The first Christians lived out a new social order and envisaged the world anew. Divisions, inequalities and injustices would be overturned as the world would reflect a new kind of reign. In the Kingdom of God, the powerful are brought low, while the oppressed are raised up; the hungry are filled with good things, while the rich are sent empty away; the wolf lives with the lamb, and the leopard lies down with the goat; the slave becomes the son, the master is the servant of all and the meek will inherit the earth. This same upside-down Kingdom is echoed in the Carnival festivals of the Medieval era, which both parodied the oppressive structures of their day and dramatically portrayed an alternative reality. In this book, twelve scholars, theologians, and social activists from around the world take up the Carnival's call for justice and a renewed society, and portray in their own contexts the Kingdom of God coming in justice and fullness of life - the coming of the Carnival Kingdom."

"Living in context is worth doing if it reminds us that we are in a battle, indeed in a struggle for survival. It is worth doing if it tunes us into the world's suffering and our part in it as followers of the 'suffering servant'. It is worth doing if it gives us a new sense of urgency. 'The end of all things is near, ' as the Apostle Peter says, 'be serious and discipline yourselves'. Above all it challenges us to be better disciples of Jesus 'in this present age'." As Christians in the 21st century, what is our context? Global megatrends-postmodernism, globalisation, postcolonialism, international migration and environmental catastrophe-may appear to be too vast for us to contemplate, let alone formulate a Christian response to; yet we cannot ignore them, as they profoundly affect who we are, how we read the Bible, and how we see the world. In Naming the Frame, Jonathan Ingleby challenges us to commit ourselves to a deeper understanding of what is going on in the world-and what is going on in our lives-and to speak and act prophetically as faithful servants of God into these situations.

The rise of Asian mission poses important questions to the global Church: How can we best relate to these burgeoning Asian mission movements? What can we learn from them? What models of partnership, mutual support and resourcing are appropriate-on both sides? This book presents the papers from three Asian Mission Consultations held at Redcliffe College in Gloucester between 2008 and 2010, which brought together mission leaders and practitioners from Asian and non-Asian missions to interact with these questions.

Christian mission has been linked for good and ill with colonialism. But what is its relation to postcolonialsm, to a world which has gone 'beyond empire' but has not necessarily fully taken into account its colonial past? Postcolonialism offers a lens through which we can re-read Scripture and re-view the history of our times. Topics such as migration, the fate of indigenous peoples, hybridity, the postcolonial city, development, and many more, come into focus in this book. The discussion then leads naturally to a fresh expression of the nature of the Kingdom of God and the mission of the church.