fore the obscure as well as the better-known interpretations, and investigating the Bible's reclamation by indigenous peoples in the postcolonial world. The volume will be an invaluable guide to anyone interested in learning about the impact of the Bible on non-Western cultures.

Over the past ten years, the North American mission field has experienced dramatic changes, which in turn have required congregations, middle judicatories, and denominations to adapt. Among these adaptations is an expectation for clear goals and quantified progress towards those goals. Church leaders who have never needed to measure their goals and progress with metrics may find this change daunting. The use of metrics denominational and middle judicatory dashboards, and the tracking of congregational trends has become an uncomfortable and misunderstood practice in this search for accountability. Doing the Math of Mission offers theory, models, and new tools for using metrics in ministry. This book also shows where metrics and accountability fit into the discernment, goal setting, and strategies of ministry. While there are resources for research on congregations, tools on congregational studies, and books on program evaluation, there is a gap when it comes to actual tools and resources for church leaders. This book is intended to help fill that gap, giving leaders a toolbox they can use in their own setting to clarify their purpose and guide their steps."

Most Americans know the story of Pocahontas, but not the fact that she was a Christian, and the reasons for her dramatic conversion. Pocahontas had a history-altering encounter with Jesus Christ. A key figure was Alexander Whitaker, pioneer Anglican missionary in Virginia, who taught Pocahontas the Christian faith - but is almost totally unknown today. This story of Pocahontas has never fully been told. Or it has been ridiculed. Yet it is true, as this book now documents. In these pages the real Pocahontas comes alive as a flesh-and-blood person with her own thoughts and decisions. This book shows the beauty, the romance, and the tragedy of Pocahontas's short life. It also traces the way the Pocahontas story has been used and misused over the past 400 years, opening the door to the larger issue of the suppression of native peoples in US history. The real story of Pocahontas presents a timely case study both in the history of missions and the history of America - an investigation of the interplay between gospel, culture, and national mythology.

How can God be good when he allows suffering, authorizes war, limits my sexuality, excludes people of other religions and even sends them to hell? Michael Ots responds with clarity and warmth to these and other moral objections to the character of God. He shows that in spite of some common perceptions, God really is good and can be trusted.

Preaching has fallen on hard times with many questioning its relevance and even its validity as a New Testament practice. This symposium of specially commissioned essays draws together an international team of thirteen scholars and pastors to address the importance of textual preaching in the history and life of the early church, the historic church, and the contemporary church. Contributions include essays on Old Testament preaching; preaching in Eastern Orthodoxy; gender-sensitive preaching; and preaching in the theology of Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It also includes essays on a range of homiletical challenges that textual preaching raises for the contemporary preacher, including genre, preaching without notes, inhabiting the text, and preaching without platitudes. A final reflection by Dave Hansen on the state of textual preaching rounds out the collection. The preaching of the gospel stands at the heart of Christian praxis. These essays make a vital contribution to the recovery of the importance of preaching, focused on the text of Scripture. Written with an eye to the pastor and practitioner as well as those in the pews and in the classroom, this is a book that is appealing to a wide range of readers.

God is on a mission to make all things new: from the fashion industry to the business community, from politics to education and from entertainment to media and the arts. God’s burning desire is to bring restoration to every sphere of society.

Starting in Genesis and working through the Scriptures, All Things New: Joining God's Story Of Re-creation will take you on a journey into the very heart of God and His relentless passion to redeem lives, heal the nations, rewire the culture, and bring renewal to all of creation.

As we immerse ourselves in the greatest story ever told we find our ultimate sense of belonging, our purpose in the present and our hope for the future. We become actors in this unfolding drama, pushing forward God’s purposes for the world and joining His mission to make all things new.

The Gospel Coalition 2022 Award of Distinction (Missions & The Global Church) A leading expert in the field of Christian missions encourages the church to recover the apostolic imagination that fueled the multiplication of disciples in the first century. J. D. Payne examines the contemporary practice of Western missions and advocates a more central place for Scripture in defining missionary language, identity, purpose, function, and strategy. He shows that an apostolic understanding of the church's disciple-making commission requires rethinking every aspect of missionary engagement. The book includes end-of-chapter discussion questions and action steps to help pastors and church leaders develop an apostolic imagination.

Leading Voices from across Christian Traditions Discuss the Mission of the Church What is the mission of the church? Every seminarian and church leader must wrestle with that question. No matter what designation a church uses to describe itself, it must also think critically about why it exists and what it should be doing. In this book, five leading voices representing a range of Christian traditions engage in an enlightening conversation as they present and compare their perspectives on the mission of the church. Each contributor offers his or her view and responds to the other four views. Contributors include Stephen B. Bevans, Darrell L. Guder, Ruth Padilla DeBorst, Edward Rommen, and Ed Stetzer. The book's format is ideal for classroom use and will also benefit pastors and church leaders.

Das Buch rekonstruiert die Konzeption der Orthodoxen Kirche Siebenburgens uber die soziale Ordnung Rumaniens in der Zwischenkriegszeit. Der Autor fasst dieses regional gepragte Ordnungsdenken durch das Konzept der politischen Ethnotheologie zusammen. Dieser zufolge ware die nationale Gemeinschaft mit der orthodoxen Gemeinschaft identisch, daher sollte der nationale Staat zugleich auch orthodox sein. Die soziale Ordnung, die er schafft, sollte eine legale Kodifizierung der moralischen Ordnung sein, die die Orthodoxie der Nation eingepragt hat. Dieser Syllogismus erklart die Haltung der Kirche gegenuber der ethnisch-religioesen Alteritat und beleuchtet, warum sie die rechtsextremen politischen Bewegungen, die versprachen, den rumanischen Staat in einen christlichen Staat umzuwandeln, mit Sympathie betrachtete.

An engaging and thoughtful book that guides readers into the frontiers of being a missional Christian

"Prodigal Christianity" offers a down-to-earth, accessible, and yet provocative understanding of God's mission of redemption in the world, and how followers of Christ can participate in this work. It speaks into the discontent of all those who have exhausted conservative, liberal, and even emergent ways of being Christian and are looking for a new way forward. It offers building blocks for missional theology and practice that moves Christians into a gospel-centered way of life for our culture and our times.Offers a compelling and creative vision for North American ChristiansPuts forth a theology and ten critical signposts that must be observed to follow a missional way of life: post-Christendom, missio Dei, incarnation, witness, scripture, gospel, church, sexuality, justice, pluralismAsks questions and points to issues that trouble many leaders in the post-modern, post-denominational, post-Christendom church

This book can fill the gap for the average Christian left discontented with the current options "after evangelicalism."

The twentieth century saw the spectacular growth of Christianity in much of the global south, the transformation of mission fields into self-governing Churches, schemes of church union (some successful, others abortive), evolving attitudes to other faiths and significant Christian engagement with issues of racial justice and world poverty. This book examines the contribution of the Methodist Missionary Society (and its predecessors before 1932) to these world-changing movements, from the remarkable mass conversions in south-west China and west Africa early in the century to the controversy over grants to liberation movements in the 1970s and 1980s. Pritchard traces the MMS contribution to education, health care, rural development and social welfare and describes the administration of the Societies and the selection and preparation of candidates for missionary service. This is a ground-breaking study of Methodist Overseas Mission in the twentieth century, how it adjusted to changing circumstances - including the forced withdrawals from China and Burma - and developed new initiatives and partnerships, including its World Church in Britain programme which brought missionaries from the younger Churches to serve in Britain and Ireland.