Re-membering missiology: An invitation to an activist agenda

Abstract

In this article, I will argue that US mission practitioners, more than at anytime in the last century, need missiologists to bring research, writing, and teaching to bear on mission as practiced by US Christians, local parishes and congregations, and mission agencies, in part because of the profound changes in the nature and composition of what constitutes mission leadership today and the methodologies employed by those leaders. This need is rendered all the more urgent by what I will describe as the crisis in US mission practice which I will outline in detail. To respond to this sobering description of our engagement with God’s mission, I will propose the adoption of an “activist missiology,” along the lines of the growing school of activist anthropology pioneered by Charles Hale, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, and others.