Missiological Education for the 21st Century

This blog highlights books from Ralph Winter’s Library and compares excerpts to Winter’s own writings on one or more of the themes from his list of twelve “Frontiers of Perspective.” (See the full list at the end of this blog.)

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(10) Needed: A Revolution in Pastoral Training

Woodberry, J. Dudley, Charles Van Engen, and Edgar J. Elliston, eds. 1996. Missiological Education  for the 21st Century: Essays in Honor of Paul E. Pierson. Maryknoll: Orbis.

The well-known authors included in this book, including chapters by Ralph Winter, Andrew Walls, Tite Tienou, Samuel Escobar, and Ken Gnanakan, anticipated the needs and global context of missiological education that we are now experiencing. The contents of the book include

Historical Contexts
     • Missiological Education in Historical Perspective (Andrew Walls)
     • The State of Missiological Research (Gerald H. Anderson)
     • Missiological Education for a Global Era (Paul G. Hiebert)
     • Missiological Education in the Bible College Tradition (Kenneth Mulholland)

Ecumenical Contexts
     • Pentecostal/Charismatic Perspectives on Missiological Education (L. Grant McClung, Jr.)
     • Theological Issues for Missiological Education: An Ecumenical-Protestant Perspective (Jerald D. Gort)
     • A Roman Catholic Perspective on Missiological Educaiton (Mary Motte)
     • Orthodox Missiological Education for the Twenty-First Century (Michael James Oleksa)

Regional Contexts
     • The Training of Missiologists for an African Context (Tite Tienou)
     • The Training of Missiologists for a Latin American Context (Samuel Escobar)
     • The Training of Missiologists for Asian Contexts (Ken R. Gnanakan)
     • The Training of Missiologists for Western Culture (Wilbert R. Shenk)

Missiological Contexts
     • The Role of the Behavioral Sciences in Missiological Education (Darrell Whiteman)
     • Worls Urbanization and Missiological Education (Rogert S. Greenway)
     • The Training of Missiologists to Develop Local Bible Translators
     • Training Missiologists for Jewish Contexts (Stuart Dauermann)
     • Missiological Education for Lay People (Ralph D. Winter)

Future
     • The View from a Refurbished Chair (J. Dudley Woodberry)
     • Missiological Education through Decentralized Partnerships (Viggo Sogaard)
     • Specialization/Integration in Mission Education (Charles Van Engen)
     • Moving Forward from Where We Are in Missiological Education (Edgar J. Elliston)

Ralph Winter’s 12 “Frontiers of Perspective” represent major shifts in his thinking that “profoundly modified and molded his perception of the mission task”:

(1) Unreached Peoples

(2) The Great Commission and Abraham

(3) From the Unfinished Task to the Finishable Task

(4) Failure with the Large Groups and the Off-setting Trend to “Radical Contextualization”

(5) Reverse Contextualization, the Recontextualization of Our Own Tradition 

(6) The Reclaiming of the Gospel of the Kingdom

(7) Beyond Christianity

(8) A Different Type of Recruitment

(9) A Trojan Horse

(10) Needed: A Revolution in Pastoral Training

(11) The Religion of Science

(12) The Challenge of the Evil One